Authors:
Grace Chee, Senior Creative Technologist, OBE
OBE's tech-forward event at SFDW.
As part of San Francisco Design Week 2024, OBE proudly hosted an event at the Cambria Gallery titled "The Future of Connecting Communities through Creative Technology." Our VP of Innovation and Technology, Jeff Yang, expertly moderated a dynamic panel that included:
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Ali Weiner, Senior Creative Strategist, OBE
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Bram van de Ven, CEO of arfected (a frequent collaborator of ours)
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Grace Chee, Senior Creative Technologist, OBE
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Jonathan Zapata, Senior Technology Manager, OBE
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Katie Schray, Senior Content Producer, OBE
At OBE, we continually evolve to meet new audience needs, stay relevant to their communities, and demonstrate the industry-leading mindset of our clients and partners. During the panel, our in-house experts on creative technology, strategy, and content shared insights on how emerging technologies are shaping the future of 360-degree experience design through different lenses.
Highlights from OBE's soldout event.
Broader shifts in the marketing landscape.
Technological advancements have dramatically shifted consumer expectations over the past two decades, making it necessary for brands to adopt a holistic approach to experiences, focusing on emotional engagement.
"We expect more from our brands and experiences. The focus is now on a holistic approach to experience, which deals a lot more with emotions and emotional engagement." — Jeff Yang
Challenges and opportunities for connecting communities using emerging technologies.
"Right now, we are looking at the most tech literate generation there has ever been. If you talk to anyone in this current generation, they can spot a deep fake video right away.” — Ali Weiner
One of the most important things to consider is building experiences with the community you’re building it for — co-creating or finding unconventional ways to involve them once it’s built. Sometimes you’re up against timeline or budget challenges, and constraints in the project can come into play, but you risk losing the multi-dimensionality of communities if you don’t involve them. For example, with the Future Pastry Boutique we created for Chase Payment Solutions at EEEEEATSCON in New York, we invited Chef Eunji Lee from LYSÉE to be there and provide in-person demonstrations alongside our webAR menu and ordering experience. She was such an important element to the whole activation, providing customers with the access and interaction they craved.
Most important platforms to leverage for facilitating connection.
The power of social media in expanding the reach of creative tech experiences, enabling broader participation through virtual versions of in-person events.
"Social media is key for integrating and sharing content from creative tech experiences, expanding the audience beyond those who could attend in person." — Katie Schray
Social AR platforms, such as Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok, are important. These platforms were built to create and share content, and now that they offer increasingly immersive capabilities, there is potential not just for users to passively consume content, but to be immersed by using their face, body, and environment to bring elements to life.
Harnessing advanced web technologies and immersive platforms to connect global audiences.
We’re also seeing phones become more powerful, allowing web browsers to perform similarly powerful functions, such as custom webAR experiences, where we can create extended content pieces without the limitations of social platforms.
"Virtual immersive environments are exciting for us to build a gathering place to connect broader global audiences, whether it’s with a custom platform (like the one we created for Sephora) or user-generated content gaming platforms like Roblox and Fortnite. Roblox, for example, has a huge built-in Gen Z audience, with 34 million-plus daily active users in that age group spending an average of 2.5 hours on the platform.” — Grace Chee
New developments in tools for experiential design.
Social AR platforms’ understanding of the user’s scene is getting a lot better with recent features like body tracking or using LiDAR to detect depth and differentiate between what is a wall, floor, ceiling, couch, etc.
"The trend towards full understanding of users’ environments allows us to create elements that blend seamlessly into their surroundings." — Bram van de Ven
Increasing sophistication of low/no code tools for AR, such as the recently released Google Geospatial creator plugin for Adobe Aero or 8th Wall’s Studio, is also facilitating quicker and easier prototyping.
Creative considerations for audience-centric experiences and community-building.
It’s important to keep in mind that this tech is still very new and not everyone will know how to navigate it. For those who do, the digital natives, we’ve established some ground rules when it comes to creating immersive experiences:
- Keep it short. Make sure the immersive experience is quickly and easily understood. Use an interactive tutorial instead of having the user sit through a minute of instructions.
- Keep it snackable. Allow users to play with the experience anywhere, at any time.
- Make sure you end the experience with something shareable. If you manage to get the audience to create the content for you, that’s basically free, organic advertising. Allow them to tell a story with the tools you’re providing.
Content considerations for tech-enabled experiences.
It’s important to plan for content creation, as it is a key component of any tech-enabled experience. For SEPHORiA's virtual event, one of the primary goals was to connect the beauty community with Sephora’s brand partners through video content. This involved managing over 50 videos from different brands and accommodating a global audience with closed captioning in seven languages.
"Editing and post-processing are vital for storytelling in tech-enabled experiences, allowing us to create immersive worlds with the voices of those who experience them." — Katie Schray
Picking the right content platform is also important, as they don’t all provide the same capabilities. To provide our Sephora client and their partner brands with useful analytics for future decision making, we selected a platform that tracked analytics.
Your future bespoke creative technology experience awaits.
Our in-house creative technology, strategy, and content experts are eager to collaborate with you on your next custom interactive experience, helping you connect with your target audience. Contact us to learn more about how we can bring your vision to life.
