Lowe’s 3D powers the highly visual experiences that our customers expect, the most critical of which is the ability to see what a product or project can look like in your own home. Through our partnerships with Google and Lowe’s Digital, my team at Lowe's Innovation Labs led the development of “View in Your Space” for ARCore-powered Android users – bringing our library of high-quality virtual 3D models to millions of customers whenever and wherever they want.
Customers can use the feature within the Lowe's Consumer App by tapping the "View in Your Space" option while browsing products. The customer can then quickly scan their surroundings and virtually drop the product into their home or patio. Augmented reality allows the customer to walk around the high-quality, high-resolution item and view it from every angle to be sure it fits in their home. Once they're sure, it's a simple click to add it to their cart.
Click here to head to Google Play to download the app.
In 2016, Lowe’s introduced LoweBot, a NAVii autonomous retail service robot by Fellow, to five Lowe’s stores throughout the San Francisco Bay area. After a successful two-year pilot of OSHbot in an Orchard Supply Hardware store, Lowe’s expanded upon the initial promise retail service robots with a proof-of-concept focused on assisting both customers and employees alike.
For the customer, LoweBot helped find products in multiple languages and effectively navigate the store. For associates, the robot offloaded inventory scanning, price auditing and planogram integrity tasks, enabling employees to spend more time offering their expertise and specialized project knowledge to customers.
BAND-AID Magic Vision started not with a formal brief, but with a big idea born out of a chance conversation.
During a quick introductory coffee with BAND-AID's brand manager, we hashed out an idea that would differentiate the brand from generic bandages – by turning the BAND-AID bandage itself into an entertainment experience that turns moments of pain into moments of delight.
Over the next year and change, I led a skunkworks team at JWT who prototyped, play-tested and politicked our way into producing an augmented reality platform – starring the Muppets – that creates a genuine emotional bond between parents and children.
By scanning a Muppets bandage with the Magicvision app, parents and kids unlock a magical experience in which Kermit, Miss Piggy and Gonzo magically spring from the BAND-AID to sing or joke your child back into good spirits.
More on the subject here, via the New York Times.
In 2013, I co-founded a connected toy company called Retoy. We develop technologies that turn low-cost plastic into fully interactive objects.
We've invented everything from NERF basketball hoops that "talk" to iPhones when you score to augmented reality Lazer Tag rifles. Our most successful invention to date is Telepods, the world's lowest cost "toys to life" platform.
The Telepods platform turns everyday action figures into toys that can be scanned into videogames, Skylanders-style. We partnered with Hasbro and Rovio to produce several lines of Angry Birds-related Telepods, including Angry Birds Star Wars and Angry Birds Transformers.
In only 3 months, Telepods became Hasbro's best-selling 3rd party invention of 2013. And since their release, more than 60 million Angry Birds Telepods have been digitally scanned into mobile videogames.
In partnership with the Assistive Robotics Lab at Virginia Tech, my team at Lowe’s Innovation Labs developed a unique exosuit pilot, focused on bringing soft robotics to retail stock employees at Lowe's of Christiansburg, VA in April of 2017.
Lowe’s stock employees are responsible for the critical task of unloading every truck delivery and moving all products onto the sales floor, during the day and throughout the night. They spend up to 90% of their time at work moving and lifting freight.
The lift-assistance exosuits are designed specifically to keep these employees strong and healthy. They are a type of soft robotic wear, designed with carbon fiber rods on the back and legs, which assist with the lift mechanism, and lightweight, conformable fabrics ensure fluid, natural movements. The suits store and release energy as a person bends and lifts, similar to a bow and arrow. This reduces the amount of energy an employee expels while lifting to simply their body weight, and makes lifting objects like bags of concrete easier.
The promise of virtual reality is more than just visualization – it’s about total immersion. Immersive technologies have the potential to change the way everyday customers try and purchase products online and in stores. With Holoroom Test Drive, we are pushing the ‘try-before-you-buy’ model further than ever before by creating a platform for customers to safely test drive a power tool in a virtual backyard, helping them make informed and confident buying decisions.
Holoroom Test Drive is a fully-immersive, multi-sensory experience that utilizes haptics, scent, sound and visuals to let customers try out Kobalt’s 24V cordless hedge trimmer in a safe, virtual space. A custom-made controller with a true-to-life weight and feel makes it easy for a user to translate what she’s learned in the real world. Currently available at select Lowe’s stores, this virtual product trial aims to vastly improve customers’ willingness to try out new products, ease decision making and even provide safety and professional usage tips.
The first augmented reality Star Wars game. One of Apple's 'Best of 2010' apps. One of the best-selling mobile Star Wars titles ever.
I directed, designed, scripted and helped secure the license from THQ and Lucasfilm. I'm still not sure how we managed to make this one happen, but this was one of the most gratifying experiences of my career.
In Hess: Tractor Trek, players are in control of the world’s fastest tractor fleet, racing through the most difficult terrain on Earth at breathtaking speeds.
Available for iOS, Android and Kindle Fire, Hess Tractor Trek uses sophisticated audio recognition tech to connect to your physical Hess Toy Truck, one of the most popular toy lines in the world.
I designed and directed this game – and even though it's a game designed to market a toy, it's actually really fun. Grab it here.
Lazer Tag has always been cool, but there's been a problem: you could never really see the lasers. We set out to change this, inventing and designing the world's first augmented reality toy blaster.
My gaming studio, lm/nl, partnered with Hasbro and Shoot the Moon to develop both the hardware and software for this new play experience. By connecting your iOS device to a Lazer Tag blaster, players transform their real-life surroundings into a virtual battlefield.
I directed and scripted the software experience, helped design the original hardware prototype and composed the game's soundtrack.
Transformers meets Mike Tyson's Punch Out. I directed and designed this game, and helped develop a toy-to-game interface, which was originally slated to let kids play the mobile game with their physical Transformers toys (unfortunately, it never made it to shelves). Get the game here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/transformers-battle-masters/id814720394?mt=8
The first app that learns what you're allergic to, and teaches you exactly why you're sneezing. It triangulates pollen, weather and your symptom log, and gamifies the whole experience.
AllergyCast has been downloaded more than 300,000 times and is the #1 branded allergy app on iPhone and Android and top 25 for all weather-related apps.
I designed the app's gamification systems, including a contextual badging and notification system and sweepstakes mechanics.
Ah, the good ol' days of Facebook canvas apps.
I was CD on this one, where we worked with Stouffer's to develop a program that would put a social spin on the traditional, low-emotion coupon deal.
We hooked into a relatively obvious insight: Facebook is an extremely polarizing platform. It's pretty common to see black-or-white arguments and comment threads about politics, religion or music tastes clutter your feed.
Knowing that a good, homestyle meal can bring just about anyone together, we came up with Agree or Dishagree, a coupon program that gives any two Facebook friends an equal deal if they can set aside their feelings about polarizing topics. We partnered with Buzzfeed to develop custom content around the promotion. Good times were had by all.
The program resulted in Stouffer's jumping to #1 from #7 in terms of Facebook fan engagement within the frozen food category.
I was lead game designer on Parks Unleashed, the world's first adventure video game played inside of YouTube.
From Mashable:
Zyrtec worked with ad agency JWT in New York to launch the YouTube game Parks Unleashed on Sept. 5, the start of the fall allergy season. Modeled on 30 year-old text-based games like Zork, the game presented users with various scenarios in which they'd have to make a choice.
The premise was that dogs have buried Samsung Galaxy Tabs all over the park and you, the user, have to find them. As the user ambles through the park, she is confronted by various characters, like the chatty hot dog man, who asks, “What can I do you for?” At that point the onscreen choices include “Seen a pug?” “Hot dog, please” and “Diamonds??" Each choice will set you on a different path.
"We looked at every aspect of the traditional brand channel experience — beyond the videos, we looked at the various interfaces and page layout — and integrated them into a comprehensive meta-game inspired by those old-school graphic adventure PC games of the early '90s," says Josh Shabtai, experience design director at JWT. "Making a Grim Fandango that my mom would want to play might have been on my mind throughout the initial development stages."
It turns out that there are a lot of moms who want to play GrimFandango, or at least the GF-inspired game that Zyrtec came up with. The Zyrtec YouTube Channel now has 2.2 million total views, almost all of which were drawn by the game — an impressive feat over a roughly six-week period.
In addition, the "time spent" metrics were also impressive. Tim Nolan, creative director of JWT in New York, says the average player spent more than seven minutes playing the game. Some returning players were on for 30 minutes or more.
"We took this approach to talk to our consumers using media that they already engage in, at a destination they spend their time, leveraging behaviors we know they love," Nolan says.
Of course, Zyrtec didn't leave it to consumers to discover the game for themselves. The brand ran an online ad campaign promoting the game that included a YouTube masthead ad, a Yahoo Mail takeover and Facebook display ads, among other methods of outreach. The brand also tagged a TV spot with a prompt to visit YouTube.com/Zyrtec, but that campaign only ran for about a week and a half.
Bloomberg Trading Solutions is an enterprise-grade software suite for traders that helps with front-end portfolio, inventory, sales and trading solutions and middle & back office operations. Basically, it makes their jobs a whole lot easier.
The problem was that traders had never heard of Trading Solutions. This product could potentially make them millions in the market, but they didn't know it.
To get the word out we created Labyrinth, a four-week long game to promote Trading Solutions. Each week, we launched 10 challenging levels for them to conquer. Along the way, they could activate power ups to help them out. The power ups represented the product benefits of speed, transparency, and optimization in the market. The game appealed to their extremely competitive nature, letting traders experience the world of Trading Solutions instead of just reading about it.
I talk too much. I've been on hundreds of panels and given keynote speeches and live product demos at conferences like InsideAR and DEMO. The talks I'm most proud of are below:
The IPG Media Lab is part creative technology shop, part futurist thought-leader for the marketing industry. Every year, the Lab publishes its Outlook -- a state of the union in where technology is leading us as marketers and consumers.
I oversaw and co-authored this year's report, a look at what we're calling Intimate Computing. It's (hopefully) fascinating stuff: now that 85% of the world is covered by a wireless network and more than 2 billion of us have smartphones, the stage is set for an explosion of extremely personal media and tech applications.
I write, record and perform punky, synthy, indie rock under the name Family Video. Listen to our debut EP here.
