After rebranding earlier this year, InReality is taking the next step by hiring a COO/President.

Last week we introduced you to our Digital Kitchen video series in which we shared what it takes to bring digital experiences into reality using new technologies such as transparent displays (See part I here). In this episode we will be demonstrating transparent displays in more depth with the use of a transparent display lightbox featuring a Stratocaster guitar and related content.

This post is the first in a series we call InReality Digital Kitchen. The goal of this series is to communicate some of our thinking related to all things technology. Here at InReality, we pride ourselves in our ability to bring solutions into the real world. However, most of the interesting work, the tinkering, the successes and failures, and the accidental discoveries are usually hidden behind the scenes. That's why we started this series. We would like to share what's cooking in our Digital Kitchen before it ever becomes a part of a solution.

This past week we witnessed a local-level charity success that has us wondering: did technology and payment innovation create a significant performance improvement?

Earlier last year, I travelled to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, which is my hometown. My trips home are usually full of emotion because they happen so rarely, but this time was truly special. My baby sister was getting married. Needless to say, my whole stay was an emotional rollercoaster: tears, laughs, reunions and even a random food poisoning to top it off.

This past weekend, a worldwide community of thinkers, doers and innovators met for a Global Service Jam an international collaboration to design a service in 48 hours. Jams were hosted in more then 120 locations worldwide and over 3000 people participated.

Earlier this week, we had a reception to celebrate the launch of our new name and identity. This was a long journey and we were glad to celebrate it with our friends, clients, vendor partners and family as we look into the future.

Why would we change our name? Why now? Why InReality? And are we leaving retail behind?

The complexity of how people go about deciding what products and services to buy, how to shop, how to buy, and even the after sale and ownership experience, has grown exponentially in recent years. There are so many more ways consumers can get information about products today than even just a few years ago, and so many more ways to buy. This has been largely driven by the proliferation of digital technologies like smart phones and tablets and online shopping sites.

As evident in the presentations and discourse I participated in during the Global Service Design Network Conference 2012 in Paris, France, Service Design (SD) is maturing as a professional discipline. Service Design is the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between service provider and customers. The purpose of Service Design methodologies is to design according to the needs of customers or participants, so that the service is user-friendly, competitive and relevant to the customers. The backbone of this process is to understand the behavior of the customers, their needs and motivations.

On December 5th Info Retail hosted CXPA Atlanta's end of year meeting. CXPA (Customer Experience Professionals Association) is a growing international organization working to elevate the importance of customer experience. The event attracted over 40 attendees which included employees from IHG, Alternative Apparel, NCR, Oracle, QEP, GE Capital, Maid Brigade, Cox Communications, and Nielsen Expositions to name a few. Common to all attendees was a strong interest in creating meaningful experiences for our customers.

Our creative team recently had the opportunity to design and produce a retail tablet solution for a kiosk application at a leading retailer. One of the major challenges of this project was to develop a tablet enclosure that would fit our needs from a user experience, engineering and cost standpoint. We’re very proud of the resulting fixture.

Last month Chris Livaudais, our senior designer and chair of Industrial Designers Society of America’s (IDSA) Atlanta chapter, led an exciting project with two local high schools as part of IDSA’s High School OutReach Program.  The purpose of the project was to expose high school students to the practice of design.

IR recently worked with Dormeo Octaspring, a European brand working in the sleep experience and technology industry. Our team worked with Dormeo to design and build a showroom for the Las Vegas Market, one of the premier events for the furniture industry in North America.

Like all successful businesses, retailers have consistently looked to technology for a positive impact on the bottom line. 20 years ago, it was computer based Point of Sale systems that provided a boost to profitability by streamlining the sales process and improving inventory management. Forward thinking retailers applied computer technology to the “back of house” or operations side of the business and reaped the rewards

Practically speaking, how can the mattress industry create a better shopping experience for female shoppers? Last month’s column described how a shopper’s experience is influenced by her interactions with a variety of touchpoints and introduced the idea of conducting participant observation to examine shopper behavior. This month's focus is on how to analyze those insights using “experience design.” Its principles are guided by two key questions: Is the design practical and is it desirable? In other words, does the store design help the help the shopper accomplish her objectives and does she enjoy the process?

It can be difficult to maintain a strong presence at retail with an inconsistent message and creative execution. Compound this across multiple retail outlets and the problem quickly becomes a high priority call-to-action for manufacturers seeking to identify areas in need of increased effectiveness and consistent brand delivery.

There has been a lot of coverage of how tablets will "revolutionize" retail and help everyone make gigantic profits. Earlier this year, a report by report by RIS News proclaimed that “Retail Embraces Tablets.” They stated that only 35% of retailers reported that they "have no plans to either test or deploy tablets by the end of the year." To clarify, this statistic refers to tablet deployments on the enterprise side and not necessarily customer-facing solutions. Nonetheless, it shows how much attention there is to tablets in the retail industry. Now this might be exciting for anyone waiting for great innovations in retail, but it actually troubles me.

The mattress industry claims its focus is on the female consumer, but is anyone paying close attention to how women actually shop?

There have been a few micro computing product launches this year that generated a lot of buzz in the tech world. Generally speaking, there are two types of microcomputers of this class on the market. The first is a mother board-type that doesn’t have a housing. The $35 Raspbery Pi and $49 Cubiboard are two examples of this type of product. The second is a better-packaged type of product that looks like a bulkier USB stick. FXI Coton Candy and MK802 belong in this category.

We live in the age of customer experience innovation. Retailers and manufacturers find themselves having to manage an ever-growing number of brand touchpoints. Markets are more dynamic and challenging than ever before: Retailers that were leading yesterday find themselves struggling our out of business today –Best Buy, JCPenney Borders, Circuit City, JCPenny just to name a few.

Info Retail conducted a survey during the August 2010 Las Vegas market in order to keep our finger on the “pulse,” so to speak, of market attendees. We interviewed roughly 200 manufacturers and retailers. In this article, we review how attendees responded to one of our survey questions, as well as offer our perspective on what the survey results may mean for your business. Do consumers want more or less products at retail?

Medically speaking, the term "anosognosia" refers to the impairment that occurs wherein a person seems unaware of or denies a disability or a weakness. For brands, a difficult but necessary component to growth is the admission of a weakness.

Early in 2008, weak consumer spending provoked brands to re-emphasize customer service in hopes of capturing the consumers’ dollar during the recession. And since then, with every quarter that reported a drop in sales, this trend has evolved into brands attempting to differentiate themselves through outperforming one another in the area of customer service. This trend has snowballed to the point that the Institute of Customer Service (ICS) has launched an accreditation strategy to audit and measure the effectiveness of these new service tactics. But where is the line between an ingenious plan that targets the consumers’ needs and wants, and a scheme that creates unnecessary gimmicks?

The following article, published on SmashingMagazine.com, depicts the user experience of shopping for bed sheets. Specifically, the authors searched for a set of 300-thread-count, white cotton sheets for a queen-sized bed from Macy's, Target and Amazon.com. Essentially, the authors walk the reader through their heuristic evaluation (a valuable tool for UX/IA [User Experience/Information Architecture] design projects).

Strunk and White's Elements of Style is perhaps the most widely known prescriptive treatment of English grammar and usage. Often these standards for good writing synchronize seamlessly with the major principles of Search Engine Optimization (or SEO). Though sometimes, the principles of SEO and english usage come into conflict with each other.

SoCon, the southeast's premier social media and networking convention, will take place at Kenessaw State University on Jan 29 and 30th, 2010. This year, Info Retail will be reporting the highlights of the conference through Twitter. Check out the Twitter feeds for Brooks Ballard (Director of Marketing, Info Retail) and myself, Alisan Atvur (Interaction Architect) for up-to-the-second updates on the events, quotes from the lectures, and insights from your favorite design group.

On September 22nd, Yahoo! launched a $100 million ad campaign to promote its new homepage and their "It's Y!ou" slogan.

These new ads seem to couple the exciting and eclectic culture  of Yahoo! with the suggestion that the brand is empowering the user (i.e. A campaign that declares "The internet is under new management: yours").