By: Jessie Frahm

Hi digital people,

As a Digital Project Manager here at Gravity Thinking I was one of the lucky ones who got to attend last week’s Digital Shoreditch festival to explore some of the latest market trends within creative, technical and entrepreneurial talent of the UK, Europe and beyond.

All pumped on sunshine, coffee and a chocolate muffin I went to the following events. Here are the key insights from the talks I went to.

  “Can Wearables give you Wings?

 Speaker: Carlos Thomas | Audiowings // Founder | @carlosdajackal   
                         

Ever since the first human walked on Earth, we as a species have been fascinated about the world that seems beyond reach for human capabilities. We explore what seems impossible and this is the root of the “I want to become a Super Hero” syndrome!

“Who here has a Smart Watch?” In a room of 40 people, 3 raises their hands. Why did this highly anticipated item fail to appeal to so many? We have all watched films such as I Robot and The Terminator; the idea of machines interfering with, and taking over our lives is not an appealing thought, but this might never the less be the feeling a smart watch provokes.

Web 3.0 - the “Internet of Things”, however, goes far beyond a smart watch, and wearables should be re-defined as technology solutions, used to boost our emotions and human experiences in the real world. Earphones are a brilliant example of this, as it is a wearable technology used to create beyond sound experience layover to the real world.

In our search for unreal experiences to be real, we are lead online where each of us can explore and develop our own pseudo reality in a variety of communities. This allows us to create a reality in the in the digital world where we can be exactly that superhero we previously could only dream about…..

Research found however, that the average person spends more time online in their virtual worlds than they do sleeping. If this is true I’ll be tempted to ask – what really is reality?

Designing experiences for sound; the next great challenge coming our way

George Webster | Critical mass // Director of Content Strategy | @georgew1971

 

One of the things we will see an increased focus on in the coming year is the focus on sound. Audio is a previously untapped aspect to being digital and an app such as Yappie, which is a mobile social network counterpart to Instagram allows its users to record up to 60 sec of sound testify its growing rise.  

"The sound of a bicycle bell ringing."

Listen and you will visualise this in a split second. The London Boris bikes send you off with a smile on your face, and manage to utilise the emotions people naturally connect to this sound.

Sound is a powerful tool. Have a look at UNMAS “Sweeper” app project, which uses sound as its core and thereby creates a powerful awareness campaign around the danger of landmines.


UNMAS "Sweeper"

But what if we managed to take the use of sound even further, and virtualise its ability to connect sound to other senses, such as taste and smell?

Could the next big thing be Starbucks personalized coffee tracks?

The sound of the Trombone is proved to be related to bitter taste but what would you imagine being on your playlist for the taste of coffee, wine or vanilla ice cream?

Superfans and Power users: the future of audience engagement 

Juliana Meyer | SupaPass // CEO and Founder | @julianameyer        
                          

Superfans are key to every start-up – they are there when you are up and coming and they are there in times where your business faces the challenges of being yesterday’s news.  In this 30 minute speech the audience were taken through the below 12 points, which focus on winning and nurturing your Superfans.

Why beacons matter? And what it means for your sector?

Ege Akpinar | Pointr // Founder & CEO | @egeakpinar                                                                           

For those of you who don’t know it, Beacons are a device designed to navigate around specific locations. So why do we need Beacons when we have Google maps? The short answer to this is that beacons work indoor and are incredibly precise, cheap and adaptable to all sorts of projects.

 

Using beacons gives you the ability to collect data surrounding people’s behaviour,for instance what is their preferred route, where do they spend time and what do they search for?

Beacons are agile and up to date, have been used to track people working under ground in mines, follow people’s behaviour at big locations. In near future beacons will be developed to interact with a task specific app which help people navigate in a big stadium, helping them to find their seat, toilets and the bar area, for example.

The Louvre currently uses beacons to capture visitors and created itinerates with suggested navigation to maximize space. Bigger airports are developing apps where people can get exact details on how to find their gate and how much time it will take them to get there. This is very useful considering that 20% of the revenue from an airport comes from the duty-free area, it is worth keeping people there as long as possible. 

Another cool example of the use for beacons is in hospitals where beacons have been used to find expensive lost items by tracking them around the building.

On the advertising side, Nivea created a Bluetooth tag to put on kids while going to the beach so they wouldn’t get lost from their parents. 

Beacons are evidently an important development and it is probably just a matter of time before we see even more creative apps developed based on the usefulness of these cheap navigation points.