Innovative work from the last week include Adidas rigging up Messi with LEDs for ‘Speed of Light’, Ikea’s 360° interactive tour and Uniqul’s facial payment technology.
Number 5) Ikea: Make Small Space Big 360°
To help demonstrate their claim of being able to make the most of any pokey little space, Ikea have developed a cunning 360° video experience where you can get a guided tour through a ‘typical home’ and check out all their space saving tips. The ability to drag the video in any direction 360° makes for a lovely immersive piece of content. It’s nice to see the app living happily on their web site rather than being chucked on to a random microsite.
Via Adverblog
Number 4) Adidas: Speed of Light
Adidas released a smart stunt to promote their new adizero F50 Messi football boot – by donning Messi, and a ball, in hundreds of LEDS. The video shows him jogging, juggling and chesting the ball along to some impressive visual effects.
Via The Inspiration Room
Number 3) MIT’s Medical Mirror
MIT student Ming-Zher Poh worked out a clever way to analyse minute changes in the brightness of anyone’s face to determine their pulse rate. Hooking this technology up to a mirror enables you to check out your radiance alongside a snapshot of physiological data. The data can be sent to your healthcare provider to help monitor patterns in your health data and spot any deviations.
Via Engadget
Number 2) Payback Time
Belgian bank BNP Paribas Fortis came up with a bold way of promoting their new Easy Transfer mobile payment app through ‘It’s Payback Time’ virtual stunt. Instead of sending a boring reminder mail, you can instead enlist the Payback Man to pay them a virtual visit through Google Streetview and suggest a friendly repayment.
Via The Inspiration Room
Number 1) Pay with your face
In perhaps the next frontier of payment technologies, Finish company Uniqul has developed a means of using facial recognition to enable people to pay with their face. Biometic sensors combined with ‘military grade’ algorithms ensure that the right customer is selected and matched to Uniqul’s database. Despite the bizarre video where you feel like you’re waiting for an in irreverent joke that never comes… it looks like an awesome piece of technology.
Via Springwise
That’s it for this week. As ever, if anything screamingly awesome has been missed out, let us know in the comments below. Or feel free to ping any recommendations for next week to @jamescfilmer.
James Filmer
Chief Innovation Officer
UM