Digit

Over a year ago we wrote a blog post titled NFC: what is it and why should you care? which outlined what NFC was and why we thought it worthy of your attention. Having had a year to muse over and play with the technology, we really do feel that it is going to be a game changer. As part of our in-house R&D program we’ve been playing with different applications of NFC, from the downright intrusive, to the fun and playful, to the sensible and thoughtful.

Take a look at the photo above: a bottle of vodka, a fashion magazine and a charity collection tin — all seemingly unrelated, except that we’ve been able to NFC enable all of these objects. The vodka bottle has an NFC tag behind the logo where the user can scan and be directed to a mobile site that gives a randomised mixer. A simple concept that ties the technology to a relevant piece of content that would be useful to the user when they interact with the product. NFC can be used this way to augment products and give them a digital presence that both expands and enhances the experience.

The fashion magazine features a printed advert with an NFC tag in the centre of the page. Here the user can place their phone on the markers scanning the NFC tag in the process and being directed to a mobile optimised site where they can browse other handbags in the collection. This is a prime example of how NFC can be applied in advertising to either directly drive sales or expand on a product line up.

The charity collection tin is a very early R&D piece experimenting with collecting mobile and wireless payments via an NFC reader embedded in the tin. We’re specifically looking to learn if people would be willing to donate in this way; if not, why not? Are there any social or technical barriers to the payment? We’ll post more when we’re further down the line.

At Digit, we think of the user first and this is always primary when we are dealing with new technologies. The first thing we discovered was that NFC technology is actually invisible in that it produces a user experience in which the user does not have to do anything — just hold their device to a NFC tag, and it works. Compared to the user journey for QR codes with the user having to open an app, scan the code and then touch to accept the result, the NFC process is almost non-existent.

This insight lead to another important finding; how do you explain to users that the product is NFC enabled? A quick Google image search produces any number of different logos all similar, but different. The is, however, an official NFC logo called the N-Mark, that is to be used to show that a product is NFC enabled. That’s a good start, but now the process of educating the public begins and this could be problematic especially when dealing with the different uses of NFC from scanning tags and being directed to content to making mobile payments.

Lastly the number of devices that support NFC is growing. It you look at this list, you’ll notice that the majority of high end Android phones now support NFC along with a host of Blackberry devices. Apple have also filed patents detailing NFC payments via a mobile device, perhaps hinting that NFC will be coming to a future version of the iPhone.

For now, we’ll be posting some videos soon, so do stay tuned.

Further Reading;
www.nfc-forum.org
www.nfcnews.com
www.nfcworld.com

It’s been with us since the year dot, but the end is in sight for the beloved manila folder. A main stay of the last twenty years of computing, the first and last bastion of computer symbolic physicality, actually had it’s humble beginnings as a real life paper folder. The first time the word “file” was used as a reference for stored data was in 1952 at IBM, it was used to describe data stored on punch cards. We all understand that folders contain files and that if we want to open a file with have to open the folder or folders to get to it.

So, why do I think it’s days are numbered? Well, with the increased usage of mobile and tablet devices, some of which do not have a traditional file browser its usage is decreasing. We seem to only have four distinct categories of things now; pictures, video, music and documents.  Our emails are stored in our email app, our SMSs stored in the messenger app and so on. With the advent of cloud storage then the concept of a physical folder on you hard drive to me already seems antiquated. So behold, the swan song for the manila folder (video by emiliogomariz.net/)

Last night our R&D project ‘I Could Do That’ moved off the streets and in to the gallery space. The first test of this new area was an exhibition organised by the Lava Collective, just down the road at the Rag Factory where work from two artists Stik and Jo Peel were being exhibited. ‘I Could Do That’ were asked to be involved and yesterday we got busy making comment pages and qr code stickers. After sticking codes next to each artwork the visitors arrived and from 6pm-11pm they were given the opportunity to use their phones to read and leave comments for each of the artworks. Check out the results here. This exhibition was for one night only but hopefully we’ll be back on the gallery scene for some more exhibitions in the future. Watch this space for more info. Thanks again to the Rag Factory and LAVA Collective for hosting us. :-)