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![]() Hard Rock Café and Digital Memories: The Magic of Rock & Roll Lives Forever in its Memorabilia
By Louis M. Brill
Now through our recently acquired interactive displays we can now show off a greater degree of the life and times of Rock & Roll's history, which is all controlled by the guests who can select what they want to see and hear.
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"Although the Hard Rock is a restaurant, we're also a museum with a vast collection of the history and the legacy of rock & roll, said Greg Thomas, General Manger Hard Rock Cafe on the Las Vegas Strip. "All of our Hard Rock locations each present a segment of that history, which is a collection of music, musical instruments, costumes and related stage props, much of which is behind glass. Now through our recently acquired interactive displays we can now show off a greater degree of the life and times of Rock & Roll's history, which is all controlled by the guests who can select what they want to see and hear. As computer literacy is so much a part of our society and our culture, it only makes sense for the Hard Rock to translate that interest into equivalent digital exhibits or games for our guests to enjoy during their visit here." Using touch screens as a graphic interface, Hard Rock International has collaborated with several design firms to create a digital interactive gateway to its vast collection of music and memorabilia. Driven by unrestricted curiosity, Hard Rock guests can now explore, experience and be entertained by varied interactive digital display Rock & Roll portals, which are now in several Hard Rock Cafes throughout the United States and overseas. "The Hard Rock International is a future-oriented proactive company," said Thomas, "and is charged with keeping its guests entertained through their entire stay at the Hard Rock including while they're waiting for dinner seating, during dinner, and afterwards when they can enjoy our live performance sets. We have our bar, our restaurant, our video displays, our music (both live and recorded), and now, our digital on-site interactive environments."
Rock & Roll memorabilia is the cornerstone of the Hard Rock's brand image and distributed throughout all 161 venues around the world. From just a distributed Cafe collection, Hard Rock's memorabilia now exists in two states. The first is a physical state where segments of it are parceled out to all operating Hard Rock locations, each showing a small portion of its overall collection of over 72,000 items of historic interest. The other form is a digital state, where the entire collection is available on the official Hard Rock website. http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/ "Since Hard Rock already has an extensive Internet representation on its official Hard Rock web site," said Michael Lemme, Creative Director at Duncan/Channon, Hard Rock's agency of record, "our thought was to engage the guests in the history and contemporary culture of Rock & Roll in a fresh way. Why not take that online content and let guests digitally interact with it here at the Hard Rock? To do so, three interactive display formats were created, a massive touch screen wall display, a multi-touch tabletop, and a video jukebox with all digital displays that let guests get up close and personal with the memorabilia, each with a unique location within the Cafe, and each with a unique user interface:
Rock Wall The Rock Wall allows between one and six guests (each having their own "viewing" zone) to acquire a section of display space to view any portion of the photographic or video Hard Rock memorabilia collection for historic examination. The wall not only gives each guest his or her own personal viewing zone, but also incorporates a spatialized audio system, allowing guests the ability to hear sound effects in their own space as well.
The Rock Wall presents itself as "public" social media, different from conventional social media which is a private communication between two people. Here with a gigantic interactive wall screen, it becomes a form of public communication, both for the guests who are using it at the moment, and as well for all the other guests watching it and waiting for their turn at it. Everyone around it can talk about what they see as well plan for their own surfing moments when they use it. The implementation of the Rock Wall was based on a series of anthropomorphic studies to determine how best to place the display on a wall. Its wall placement was established in a way to make the interactive screen accessible to both young people and adults, as they touched their way through the Hard Rock's digital memorabilia collections The Rock Wall has been effective enough with its guests that the Hard Rock is expanding its deployment with similar big digital displays in Orlando, Seattle and Berlin. A smaller version (52 inch display) called the Rock Solo now appears in an additional 70 Hard Rock Cafes throughout the United States and Europe.
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Microsoft Surface
One of the appealing feature's of the Hard Rock's configuration of Microsoft Surface is it is very much program driven and thus as new Rock & Roll applications are developed for it, it keeps the Hard Rock's Microsoft Surface fresh and up-to-date with new entertainment activities for its guests. Duncan/Channon (San Francisco) and Vertigo (Point Richmond, CA) created the memorabilia application for Surface, and all other applications (keyboard, etc) were developed by Hard Rock's internal design team. The Microsoft Surface displays also appear in Nashville, Seattle and Berlin.
Booth Interactive
The location of each Interactive digital display was a strategic installation decision as Rick Sconyers, Senior Director of Design at Hard Rock International pointed out, and governed equally by audience traffic flow and the intended purpose of the display. "In a typical Hard Rock Cafe on a busy night, our average table waiting time could be anywhere from forty-five minutes to an hour and a half. Now with both the Rock Wall and the Microsoft Surface placed within that waiting area, each is 'loaded' with an enormous volume of rock & roll memorabilia and other related fun activities. Here our guests have an additional entertainment value to help them pass the time which becomes more enjoyable as they're waiting."
"Don't touch" is out the door The Hard Rock Cafe's digital displays create unique emotional connections between their guests and their favorite Rock & Rollers. The brand's use of digital signage as dedicated entertainment displays initiates a form of social media beyond the Internet and cell phone tweets. Between the Rock Wall, the Microsoft Surface and their Booth Interactives, the Hard Rock displays are big, bold and brash user interfaces that converges guest activities at the Cafe in tandem with a virtual museum, and empowers the guests in a fun way to have a greater contact with their favorite music and gives greater meaning to "Long Live Rock & Roll."
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