Perfume Genie
Babalú, Miami
The Perfume Genie is an interactive projected installation built for Babalú Miami. Babalú is a concept boutique providing Miami locals and tourists alike with a one-of-a-kind experience incorporating one-stop shop convenience products with high-end design goods. Their fragrance collection makes up a large part of their inventory; with hundreds to choose from, customers may not find what they're looking for before exhausting their olfactory senses. The Perfume Genie seeks to innovate this aspect of the fragrance-shopping experience by enabling customers to use a game-like interface to narrow down their search and find exactly what they had in mind.
The installation exists in a small room accessible from within the store, containing two stations. Each station consists of a projected display, made interactive with a Kinect and openFrameworks, and an adjacent touch-screen monitor. These systems are each running off a Mac Mini, which has access to the store perfume inventory database. The OF build utilizes the ofxUI (for debugging), ofxTween, ofxJSON, ofxXmlSettings, ofxThreadedImageLoader, ofxQuadWarp, ofxCenteredTrueTypeFont, ofxOpenCv and ofxKinect addons. Most animations are coded, a few are done with a series of loaded image assets. The fragrance notes and families were implemented as a particle system with flocking mechanics and a series of attractors enabling more controlled movement for specific circumstances.
The customer waves their hand in front of a projected display to begin the process. After answering a few questions regarding their prospective purchase, the user selects a fragrance family, followed by five notes they'd most like in their desired perfume from the chosen family. Once they've completed their concoction, the Perfume Genie pulls a selection of closest matches from the store's database and presents these results to the user. The customer may try the fragrances selected by the Perfume Genie, then complete an online purchase from the adjacent monitor or in person at the register.
Built at Spies & Assassins. Concept was established among Mauricio Sanchez, Chris Gsell, Babalú and myself. I was responsible for the design and implementation of the digital assets, with branding guidance from Babalú and their in-house designer. I developed the interface alongside Mauricio Sanchez. Chris Gsell directed product development.