Spiegel Pillar: An Interactive Smart Mirror Installation

Revolutionizing the Retail Experience

The Spiegel Pillar stands out as an interactive smart mirror installation, offering customers a unique and immersive experience. It features three distinct modes: Sense-able Mirror, Info-Graphics, and AD mode. Each mode provides a different way for customers to engage with the medium, creating a dynamic and captivating retail environment.

In Sense-able Mirror mode, the Pillar showcases Hyundai Department Store's growth as an identity content. The medium uses lines that cascade down the pillar, forming a grid matrix that transforms into a circle and then into faces. These themes react to the customer's presence, evolving into new forms and creating a three-dimensional space.

Info-Graphics mode provides real-time information to customers, including weather updates, time, and messages. The time is displayed in a unique two-dimensional graphics format, with the minutes separated from the rotating center line. Weather conditions are visualized through dots, lines, and faces, representing clear skies, clouds, rain, snow, and wind. Messages are shown through random particles that shine and react to the customer's gestures, forming and disassembling in captivating patterns.

In AD mode, the Pillar transforms into an advertising environment, displaying videos and images of newly opened brands. The videos are shown in portrait ratio, adjusted to the customer's point of view, allowing for detailed advertisements that maximize their impact. By utilizing the entire body of the model, these advertisements create a captivating visual experience.

The Spiegel Pillar is a technological marvel, combining smart mirror panels, LED panels, and a system rack for control. Three of the four sides of the Pillar are smart mirrors, while the remaining side houses the system rack. Kinect cameras installed at the bottom of the pillars enable gesture recognition and interaction, detecting the movement and shape of objects.

Measuring 3525 x 1423mm, the Pillar is controlled by a PC and a motor. The LED panel measures 2725 x 1255mm, and the system rack is 2667 x 200mm. The system rack houses six PCs and motors, controlling both pillars seamlessly.

The Spiegel Pillar project began in July 2018 and was completed in September 2018. Located on the first floor of Hyundai Department Store (Gangnam World Trade Center) in Seoul, Republic of Korea, it has transformed the retail experience for customers.

By installing the Spiegel Pillar, Hyundai Department Store has overcome the challenge of overwhelming customers with traditional billboards and banners. This interactive medium allows for mutual communication and liberates customers from one-way advertising, creating a truly engaging and immersive retail environment.

The Spiegel Pillar, designed by Easywith, has received recognition for its innovation and practicality. It was awarded the Iron A' Design Award in 2019 in the Interior Space, Retail, and Exhibition Design category. This prestigious award recognizes designs that meet professional and industrial requirements, integrating industry best practices and technical excellence to create a better world.