Current Program of study

Title: Located Consumer Media: an investigation into how retailers could use new technology to interact with consumers as they go about their daily lives.

Brief Description of research: My research will cover a wide range of themes & topic areas covering mainly secondary research to begin with before moving into some primary research as the work begins to develop.

Some of these research areas will include looking at:

• Research papers (on technology, predictions, human interaction, interactive displays, advertising etc)

• Futurologists

• Science fiction ( a look at various mediums and influences)
• Technology magazines and websites

• Discussions by academics (podcasts, interviews etc)


Aims: By use of the above research, formulate a hypothetical prediction for the future.

Use the aforementioned hypothesis to formulate a range of technologies and techniques that could be implemented by future advertisers and retailers to communicate with consumers.

Develop a range of design ideas and concepts that show how the technologies and techniques would work & look.

Present this visual representation of the future in an appropriate format.


Methods: The broad scope of the research will require many hours of sifting through a range of different mediums and documents to find relevant and useful information.

The formulation of my own vision of the future will require a level of intellectual strategic foresight which can be accomplished by collating the relevant research .

Rather than simply coming up with a random outcome I’m going to take a certain type of technology(s) that are currently available, analysing what they are currently capable of at present, and then predicting how the technology could advance over the next ‘x’ amount of years. I’ll do this so an outside observer to my work has a good idea of what the technology is currently capable of and so have a context of which to view the technologies evolution.

At this stage, the potential and capabilities will be clear in my head which will aid me to accurately and better visualise the designs and concepts. It’s around this point that I will look at context, and how best these technologies could be implemented and where. Their location could greatly influence how they look and operate. Depending on the concepts, I may mock up a simple version that people could interact with so i can test my outcomes as I go along.

For this project I intend to look more at the visual aspect of the how retailers could use new technology to interact with consumers rather than the technical and electronic side to it. So my final outcomes and presentation will have to reflect this. Interaction is quite an integral part so many of the final images will have to show people interacting with my designs, be this 2D images or a short video or 3D animation clearly showing the interaction. Other aspects of the project which will include research, development, blog & multimedia will also have to represented in a very visual way. So perhaps a digital catalogue of all this information will have to be produced.