The multimedia future: still a virtual mystery

Most everywhere you go today you find yourself running into some form of interactive installation. Be it the Electric Carnival site at Lolapalooza ’94 where a number of participants could jam together in virtual worlds, the Balance of Power kiosk at Ontario Hydro visitor centres where participants play an educational energy game, or simply information kiosks at your local Canadian Tire, this technology is quite definitely creeping into our everyday experiences.

And, while it’s obvious that multimedia and interactivity are here to stay, what’s not so clear is which direction the technology will lead us in the future and to what degree the various new fields will metamorphose. Different multimedia gurus and companies are heading off in a great number of directions, so Playback spoke to a few key players:

Mackerel

Toronto-based Mackerel is one of the pioneers of multimedia. Over the years, it has won numerous national and international awards for its interactive projects, such as the Mackerel Stack and Birdsong, and has developed its own methodology for communicating through this media.

‘Technologically, the level of sophistication is increasing exponentially,’ says Mackerel president Gord Gower. ‘Every six to eight months there’s a cycle up of processing speed.’

This, coupled with advances in compression technology, means everything is getting better.

However, as in the consumer cd-rom marketplace, this doesn’t mean the bottom end of the market will be cut out. While the stumbling block to incorporating a greater degree of live-action video or animation currently is that a lot of cd-rom players out there can’t handle it, Gower says video is just one element, and not really the emphasis of multimedia evolution.

The true measure of the sophistication level of multimedia product today, he says, is on the side of what can be done with the media elements, how they are blended together, and the design of the user interface.

Consumer expectations and client demands are rising rapidly. Gower says people have been bombarded with what’s possible, adding the press has been doing its bit in raising expectations, and with every report of a new whiz-bang gizmo or someone pushing the envelope, the hype level goes up a notch.

This has led to not a few ungrounded expectations.

Although it’s not all that accessible to the consumer market, a lot of clients want full-frame video. People also walk in asking for interactive video, which it’s not – it’s still interactive multimedia no matter how high-octane or media-rich the content.

Another misconception is, ‘I want an interactive piece that’s five minutes long.’ An interactive piece can last anywhere from 20 seconds to 30 minutes, or more, depending on how long one cares to browse.

Another area of unrealistic expectation is price. While it is discounted from commercial budgets, it takes a lot of time to design, produce and bug-check this kind of product. Like a commercial, it’s impossible to give an average cost. Mackerel has had projects ranging from $10,000 to $100,000.

So why is it that companies are willing to spend their advertising dollars on kiosks rather than television commercials when commercials will certainly reach a wider audience?

The answer lies in the amount of bang for the buck. A commercial will only hold the viewer’s attention for 30 seconds, while typically at less expense, kiosks and cd-roms can reach a targeted audience and hold its attention for a number of minutes, and for a number of uses.

Therein lies the interactive challenge: not only does the application have to fit the product in a viable way, but you must also come up with inventive ways to keep the consumer interested and moving, because if the user does nothing, everything just stops.

In Mackerel’s new Virtual Walk cd-rom for Toyota Tercel, they’ve met that challenge. And, like most Mackerel graphical user interface projects, the Virtual Walk makes the assumption that the consumer has the idea of exploration, and does not need to be told where to point and click.

‘We’ve spent hundreds of thousands of years developing all these ways to communicate information, to make sounds,’ says Gower. ‘Now it’s coming together in such a way that all forms of communication can be presented at the same time – people just have to come up with ways to do it.’

To the folks at Mackerel, the fact that clients are finally catching on to what can be done with the technology is more important than the next steps of technological evolution.

‘When you’re doing a customer piece or a consumer product, you can’t be on the technological cutting edge,’ says Fred Williamson, vice-president, marketing. ‘It’s important for the user to feel comfortable and to feel free to explore their environment.’

In each project Mackerel pushes the envelope of what it does – graphical user interface – the technology seems almost secondary. ‘It’s just a box to work out our ideas onÉor a vehicle to transport digital information to the public,’ says Williamson.

The Vivid Group

Vincent John Vincent, director of The Vivid Group in Toronto, has created a different way to present information, the Mandala System, a camera-based Virtual Reality system.

‘We’re creating realities in the computer that people can step into, but what differentiates us is mostly that the people don’t have to wear or hold any special equipment,’ explains Vincent. The ‘video gesture’ of the user’s digitized image triggers the action and reactions.

Vincent sees this as the next phase of the kiosk or touch-screen. ‘You stand four or five feet away – totally out in space – but you’re totally in control and can access anything.’

And it’s great for locations like museums, arcades and malls because it overcomes one of their biggest problems: breakage, he says. ‘(The client) wants a lot of interaction, but generally, the more you have, the more people are holding things, wearing things, touching things, and ultimately these things break. The Mandala modules don’t get broken because no one ever touches anything. Maybe the rug gets a little worn beneath their feet, but that’s about it.’

Vincent also believes that, for advertisers, this system is almost like a billboard of the future. ‘The concept is fun, and it’s also so interactive; if there are other people around, they’re watching different people doing different things. It becomes almost a participant and observer kiosk.’

In this way, advertisers get a broader base of customers who will come back a number of times and have completely different experiences.

Again, the cost can be a lot less than a television commercial. You don’t need the same level of broadcast quality in your visuals in a public installation, and often, as in Vivid’s Skylab and Star Trek installations, they can use some existing visual materials.

Vincent also stresses that the market is not restricted to Canadian clients. Vivid Group has over 200 installations worldwide, its Mandala modules are constantly on tour, and it has produced interactive television segments for such countries as Korea, Japan and Germany.

‘The way I see it,’ says Vincent, ‘the more you give people interaction, the more they’re intrigued or entertained by it and the more they’ll indulge in it.’

I-Line Multimedia

‘Where our company is concerned,’ says Keith Winn, president of I-Line Multimedia, ‘we’re moving toward things that operate out of the home rather than public-display kiosks.’ Winn is not convinced that most of today’s kiosks are really for more than advertising and market research.

Operating out of the home with current technology means that his products are available on cd-rom, ‘but only until such services can be delivered over cable, which is starting to happen and in a couple of years will be a lot more prevalent.’

He sees such things as entertainment, library research and shopping coming straight to the home. ‘The number of boxes you need in the home to make things work will be reduced, cost will be reducedÉyou’ll be able to dial in through your computer or tv and see a list of products at your leisureÉ.I think that retailers and manufacturers will start to look at this kind of service in the home as an extension to retail outlets.’

Gower also sees it all ending up on the telephone, or cable, saying everyone has just been practicing interactive content creation skills for distribution through these delivery systems that are currently being upgraded to handle it.

Despite the different directions multimedia companies take, there are things that all agree on. The existence of a huge market for one. ‘Who doesn’t want it?’ asks Fred Williamson. ‘People are looking for a graphical presentation – as opposed to a textual one – for anything that needs promotion or dissemination of information.’ And, as Mackerel’s Gower points out, ‘90% of the information that we’re distributing to each other is in a form that can be represented digitally.’

Along with high demand comes employment opportunities. ‘Labor shortage is the number one crisis in this industry,’ says I-Line’s Winn. ‘The problem is that it’s not good enough to be really good at just one skill, you have to be good at a minimum of three skills. For some projects you have to be designer, programmer and photographer.’

Suffice it to say no one can really predict where the technology is going, but the underlying motivation driving firms such as Mackerel, Vivid Group and I-Line, is that in an information-based society, clients and consumers alike are looking for new and ever-changing graphical representation of traditionally textual information. This demand, regardless of the technological delivery format, can and will sustain a thriving global industry of creative and skilled multimedia workers.