Dissertation

At the AW17-18 trend presentation
by The Trend Boutique, Sally Denton
discussed the ‘Movement’ trend;
a trend driven by our ‘constantly
connected’ lifestyles, in which
everything is instant and accessible.
She believes that, as we move forward,
“creatives are becoming secondary to
technology”; all aspects of life, from
science, to health, to retail, are being
driven by new possibilities provided
by emerging technologies (Appendix
H.7). The digital age is here and now;
innovation and advances are making
technology more accessible than ever.
For example, advances in motion
sensors and NUIs mean that many
technological can be now be easily
controlled by natural human gestures.
These technologies were perhaps
first made commercial via the games
industry, with the launch of the
Nintendo Wii in 2006 (Nintendo.
2015), followed by the launch of the
Xbox 360 Kinect in 2010 (Hartley, A.
2010). Both of these devices came
with new, innovative motion-sensor
control systems; a technical revolution
at the time. In 2011, Bill Gates hailed
Kinect as “a remarkable technical
achievement”, stating that “the ability
to take video cameras, multi-array
microphones, and depth sensors and
bring them all together in order to
recognise people, understand and
anticipate how they move, incorporate
voice recognition, and insert them into
games—all at 30 frames per second—is
phenomenal” (Gates, B. 2011). Today
NUI controls are much more common;
with speech-command, personal
assistant systems like Siri and Cortana
built into the majority of smartphones.
Not only do technologies like these
offer up great advances in our daily
lives, science and health; but also a
breadth of opportunities for the retail
industry.
[Fig 31] Movement (2016).
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