Kate Spade Saturday Shoppable Windows

Overview

We partnered with Kate Spade Saturday to help launch their first physical retail presence in the United States—using the streets of Manhattan as the showroom floor.

We took four empty storefronts across New York City and outfitted them with vibrant physical displays paired with large-scale, touch-capacitive storefront windows. At any hour of the day or night, pedestrians could walk up to the glass, fluidly browse the summer collection on a bright multi-touch surface, transfer their selections directly to their smartphone via SMS/handoff, pay with PayPal, and receive free 1-hour courier delivery anywhere in Manhattan.

The installation helped redefine physical window shopping, shaped Kate Spade Saturday’s physical real-estate strategy, and was featured in over 90 international media outlets including TechCrunch, CNN, Fox Business, Mashable, and Engadget.

Engineering & Interaction Architecture

• Through-Glass Capacitive Touch: Laminated large-format Displax transparent multi-touch foil directly to the interior storefront glass, calibrated to detect touch accurately through thick exterior window panes in varying weather and temperature conditions.
• 60fps Web Kiosk Engine: Built a custom-scripted Chrome kiosk runtime driving a hardware-accelerated HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript application tailored for high-contrast daylight legibility and ergonomic reach zones.
• Seamless Kiosk-to-Mobile Handoff: Engineered a zero-friction handoff to mobile web so shoppers never entered sensitive payment details on a public sidewalk display—completing checkout privately on their phone while the window reacted with custom animations.
• Ambient Kinect & DMX Integration: Used a Node.js backend coordinating Microsoft Kinect sensors for passive sidewalk dwell/engagement telemetry and DMX lighting controllers to dynamically illuminate physical merchandise around the screen.

Videos

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Screenshots & Figures