Westfield Connected Glass

Overview

Building on the lessons learned from our Manhattan storefront deployments, eBay Inc. and Westfield Labs partnered with Sony, Rebecca Minkoff, and TOMS to launch a trio of interactive digital storefronts inside the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall.

This installation represented a pivotal step in evolving connected glass from an experimental street-level prototype into a scalable, multi-vendor mall commerce platform—allowing shoppers to browse curated brand collections on massive 4K projected glass walls, pay via PayPal on their phone, and arrange either home delivery or in-mall pickup.

“Large, interactive shopping screens may help retailers generate more sales from existing space they lease from mall operators like Westfield and other commercial landlords, while for eBay, the technology helps the company generate more revenue and profit from the much larger physical commerce sector, not just online transactions.” — Alistair Barr, USA Today

Engineering Contributions

• Kinect & Application Telemetry Platform: Engineered the C#/Kinect passive spatial analytics pipeline and application event tracking architecture, measuring pedestrian foot traffic, dwell times, conversion funnels, and multi-user interaction patterns in front of each brand’s glass wall.
• Hardware & UX Architecture Consultation: Consulted with the eBay Retail Innovation team and R/GA on through-glass touch film calibration, stacked 4K rear-projection ergonomics, and web kiosk reliability.

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Screenshots & Figures