SHOPAGEDDON

2014

Designed by Ronan Kelly at Wieden+Kennedy (London)

Creative Technologist: Jonny Plackett

UX: Rob Meldrum

Categories: Website

Industry: Cultural

Tags: Retail

Website: shopageddon.biz

SHOPAGEDDON is a web VR experience that takes the madness of Black Friday and rams it into your eyeballs. It is the result of a two week exploration into Virtual Reality.

We used the Amazon API to place a random selection of products into an endless tunnel of VR shopping. Looking up or down allows visitors to fly at breakneck speed through the experience, while levelling out their gaze slows the motion down. A soundtrack was created which reacts to this; intense while flying, and calmer when level. We also turned on the screen reader to call out product names as they're looked at. Each one is read in a different voice, with the pitch and tone altered to make them more intense. Visitors are against the clock, and when time runs out they are presented with the items they spent longest looking at, all linked to buy on Amazon.

SHOPAGEDDON works best on your smartphone using the Google Chrome browser (you can use your desktop too though). For the full effect, hit the Google Cardboard icon in the bottom corner and strap yourself into a headset.