“Mom, Dad… Are we there yet?”
Posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2014 by ATC in Content Is King with No Comments
By Clement Charles, CEO & Founder, AllTheContent News Agency
A classic on long road trips, this sentence may well disappear with the planned arrival, over the next decade, of ICE (In-Car Entertainment), in new vehicles.
Still relatively unused in the industry, ICE covers all the services which will be on offer in future cars, to keep pace with the evolution of technology and continue extending their scope of added value.
With or without being constantly connected to the Internet, and whether managed centrally by a “carputer” or in a distributed manner through various accessories (GPS, DVD), ICE will play a big part in keeping the peace on family trips, while becoming a new platform for entertainment and communication. As always, several indispensable reflection stages need to occur before the concept can become a successful reality. This is where Cominmag steps in.
First, all user segments must be defined, identifying on one hand their relationship with the vehicle and the road, and on the other their level of attention. This will determine content, with a view to creating additional added value for vehicle users, while remaining relevant according to each target’s context of use.
Projected against the windshield’s moving background or visible on an easy to consult screen, drivers will access geolocalized, real-time news on driving conditions (traffic, weather, itineraries) and be offered practical advice (for example, reminding drivers to take breaks every two hours, to drink every half-hour in the summer, along with basic safety advice).
In addition to the usual on-demand options, geolocalized tourist guides are ICE’s major innovation, using a vehicle’s real-time location as the epicenter of proposed points of interest. Applied to simple queries (such as finding a hotel or a restaurant within a 5 to 50km radius, based on the vehicle’s location), these services become purely entertaining with the arrival of “scenery guides,” in which localization capacities are combined with content delivery, thereby enriching the reality of passengers. Basing queries on a landscape’s historical, natural or cultural elements, passengers will be given keys to understanding their surroundings (for instance, the geological formation of mountains in the distance, the origins of castle ruins on the side of the road, or characteristics specific to a given region).
The challenge takes on another dimension in the back seats, in that we are dealing with a fragmented audience (age differences, constantly evolving interests). ICE will propose two main types of content for children, already geared for them on existing media: entertainment or educational content. Whereas entertainment will adapt basic, easy to understand board games, allowing all ages to play together along with licensed games and films, educational content will logically take on several angles.
Clearly a creator of value, especially when keeping in line with academic programs, edutainment will offer entertaining, fun games, while being stimulating and generating knowledge (capital city quizzes, mental arithmetic, geography games connected to passing landscapes, simple logic games aimed at accelerating thought processes).
Connecting multiple existing options in a single system and practice, with yet more to come in the future, ICE is a strong argument in favor of the continued presence of individual cars as indispensable to modern life, and for providing transportation in public space within an intimate setting.
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