Casey Central Shopping Centre leads the way with Interactivity
Casey Central Shopping Centre is slick, modern and complete with just about every available amenity.
But it’s also only 10 minutes drive from Westfield Fountain Gate Shopping Centre — the largest in that area of the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne.
Casey Central Shopping Centre had a large open plaza area in front of its Woolworths supermarket, which the centre’s management, CBRE, identified as fertile ground to install a customer attraction… a family-friendly feature that would help win over patrons to the charms of the smaller, yet more personable Casey shopping village.
JUST IN CASEY
CBRE engaged Interactivity to design an interactive play area for kids. Interactivity is a thoroughbred specialist when it comes to these manner of attractions. It’s helped activate underperforming shopping spaces around the country, combining good old-fashioned physical play, with up to-the-minute digital interactive play areas using the latest in touchscreens.
This job was a little different. There weren’t any iron-clad metrics to be met. In fact, CBRE hadn’t made wi-fi a priority at the shopping centre (high-density wi-fi is a necessity for driving digital engagement). Rather, the brief to Interactivity was more intriguing: do something cool that kids will love.
BIG TIME PLAY
Another Casey Central Shopping Centre differentiator is the available space: it’s huge (~20m x 8m and plenty of height in the building’s cupola).
Interactivity Projects Director, Maddi Goricane, reflects: “This project was a great opportunity to demonstrate our full-service offering — design, build and installation. We have the space to design a play area with active play, high play and to seamlessly integrate the technology into that.”
The theme agreed on with the management was about bringing the outdoors inside, hence ‘Casey Critters’.
The playground showcases much of what Interactivity is capable of. All the technology interactions are designed specifically for kids. Oversize red buttons activate LED strips on the trees. Steering wheels demand to be manhandled as bubbles fill long acrylic tubes. Touch activated light blocks illuminate paths, much to the delight of hop scotching youngsters. And then, of course, there’s the amazing array of interactive games available on touchscreens that keep kids mesmerised — in this case Critter themed to match the playground.
BIGGER NOT ALWAYS BETTER
DigitalSignage has followed the growth and success of Interactivity’s playgrounds for years and has noticed an interesting trend: the touchscreens have shrunk rather than grown ever bigger.
“Bigger is not necessarily better!” agreed Maddi Goricane. “From a play perspective, when you have larger displays during busy times, it can encourage jostling. Kids are looking over the shoulders of over kids and that’s not desirable, especially for less outgoing kids.
“This playground is for children under five years old. These kids aren’t tall and they’re arms aren’t long. Having a 43-inch display might look impressive but when a child is so close to the screen you’re better off with a smaller screen.
“This also works for the client. In terms of a return on investment, I’d much rather recommend two 22-inch screens than one 43-inch.
“A smaller screen is simply more comfortable for a child to use… it’s more child-sized.”
HERE TO STAY
Often interactive play areas such as this have a built-in shelf life — it might be six months or a year to give a shopping centre a Christmas kick-along or help activate an underperforming cul de sac of the mall. Not so at Casey Shopping Centre — Casey Critters is here to stay, and it’s demonstrated in the quality of the Interactivity installation.
The level of finish in this playground is next-level, and in the case of the pond (which shows a cross section of aquatic life) the sheer heft of the work is staggering: “There’s about half a tonne of epoxy resin in that pond!” enthuses Maddi. “The amount of supporting steel work is off the charts. I can assure you, Casey Critters is not going anywhere!”
Casey Central Shopping Centre: caseycentral.com.au
Interactivity: 1300 797 199 or interactivity.com.au