The feature uses enabled stickers to produce a digital experience through customer smartphones.
Although many McDonald’s locations around the world feature a Playplace where kids can run around and play before or after they eat, but now there is a higher tech option being launched with kids living in Asia in mind and that uses NFC technology.
Enabled stickers have been introduced to create a whole new in-house experience for the restaurant’s smallest customers.
The NFC technology using stickers are meant to help boost the experience for kids in some Asian cities. In locations such as Singapore, land is extremely expensive purchase, so the space needed to add a Playplace is sometimes considered to be cost prohibitive. Though areas where land is cheaper have the advantage of outdoor playgrounds or large indoor extensions to their restaurants, this experience has been micro sized through the use of this cutting edge smartphone tech.
The NFC technology has allowed the experience to be shrunken down and tucked under the tables.
This NFC technology play experience has been called the Happy Table. It functions by attaching enabled stickers on the existing tables in the restaurants. They’re positioned underneath the tables, where kids can use them with a device that is equipped with near field communication chips. A simple tap brings the table to life with an entertaining interactive service.
The NFC technology using stickers that have been affixed to the Happy Tables were initially created by Samsung in 2012. This allowed businesses – not exclusive to McDonald’s – to be able to program them to perform certain functions, providing consumers with convenient, rapid, and easy to use access to various types of services.
In fact, many marketers are beginning to believe that NFC technology can be used for a similar purpose to QR codes, except for the fact that the majority of smartphones have yet to be equipped with this tech.
In parts of Asia, however, kids whose parents have an NFC technology equipped smartphone can place the device on the top of the table to be able to play games, turning the table into a puzzle that needs to be solved, a race track, or other types of attention keeping surface.
