42 Retail Ball Game

Trade fair stand as a playground

Through the "Retail ball game", a completely new way of experiencing a trade fair stand is made possible. Students from the Design Department of the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences have developed a game that creates a combination of conference and game mode.

The visitors themselves can participate and actively change the offered game area. This creates an innovative and playful level of communication and a space for making international contacts.

A rendering of the Retail Ball Game special area at EuroShop 2023; copyright: Retail Ball Game.

Goal: Find the question about the future of retail and answer it anew

The retail industry is facing great challenges, environmental, economic, social and technological conditions are changing. The goal that HSD students have set themselves is now no less than to find and answer anew the ultimate question about the future of retail.

Among other things, 42 balls come into play, inspired by the work "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by British author Douglas Adams, in which "42" is the answer calculated by a supercomputer to the "ultimate question of life, the universe and the whole". But can a fiction, a surreal story, be a starting point for new discourse? Find out for yourself and take part in the "retail ball game".