A connected digital experience strategy throughout three global office hubs that conveys the company’s mission and values and celebrates its people.
OVERVIEW
My Role: Lead Visual UX Designer
What I Did: Established look and feel of visual interface concepts, Built interactive prototypes, Created motion graphics assets for architectural renderings
Project Type: Digital Experience Strategy
Software: Figma, Illustrator, & After Effects
Firm: Gensler
Timeline: 8 months
PROJECT SUMMARY
We were tasked with crafting a connected Digital Experience Strategy throughout this Large Energy Company’s three global office hubs that conveyed the company’s mission and values and celebrates its people. We started by auditing the existing architecture and flow of their current spaces. From there, we created a holistic Digital Experience Strategy that tells the stories of their global initiatives, employees, and partnerships with digital touchpoints and architectural updates. The end goal of these experiences was to create new spaces within each building that are warm, inviting, genuine, and proud.
Experience Journey Approach
We crafted our connected experience around the visual metaphor of Streams and Pools.
This helped us determine how much information was appropriate to showcase at each touchpoint location without over burdening the cognitive load of our users.
Streams continuously pull people from moment to moment. These are the spaces that a person passes through quickly, like corridors and elevator or stairway terminals. A person passing through a stream is on a mission to get from A to B. They aren't in the mindset to consume a lot of information, so the touchpoints within streams are quick-hitters and with skimmable content.
Along the way there are Pools which give people the opportunity to pause, converse, and explore. A pool is a space-type that by nature encourages dwell time. Visitor Lobbies, Employee Cafes and Amenity Spaces are pools. In these spaces, a person is more relaxed. They have more time on their hands and are more open to reading and consuming larger amounts of information and videos through the touchpoints.
Visual Design Approach
I established the visual aesthetic for the media content around the company's belief in 'Human Energy'––the way inspired people with creative ideas power innovation in the global economy. The visual style is fresh and modern and meant to attract and appeal to the company’s younger workforce by leveraging the following three principles:
01: Bright, Bold colors
Represent the defining impact Energy has on our daily lives.
02: Close-Up Photography
Showcases the value the company places on its People and Partners.
03: Soft Edges & Shifting Patterns
Emphasizes the always evolving and changing nature of Energy.
An Echo Beyond the Screen
It was important to challenge the conventions of what a "digital experience" can look and feel like. We wanted to accentuate the height and grandeur of the lobby with a dynamic installation that told the story of the company's purpose, while also feeling like a piece of art.
Location Type: Pool
Journey Moment: Visitor Lobby
Experience Goal: Teach people about the evolving energy landscape and company's mission to improve it
This lobby experience includes a set of tables with embedded touch screens that provide a deep dive into the company's investments and impact in developing communities around the world. The user can select a topic to view a range of stories on the complex challenge of climate change, data and statistics about the human cost of energy inequity, and videos highlighting personal stories of communities benefiting from the company's global initiatives.
However, these tables provide a experience for just one or two people at a time. We wanted to extend this touch point to the entire lobby space in a way that wasn't disruptive or distracting to other visitors waiting or milling around the lobby, so we concepted a cloud-like installation of several translucent LED panels that hang from the ceiling to create a dynamic digital sculpture. As someone is browsing the content on the touch table, the dominant colors of the content they're viewing is echoed up onto the LED cloud and expressed through constantly morphing, organic, fluid-like visuals.
Focused Interaction Zones
Here we wanted to create and immersive Lobby experience using video and sound in a way that wasn't disruptive.
Location Type: Pool
Journey Moment: Visitor Lobby
Experience Goal: Educate, inspire, and give visitors a fresh perspective on the company's impact they may not be aware of
While this building lobby in another location didn't have the benefit of high ceilings, it did have ample wall space. Here we used a wall-to-wall canvas of LED panels to tell an immersive story that could be experienced by the entire room at varying degrees of engagement.
The large center panel has a motion sensor that activates the video content as a person walks up to the screen. They can touch the screen to select a location or story they want to learn more about. A directional speaker in the ceiling provides sound output that can only be heard by the people standing directly in front of the middle screen. The flanking screens display ambient contextual visuals related to the center screen and are static, rather than interactive. This allows those in other areas of the lobby to still experience the content but in a more subtle, less distracting way.
Fully Integrated Hardware
In order for these experiences to feel intentional and genuine, it was critical that the hardware be fully integrated into the archictecture and could recede when not being directly interacted with.
Location Type: Stream
Journey Moment: Corridor
Experience Goal: Emphasize the company's legacy and extensive history of innovation
This corridor is an example of our approach to hardware integration. As a person walks down the corridor, sensors in the ceiling track their movement and reveal the content on displays hidden behind black glass panels. The information remains visible as long as the person is standing in front of the panel. As they move, the information is tracked to their movement and appears in sync with their movement. When no one is in the corridor, the panels "turn off" and the wall turns back into just that: a wall.
This particular installation is a showcase of the company's legacy of innovation past, present, and future. Since this location is in a Stream, the content mainly consists of images and simple data visualization, or short videos, with minimal supporting text.
