Role: Director of Environmental Graphic Design + Digital Experience Design
Location: Mountain View, CA
Completed while working at AP+I Design
Concept Design to Implementation*
The Brief: Our client is a multi-national healthcare technology provider looking to create a one-of-a-kind lab facility where they can foster new levels of innovation and design for their products. This lab should include key automated features, collaborations areas for multiple teams, a secure lab space for confidential projects, and be packed with all the computing power and infrastructure required.
Quickly; however, conversations turn from architecture to leveraging technology to create a very specific experience for users of the lab, prompting me to join the project.
The vision for the lab is to create an environment that fosters ingenuity, collaboration and embodies the spirit of innovation through the thoughtful sentiment of ‘Few Human Touches”. A special request from the client was for a lab “that would make Tony Stark jealous”. This environment will oscillate between the gleaming fabricated technology of the Command Center** and testing areas (the actual name is confidential), and the comfort and warmth of natural materials in the Patient Hub**.
“…our lab should make Tony Stark Jealous.”
– Client team member, during Discovery.
Mapping Out The Digital Experience
We begin with identifying the the experiences and custom workflows for a space like this, and the corresponding technologies required to create them. The visual above was created to educate the client on our findings and potential investment for each level of interactivity. This, of course, all had to align with the architectural design schedule established during the planning phase.
Our final digital strategy is two-fold: (1) develop a two year implementation plan, whereby the lab can function upon opening, but advanced features, like gesture controls and object recognition will continue to be developed and implemented after opening, and (2) engage a DXD partner. equipped to handle the actual testing and development of interactive features and media architecture.
Proprietary hardware navigated this large open space between work areas, as part of R&D. The Secure Lab and Collaboration Areas can be seen behind the Command Center, with the Patient Hub to the left. In this view, the Secure Lab’s security glass is engaged, obscuring visibility into the room.
CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGY AND CUSTOM WORKFLOWS
The Command Center
Replete with multi-touch, clear LED screens, custom gesture-controls for environmental settings (lights, data sharing, and collaboration) and RFiD-based features like personalized ergonomic settings to workspaces (desks, chairs, monitors, etc.), the Command Center’s 6-workstations are the heart of the lab. Able to access and control all the technology in the room, excluding the Secure Lab, all data and content is standing by to be displayed on any of multiple interactive displays, digital whiteboards, and a large overhead 360º media display ring. This ring display is driven by user content during work sessions, and AI-generative artwork during media events and special events.
Open Collaboration Areas
Open Collaboration Areas come ready for action, as multiple portable digital whiteboards fill the space, along with cameras and projectors which facilitate digital capture and projection of data.
A Lab Within A Lab
For the most sensitive and ambitious projects, the Secure Projects Room is enabled with biometric security measures, 3D projection mapping, digital whiteboard, camera-based object recognition, VR collaboration tools and more.
The addition of brand-inspired placemaking elements provides another level of inspiration to the lab: here circadian rhythms drive projection-based light animations. When use of the digital whiteboard is required, the placemaking feature simply shuts off to allow use of the entire wall.
Brand Expression
Our client had been working with an agency to develop their brand’s visual identity and assets, so overlaying those was an important step to take. They want users of the lab to feel enabled to do great things and also a sense of pride, with a little bit of awe sprinkled in. Brand-inspired visual and interactive elements, such as gesture and voice controlled lighting, provided that final level of detail to the ITL experience.
Custom printed wall coverings wrap the entire perimeter of the lab and, during special events, brand-inspired motion assets fill the LED ring above the Command Center displays.
We created a placemaking kit of parts from the client brand assets. Here is an interactive element. When triggered, reactive lighting, driven by proximity sensors, responds to passing or lingering viewers. In it’s passive state, lighting is programmed calming, ambient animation.
A non-interactive element: non-illuminated, dimensional graphics.
*Project put on hold while in Schematic Design, during the COVID shutdown
**Actual names of areas and features are confidential.
