TRANSFORMING FLAT SURFACES INTO DIGITAL DISPLAYS

Office design should invite and inspire employees to do their best work; that has been the central premise behind wide-open floor plans designed to boost productivity, enhance transparency and foster collaboration, whether planned or spontaneous.

Pixar Studios was at the forefront of this trend, which only accelerated as companies such as Google, Facebook and even Goldman Sachs moved to adopt the so-called office of the future. Today, 70% of U.S. offices have open floor plans and work has become more collaborative than ever before. But there is a growing sense – and data to back it up – that open offices distract employees, hamper productivity, inhibit creative thinking and dampen morale. In response, some companies now strive to create a “balanced workspace,” one that provides different environments for different types of workers.

Our client Lampix has developed a projector technology that transforms any flat surface into a glass-less augmented reality display. Their technology has the potential to transform the 21st-Century office and the Future of Work, and they enlisted us in a design research project to help them reimagine smart workspaces. 

We started from a simple principle: People want to collaborate, multi-task and be flexible, but not at the expense of their creativity and productivity and focus. Working closely with Lampix, we identified three new product concepts that would underpin the company’s next phase of design development. These conceptual prototypes were also presented to investors as Lampix sought additional funding. 

PROCESS

FRAMING THE CHALLENGE

We began our research familiarizing ourselves with the problem and developing our hypothesis. What type of people were experiencing the the problem and where they were experiencing it? Our learning objective was to understand our participants’ overall journeys and see where there are pain points and needs while participants were performing activities on flat surfaces.  We narrowed our research discussion guide to focus on home, work and retail physical spaces

GET IN CONTEXT

The second part of our approach was to immerse ourselves in our participant’s physical spaces and observe their pain points and needs while performing activities or tasks on physical flat surfaces. An effective research method we used consisted of presenting participants with hand drawn sketches of future scenarios using flat surface concepts. Then we asked them to show us how they would perform everyday activities on a “what if” flat surface.

CO-CREATION WORKSHOPS

The next part of our approach was applying the Co-Design method that allows targeted consumers to become an active part of the creative development of a product while interacting with the design and research teams directly. During the workshop we introduced themes that were synthesized from the research as well as newly sketched prototypes to inspire further ideation and help focus on the optimal concepts.

BRING IDEAS TO LIFE

In effort to keep us grounded in the reality and flow of the participant’s life, we created three story boards that demonstrated how consumers wished to engage with Lampix products. The story board prototypes also featured the infrastructure that Lampix must develop to bring these ideas and products to life. The story boards were also the inspiration for the company’s vision video, which helped to validate Lampix’s direction and anchored the company’s pitch presentation to investors.

LAMPIX MAKES FINALIST FOR BEST AR/VR COMPANY AT SXSW 2017 FESTIVAL