Engagement Strategy, Experience & Visual Design for a 14-foot-tall multi-screen extruded-aluminum community member.
Every City Needs a Center.
Background
The dreamers at LQD Wifi wanted to bring communities together around the places, activities, and information that make every city unique. After partnering with Frog to ideate an enclosure and high-level brand for their innovative citizen engagement kiosk, LQD Wifi approached us to bring the experience to life.
Approach
We brought the digital kiosk to life, from strategy to design and code. VDK was designed to bring communities together so they can connect, discover, and celebrate the places, people, and stories that make each city special.
Outcomes
Process & Team Scaling
Engagement Strategy
Experience Design
TOV & Design System
Bespoke CMS
Engagement Strategy
Building on the foundation of the experience principles Frog created, I authored an execution-focused strategic vision document that defined our user types, their journey, and interaction states.
All anchored in the customer experience principle that VDK is in its purest form utility wrapped in delight.
Experience Design
More than customer journey maps and wireframes, we labored over the nuances of VDK’s personality: its tone of voice, use of color, and “pebble” hierarchy. Every debate and decision was meant to cement VDK as a connected and educated member of the community.
Visual Design
I led a creative team of five incredible brand, user interface, and user experience designers to translate an especially complex system of features and functions into a purposeful and bold experience.
Accessibility
We balanced the needs of a 45-inch touch experience with that of a CMS meant to manage thousands of devices, all while adhering to ADA best practices.
Team Scaling & Process
Partnering with the CTO, we scaled the engineering and creative team of eight to over thirty in six months. We customized agile processes and delivery team structure to deliver production-ready features every two weeks; putting a considerable amount of care into creating an authentic connection between our creatives and engineers to support our breakneck delivery.
The first VDK units went into the ground in the Spring of 2018. With the arrival of Covid-19 in 2020, the idea of keeping communities connected took on greater significance. VDK kiosks were updated to provide information regarding CDC guidelines and local regulations. And so we’ve seen that the system is more than capable of keeping pace in dynamic, real-world environments—and helping people along the way.
Creative
Executive Creative Director: Shiloh Gray
Lead Designers: Krystyn Heide & Aggie Ng
Senior Designer: Spencer Hill
Designers: Alex Crandall & Cole Johnson
Engineering & Delivery
CTO: Aaron Vernon
Engineering Managers: Gideon Redelinghuys, Ernest Grzybowski & Simon Collins
Engineers: Alex Bielen, Alex Martinez, Darcy Rayner, Tyler Williams, Sruti Modekurty, Naim Luján, Runze Dong, Dan Gorelick, Dennis McDaid, Ada Ye, Will McCutcheon, James Lee
QA: Todd Kovner, Hossain Elahi, Kieran Byrne, Alejandro Mcghee, Rani Onyango, Britt Skyers-White
Delivery Leads: Alicia Tyree, James Seetal, Susan Leopold, Tiani Jones
Partners
Industrial Design: Frog Design
Manufacturing: Boyce Technologies