Client: Amazon (Talent Acquisition)
My Roles: Industrial / UX Designer
Duration: 4 months
I designed a pop-up experience for Amazon’s Talent Acquisition at the Grace Hopper Celebration; an event that hosts the world's largest gathering of women technologists, helping women in tech succeed. It lasted 3 days with over tens of thousands of attendees.
Thinking inside of the box
CLIENT ASKS
Amazon’s marketing team wanted a pop-up, where attendees are able to come into the booth to engage and interact with the brand and Amazon’s Talent Acquisition team. They want people to write on the wall problems existing in the world that Amazon can possibly help solve, to make the world a better place for everyone.
IDEATION SESSION
The client and I began doing ideation sessions of how they would like the booth to draw in attendees for engagements with the Amazon brand and their staff of recruiters. We wanted to “think outside of the box” by literally looking inside the box.
By thinking outside of the box, we began to look at Amazon packaging boxes, how It evokes curiosity in people when they have one delivered to them. I wanted to create that visual emotion as attendees pass by on the show floor and see the larger than life Amazon delivery package shaped booth. I wanted to them come in and peek to see what’s inside.
CHALLENGES
With Amazon being amongst a sea of competitors, I had to think critically of where the booth is located, who was showcasing around and next to them, where the most foot traffic flow will be. Each side of the booth with way-finding needs to be utilized efficiently with all these constraints.
Another major constraint was that I was limited to only designing the booth made only with standard parts and sizes my company manufactures. It was a huge challenge while still maintaining the look and shape.
COLLABORATION
I collaborated with build engineers on how we can use our specific hardware and parts to build my design concept that will hold up structurally on its own. After several iterations and simulated structural testing, we successfully engineered the booth design while still keeping the visual emotion and engagement that I’m trying to achieve.
THE BUILD OUT
Even with a successfully engineered design, the real test comes down to the build out of the physical booth. There were problems that my builders have encountered during the setup. To make sure these problems were solved, I worked with them hands on, designing and testing different build solutions for the booth, understand what works and what doesn’t as we test it out.
OUTCOME
The number of attendees and engagements was greater than expected. We were able to have the wall panels filled with interactions and attendees having discussions with the recruiters within the space. This help gave the Talent Acquisition team a large number of leads to hire for Amazon.
RETROSPECTIVE
Creating large walls required large bases in order for it to hold itself up structurally, however that takes up a good amount of floor space in very small area as every inch counts.
What I could do differently next time is design a full boxed structure, with entrance cutouts at the front and back. This could possibly eliminate the need for heavy bases, helping them take advantage every inch of the booth, giving it more room for engagements.