Simplifying Complexity
At tradeshows and events, such as CeBit, Hannover Messe, or the World Expo, visitors are bombarded with screens, ads, and messages. How can we have visitors initiate a conversation with our sales staff out of interest and curiosity?
In my experience, fun and positive emotions are the best ingredients for a successful sales pitch. People, regardless of age, culture, and position, are not afraid to interact with playful models and discover their magic ingredients. Each demo is wired up and equipped with sensors that track interactions and help to tell success stories for the underlying solutions.
Musuem of the Future, Dubai
O.S.S. HOPE is a space station of the future. It has limited resources, just like earth. For us to build and maintain this home among the stars, it is crucial to sustainably balance energy, materials, and opportunities for all the residents and for the station itself. Working hand in hand with technology can help reduce emissions, waste, and inequalities to zero.
Expo 2020 Dubai
“The Intelligent City” is a visual metaphor for SAP’s “Intelligent Enterprise”.
Like Dubai, any successful enterprise needs to constantly adopt to change in order to stay relevant. With success come great responsibility: More people require modern systems, more customers require scalable eCommerce marketplaces, networks and markets need to interact in the virtual, as in the real world.
This showcase maps Dubai’s iconic landmarks to SAP’s digital solutions. It illustrates the importance of vertical and horizontal integration to make the world run at its best.
The Wheel of Purpose
This interactive showcase exists in some centers as a physical showcase, but can also be played online. I took an older flash version of this concept, and then re-designed, and programmed a fully responsive, contemporary user interface. It is used in ‘interactive breaks’ during customer meetings around the globe in order to educate about SAP’s contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. You can try it out:
CeBit Chancellor Demo
I got the chance to support the story creation and UI design for SAP’s central demo at the CeBit trade fair in Hannover. Our model of the city Hamburg simulated traffic flows to and from the harbor and showed various solutions to reduce inner-city traffic jams through proactive rerouting. The buildings were modeled out of glass and lit up from a screen below. This demo was presented to German chancellor Angela Merkel.
Asset Intelligence Network Lego® Model
I designed, built, programmed, and soldered a modular, connected Lego® model of SAP’s Asset Intelligence Network solution. The entire model fits into carry-on luggage and can be set up in 5 minutes, which made it extremely popular amongst sales. Over 60 units were built and shipped to offices around the world at a total value of over 250,000 euros, resulting in several millions of Euros in sales revenue.
The charm of this model lies in its thoughtful simplicity: Visitors are first attracted to the Lego buildings and don’t hesitate to interact with the little truck and machines. Then hidden sensors and magnets trigger interactions with the SAP solution on the screen behind. One can therefore easily simulate what happens when a new asset leaves the factory, is being modified or repaired. These are all key features of the SAP solution, and the rather complex solution can be explained as a children’s toy.
I used an iterative design thinking approach to get to the final form, starting with paper prototypes, 3D models, and functional prototypes, before reaching a final, scalable solution.
“Internet of Things is hype. The challenge with IoT is to explain what it can do for you. Thanks to you Thomas that you developed a cool physical model which happens to become an icebreaker. In the session with the [Customer] team yesterday you triggered “something” with the participants. After your demo, they understood what we mean with a digital twin and secondly the follow-up discussion turned out to be very creative and fruitful based on your Lego-Session. Great Job, thank you!”
Smart TV Lego® Model
For an SAP solution that helps TV stations to analyze viewing behaviors, I developed this model with various „context“ scenarios, such as watching movies on a PlayStation, at home, in the office, or on a train. The visitor could turn tiny Lego® TVs on and off via remote control. Viewing times and data were collected and displayed in an old school monitor with SAP‘s latest UI designs.
The entire model is modular and plug-and-play, meaning that it can be set up in minutes and transported in carry-on luggage.
SAP Hybris Party Box
Copenhagen’s smallest disco was a collaboration with the SAP Hybris Labs team in Munich. SAP Hybris was a solution that tracked user behavior online to create a personal profile for marketers. Our storyline was to create a personal profile of our visitors and instead of playing ads, we would select a fitting music genre to create a personalized party experience.
I programmed the entire frontend that controls the user interaction, lights, sound, fog-machine, camera and social media sharing using Node-Red and a RaspberryPi.
Feed the Developers
This interactive installation at the SAP Innovation Forum was intended to increase social media coverage of the hackathon that took place during the event. My idea was to distribute connected candy dispensers in the rooms of the competing teams. Visitors who tweeted about the event could add the hashtag of their favorite team and thus “feed” them candy to increase morale.
I came up with the idea, designed and 3D printed the candy machines, connected them to the internet, and got fed lots of M&Ms.
A Dog named Cadejo
My first concept using machine learning and visual image recognition was a project for the National Historical Museum in Costa Rica. The goal of this summer school project was to keep folk stories, like the one from the dog “El Cadejo”, alive in the youngest generation. We combined an animated video with traditional shadow figures that visitors can cast against a wall to progress the story at various breakpoints.
