The Synergy Future Home - Interactive Installation

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To promote Synergy, Western Australia’s largest energy retailer, as a progressive brand of the future, we created an interactive installation featuring some innovative (and very cool) digital tech. We built the Synergy Future Home from the ground up in a vacant retail space within Home Base, Perth’s largest retail centre dedicated to renovations and home-building.

This is an Australian-first, walk-through installation that utilises touch-sensitive conductive ink, iPads and Amazon’s Alexa. The Synergy Future Home offers a fully interactive, immersive experience where visitors simply touch a wall or voice a command to set off projection-mapped animations and sounds to complement entertaining infographics. The installation delivers complicated energy technology information in an accessible way to inform just as much as it inspires and delights.

The final product.

The Synergy Future Home required a strong artistic direction, to give it a personality of its own, while working with existing elements of the corporate Synergy style guide. It was important to present a large amount of information in a way that was not overwhelming for the visitor, and instead encouraged them to interact and learn. The images and animation style were created to give the space a clean, modern look that would still be still warm and inviting. The headline typography was also custom created, and was used to establish a through-line on the screens in the space, along with other branded communications outside of the Future Home.

As well as the graphic art direction, the entire space, architecture and lighting scheme was conceived and designed from scratch in-house. Stylised physical 3D models of a home solar-panel system were used to educate visitors, while motion-sensors, touch-sensitive areas, and voice activation encouraged movement and interaction through the story.

Synergy's gradient arrow graphic was repurposed as a way-finding device, beginning at the entrance, and moving onto the floor, and around the islands - subtly directing visitors around the correct path. The central islands were not only designed to house electrical equipment, they also performed a way-finding role, provided a space for lighting, and one island doubled as a bench for visitors to use while watching content on the big screen.

The design was intended to stand out, and invite people in, with and entrance that only allowed a peek at the action.
The unusually angled walls gave the space a futuristic feel.

A 3D render of the space from above.

The entire space including lighting design was designed in-house by Rikki Burns & Melissa Radman.

Each story had an animation cycle designed for the short-throw projectors concealed in the roof space.

Conductive ink helped to remove barriers to people interacting with the individual displays. Being able to paint electrical conductive paths behind walls, meant users could simply place their hands on a section of a painted wall to activate animations. This seemingly ‘invisible’ force never ceased to amaze and encouraged a lot of interactions.

When users select a story, one of four projectors throws out an animated sequence which brings the story to life. The projectors were selected specifically for their ability to throw out the image at extremely close range, enabling a user to interact whilst standing close to the wall without casting any shadows or blocking the animations. The projectors are all mapped with sound and use in-built sound systems to bring the experience to life.

Typography and illustration style was custom-made for the space.

How it was built.

Credits:
CCO & CD: Martin Beecroft & Josh Edge
Art Director & Writer: Rikki Burns
Designer: Melissa Radman & Joseph Dennis
Business Partnerships: Kelly-Anne Sporre & Dre Liang
Agency Producer: Sophie Middleton
Illustrator: Matt Wong
Motion Graphics: Sam Price
Tech Lead: Marcus Collier
Developer: John Lombardo