Innovating the Tradeshow


Combining physical and digital experience
to drive relationships and conversions

Header Image

About The Project


Weatherford operates in a very crowded space within the oil industry where they focus on up-stream services (i.e. extraction) . In order to attract new customers and maintain relationships with old ones, they attend a number of tradeshows each year. Unfortunately, the tradeshow environment is equally as competitive and attracting potential customers requires a unique experience.

Weatherford approached our team at CMU to address their tradeshow situation, an avenue they recognize as having high potential for customer education and acquisition. We took this challenge through the product development cycle from identifying stakeholders and their painpoints to a final concept and business case. This project was completed as the capstone assignment for the Masters of Product Development program at CMU, Spring 2014.

CLIENT
Weatherford & Carnegie Mellon University

LOCATION
Pittsburgh, PA

ROLE
Lead Designer

Second Render

Tradeshow Challenge


Our initial research focused on a "look out" approach, culminating in an analysis of the overall tradshow experience, from visitor experience to competition.

Challenge

Research & Discovery


We conducted user research to uncover our key stakeholders, their painpoints, and determine how we can best influence the experience within the booth. By uncovering visitor—and employee—painpoints, we found that cost, safety, efficiency, return on investment, and case studies were the most important pieces of information needed to purchase an upstream service from Weatherford.

Booth Visitors
Painpoints
Addressable Audience

Process


Through a synthesis of our user research, we defined over 100 opportunities to better influence a tradeshow booth visitor and drive purchasing decisions. We refined, revised, and iterated these ideas to eventually land on four key opportunities that were shared with our client. The top opportunity would serve as our "north star" for ideation around solutions.

Opportunity

Product Opportunity Gap


There is an opportunity to reduce “dead time” and build relationships by providing relevant solutions in an interactive, immersive, and informative way.

Concept 2x2

Solution


Our final concept provided a four part experience to meet the needs of visitors to our client's tradeshow booth. The first component, the overall booth design, emphasizing the flow of visitors into and out-of the booth. The second component, is a queuing system that creates a virtual queue and know that they'll be guided through the booth in a timely manner—cutting down on "dead time." The third component, the central Wable (wall + table) provides two type of experiences for visitors interested in assisted and unassisted curation of information and product demos. The final component is the UI within the Wable experience, which allows users to cycle through relevant information and package a digital set of documents for later reference.

This integrated solution will allow Weatherford to convert a higher percentage of booth visitors into customers at each show.

Solution
  1. The overall booth design helps to enhance flow of visitors into and out of the space.
  2. Specified greeting stations coupled with a virtual queuing system allows for visitors to interface with employees in a timely manner.
  3. The centerpiece of the booth, the Wable, is an innovative solution to providing guided and self-guided experiences.
  4. The UI component of the Wable provides relevant information for those interested and can package a digital "takeaway" of information.