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Rachel Felber

Eisai - Interactive Touchscreen Experience

The ask was to create an interactive timeline or museum of the history of Alzheimer's Disease research and treatment, with a focus on Eisai's leadership and contribution and with an eye towards the future.

 

The final outcome was an interactive touchscreen display featuring the "Growing Hope" tree, within Eisai’s booth at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC). Inspired by the Yakusugi Tree, the "Growing Hope" tree is a symbol of strength evolving over time, with multiple pathways or branches working together towards a common purpose. It represents Eisai’s history of innovation and focus on the long term impact for the future and is a nod to Eisai's Japanese heritage.

Produced in partnership with Blue Hive for Eisai.

Connecting the Pieces

Concept 2

This experience tells about how Eisai has lead the charge in Alzheimer's research and how they are continuing their mission of connecting the pieces.

  • Powered by a large LED display, guests will have the opportunity to dive in and learn from Eisai’s very own experience of perseverance, patience, mastery and discipline to connecting the pieces to combat AD. Each fragmented video story will tell a different story.

Growing Hope

Concept 3

Growing Hope draws correlations between the neurons in an individual’s brain to a tree. The branches of the tree stem into three categories of a patient’s experience with Alzheimer’s Disease, these being physical, emotional, and clinical.

  • A digital display located on the back wall of the booth will feature the Growing Hope tree.

The Mapped Mind

Concept 1

 

Relating Eisai’s research and development into how the mind works and ultimately makes memories is shown with the mind diagram that relates back to the parts of the brain that Eisai has meticulously mapped throughout the years in their research.

  • A tablet “bar” will be located at the back of the booth, allowing visitors to explore the Mapped Mind digital content.

Advocates and Analysts
Secondary Audience

  • Graduate-Level Researcher

  • Director of Policy

  • Lead Advocacy Group Member

 

Goal: To make a meaningful contribution and to see how companies are also making a difference.

Investigators
Tertiary Audience

  • External Media

  • Pharma Rep (Competitor)

 

 

Goal: To see what is noteworthy and new and to see how Eisai stands out from other competitors.

Experienced Healthcare Professionals
Primary Audience

  • Neurologists

  • Licensed Social Workers

  • Registered Nurse Specialists

 

Goal: To digest information quickly and learn something new that they don’t already know.

Conference attendee sees the Eisai booth with sweeping banner leading their eye to a screen with a tree. 

The attendee is either greeted by Eisai staff and is taken to show the wall in operation or if the Eisai staff is caught up in conversation, the arriving attendee will be compelled to go over to the screen to want to know more about the tree.

When the screen has not had individuals interact with it for an allotted time the tree goes to its neutral state. The tree of hope
is backed out to see the full tree. Particle effect float around the tree.

When the screen is tapped the camera pulls in towards the tree, easing into the optimal viewing angle.

Hotspots will appear along the branches as the camera zooms into the tree.

The connecting lines appear between the hotspots

The attendee clicks on a hotspot and the associated content window pops up next to the selected hotspot.

The attendee can move the content window to a desired viewing position and is able to click through content. They are also able to click individual Tree Sprites and open new content windows.

Research

Brainstorming

The internal team then gathered to brainstorm on how Eisai could showcase the research and development of Alzheimer's research in an engaging, interactive way. Each brainstorm participant was given several minutes to jot down their ideas onto sticky notes located below their name. After a brief discussion on each of the ideas, participants voted on on their favorite ideas, which were then further refined and ideated on.

Research

Prioritizing and Bucketing Key Audiences

In order to capture the audience that would be attending the conference, proto-personas were created then grouped and prioritized into primary, secondary and tertiary audiences based on similar actions, needs and goals. Prioritizing allowed us to uncover what the primary goals of these groups were, as well as to define the key messaging and desired outcome that Eisai would like to communicate to them.

Design

Concepts

After the initial brainstorm, the most popular ideas were further refined into three concepts before presenting to the client. 

Design

Storyboarding - Growing Hope

The "Growing Hope" concept was chosen by the client and a storyboard was created to define the user journey through the booth.

Design

User Interface and Animation

After several rounds of iterations on the content, 3D modeling and the user interface, the tree was refined into its final form. Watch the video below to see the final animation as it appeared on screen.

Research

Screen Dimensions and Accessibility

Special consideration was given to making the experience as accessible as possible. With adequate spacing in mind, multiple users can interact with the touchscreen. The content windows are draggable and movable in order to accommodate individuals of different heights, including wheelchair users. Additionally, each content window contains a navigation menu, allowing users to access all hotspot content comfortably within one window.

Research

Touchscreen Wireframes

Content provided by the client was mapped into three branches of sprites all originating from the sprite on the trunk. Each sprite on the tree will open a content window. Users can navigate through all sprites easily from this content window.

Design

Booth Design

We collaborated with Set Design to create a cohesive booth experience. Plaques were mounted next to the touchscreen to highlight the Yakusugi tree's symbolism and link to Eisai's history.

Role
UX Lead

Event

Alzheimer's Association International Conference

Tools

Figma, Miro

© 2023 by Rachel Felber

Retrospective

In Conclusion...

  • We had limited time with the physical touchscreen, and ran into a technical issue with the screen where multiple touches were registering along the left border. This resulted in us having to move the logo to the right top corner. Tapping the logo results in the screen going into an idle state with a zoomed out view of the tree. Ultimately, this issue was due to sunlight hitting the screen and the issue was resolved.

  • After reviewing the design on the physical touchscreen in person, the size of the content windows was increased nearly double to improve legibility and user comfort.

  • It was a challenge to make sure that the design was accessible and that any user could access all content, regardless of height. We solved for this by making the content windows movable and draggable, with all content available within a submenu.
     

Because of its appearance at a healthcare conference, I wanted to make this as user friendly and accessible as possible. The final design ended up being not only functional, but also thoughtful as the Yakusugi tree was a beautiful metaphor for hope.

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