As the guiding design direction, Quicksand decided to explore the intersection of visual art, music and interaction technology. Visitors were provided access to the music library through isolated ipod modules, each of which was also an independent radio stream that could be accessed through wireless headphones. Large image collages were used to heighten interest and relevance to the culture of music.

Strong icons, such as the Indian coin operated payphone & the London phone booth, were modified and using embedded technology converted into interactive installations.

The space in turn was designed with built-in modularity that made replication across other British Council centers fairly simple.

Brand Coke wanted to develop a small format museum that could become a traveling exhibit across about 20 Coca-Cola plants in India. Meant to educate regional media-persons and consumers on the rich legacy of the brand, its commitment to local communities & its support to local art & crafts, the traveling exhibit would front-end a countrywide PR initiative for Coca-Cola.

Quicksand conceptualised, designed and executed the first 3 exhibitions across Jaipur, Hyderabad and Mumbai. The key features of the exhibit were:

• information design to assimilate, sort and design content across 400 brands, and 200 plus countries where Coke is present
• a geodesic structure that would house all exhibits and is easily assembled and disassembled
• an interactive software developed in collaboration with FLIP design, Bangalore
• graphic artworks depicting the Coke chronology, its Olympic & FIFA associations and Coke’s brands in India
• life size impressions of the Coke bottle that were fabricated in different crafts from all over the country – terracotta, soft stone carving, wood carving, textiles, madhubani painting

CONCEPT PRESENTATION

EXHIBITION PHOTOGRAPHS: Pictures from one of the installations of the exhibition at Hyderabad

COKE INTERACTIVE GAME

The Coke Interactive installation was designed to engage visitors in a short, informative game on the brand. Published below is the interaction concept.

The NNOC (national network operations center) occupies a pride of place within the corporate headquarters of Reliance located at the outskirts of Mumbai. It also doubles up as an exhibition space that gives visitors a window into the company’s infrastructure, operations, services and products.

The Reliance brand team approached Quicksand with a brief to re-vision the space as an immersive & interactive experience communicating the key products, services and values of the group. What follows is the process we undertook and some pertinent design outputs. The end output from Quicksand was an experience blueprint that established the intended user experience & enablers for it.

DESIGN RESEARCH

Detailed one-on-one sessions with all business heads within Reliance helped the design team establish the guiding vision that exists within the group. It also gave early pointers to the scale, complexity and magnitude that needed to be represented within the NNOC. We also spent several days at the NNOC, experiencing it as visitors, architects and designers.

All interview transcriptions were compiled and archived for internal reference (click image below for enhanced view)

DESIGN VISIONING

Synthesis of these interviews led to the initial design vision and an expectations summary that was necessary to establish internal buy-in. These were a mix of evocative visuals and written content that summarized what internal expectations were and how they all came together under a unifying vision for Reliance.

DESIGN BLUEPRINTING

The design & experience blueprint developed on the basis of above research, involved studying the floor plans of the NNOC and a massive content hunt for

• products & services of Reliance Communications including technical specifications
• building a technology glossary of the latest interactive technologies from around the world that could be brought into the space
• benchmarking against operation centers of other global majors in telecom

The final output consisted of a virtual walk-through of the space conceived as 9 distinct zones – each zone with a set of installations that communicated the past, present and future of Reliance. Click below to preview parts of the film and the print document presented to Reliance.

(the video below is confidential. please get in touch for more details)

The concept was presented internally to the Chairperson, Mr. Anil Ambani and given to Accenture for a technology feasibility study. Further developments are awaited.

As the first pilot in India, Quicksand was brought on board to design the space, individual technology modules and integrate all system components. Technology interactions within the Red Lounge comprised of:

• interactive packaging (a special ink printed on the PET bottle label has a video code embedded in it – when swiped against a code reader it triggers the video on an adjoining display screen)
• mobile content download (a content portal from which users can download content locally through their bluetooth enabled mobile devices)
• Coke connect (a closed user group chatting interface which allows for users to chat with each other anonymously through their mobile phones – users SMS to a display screen which relays their messages real time)

Quicksand partnered with Nest and a Finnish startup to develop some of these interfaces. The Red Lounge was piloted in the city of Pune and later scaled to Bangalore, Hyderabad and Delhi.

Quicksand partnered the advertising agency Leo Burnett in developing a concept presentation to Reliance for the new retail identity. Published below is a walk-through of the proposed design. In-store observations of consumer walk-ins, customer service and back-office operations guided much of the design process.

Published below is the initial concept note and some environment graphics developed by Quicksand. The current office of Coca-Cola in Gurgaon, India has implemented some of these concepts.

Quicksand was mandated with conceptualizing and proposing a new restaurant experience that combined the strong equity of Nirula’s, Coca-Cola’s best practices from around the world and the changing face of food & beverage retail in India.

Breaking down the restaurant experience into a series of micro-experiences, Quicksand did a conceptual re-modelling of an existing space to demonstrate how the new retail identity & restaurant experience could play out. The concept was also a pointer at a new brand personality for Nirula’s and sought to make an impact at all customer touch-points beyond just the restaurant space. It became relevant in light of the brand getting acquired by a new management and hence was in need of being re-visioned.

Coca-Cola acquired the Nirula’s account in early 2007 and is now their preferred beverage partner.

The kiosks were built to be modular, adaptable to different foot-prints and optimising on space available for serving vis-a-vis stocked merchandise. Several installations of the kiosks now dot airports across India.

Click on image to download case study (1.3 mb, 10 pages)

The brand manifests in the initial launch phase spanned:

• Flagship retail stores
• Small format retail kiosks
• Vending machines

Quicksand designed the visual identity and its applications across all these manifests. We also did conceptual renders of some of these manifests. Media Mart is now a recognized retail brand in Delhi with plans to expand its outreach to other cities.

The project was part of studio’s early foray into retail spaces and provided important understanding of vendor networks, material and process limitations of the flourishing retail VM industry.