Monsanto’s Channel brand partnered with Sandbox to create an educational and personalized experience in their exhibition building at the 2017 Farm Progress Show held in Decatur, IL.

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Channel wanted to be able to gather visitor information to gain a better understanding of the customer and their needs, enable conversation starters for on-site sales people, and create pre and post messaging opportunities.

The Sandbox experience strategy team began the work to innovate on a solution framework for the event that would:

– Have users register on-site to personalize content to their farming needs

– Use RFID tags to capture data from registration and use throughout the other stations

– Allow visitors to scan their RFID tag at each station so their tailored content would appear during their experience

– Create and educational and interactive experience throughout four stations to reinforce Channel product benefits

Using the strategic direction and hardware recommendations from the experience design team, I began to work with a content strategist on a flexible content template that could be used across each station in the experience. I then created an interactive prototype that allowed the client and internal team to walk through how the experience flow would work, starting from registration all the way through final completion of all four stations. This prototype also allowed the content strategy and art production team members to determine what copy and assets needed to be created yet and what was complete. The Channel legal team also used the prototype to understand the experience and approve the design from a legal ramifications standpoint.

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The prototype also housed user experience requirements that I documented and exported for the development team so they understood some of the details behind the design (i.e. screen timeouts, database look-ups, alternate flows and error conditions, etc.). The following is an example screen of a few of the requirements around on-site registration:

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Finally, from the prototype, I worked with a digital designer (@jplobaito) who then created the visual design of the experience. We collaborated to ensure that the experience was understandable even if you went through it “out of order” and that the screen elements where usable and readable on a touchscreen interface. Here are a couple example screens of the final design:

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Channel had an impressive ⅓ of their booth traffic take the time to register and go through the experience. They achieved in increase in registrations of 41% over the previous year, when people had to register at the booth through handwritten cards and Farm Progress sponsored activities.

At the end of the show, the Channel client said it was the best booth they had ever had. Here are a few pictures of the final exhibition setup at the show:

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