Synergy Future Home Experience

Educating through immersive future environments.

Western Australia’s largest energy retailer, Synergy, had a problem. Despite offering a range of exciting, technologically-advanced products and services, many people across WA just saw them as a name on a bill. To promote them as a progressive brand of the future, we built a walk-through installation in a vacant retail space within Home Base, Perth’s largest retail centre dedicated to renovations and home-building.

We called it the Synergy Future Home.

Following a carefully-planned path around the future home, visitors simply touched a wall or voiced a command to set off projection-mapped animations and sounds to complement entertaining infographics.

The user experience.

The real challenge was to deliver a lot of complicated energy technology information that enlightened people as much as it inspired and delighted them. We ensured people of all ages could easily interact with all the individual displays and get a better understanding of what Synergy offers, no matter how complicated.

The simple design and illustration style, iPads, voice activation and conductive ink helped remove barriers to people interacting with the individual displays. By painting electrically conductive paths behind walls, 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.

Technology and play in harmony.

In an Australian-first, users were introduced to the future of domestic AI technology, through new technologies like touch-sensitive conductive ink and iPads. They even got to test out Amazon’s Alexa prior to its Australian release.

When visitors selected a story, a projector threw out an animated sequence to bring the story to life. The projectors were selected specifically for their ability to display an image at extremely close range, enabling a user to interact whilst standing close to the wall without casting shadows or blocking animations. The projectors were all mapped with sound, using inbuilt sound systems to further enhance the experience.

The projection system we developed was incredibly complex, allowing each projector to throw out a number of different stories and animations. The whole experience was so fine-tuned that many visitors didn’t even know there were projectors in the ceiling!

Competing for information.

Visitors could enter a competition and seek further information about products that sparked their interest through our custom iPad displays. This data was used to retarget customers with further information about Synergy’s products and services in a more useful and effective way.

The future.

The Synergy Future Home was designed to better WA’s understanding of what Synergy does, while inspiring awe and amazement about what lies ahead. It has gone a long way to transforming an energy utility and sender of bills into an innovative brand that is leading WA to their intelligent energy future.

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