Role: Executive Creative Producer w/ Set Creative, Deep Local
2019 The One Club Honoree - Best in Spatial Design
Billions of people know Google for search and software. But not many people, relatively speaking, knew much about Google Hardware. So in the fall of 2019 - we built the Google Hardware Store: a place for discovering helpful tools of a different kind.
Over 3 months, our 2 pop up stores (one in NYC and one in Chicago) - we engaged the local community and hosted a total of 55 events with daily programming with local influencers and creators. We welcomed 80,000 visitors – with an average dwell time in store of 20 minutes. - and got 88 press hits with 38,000 shares, had 97,000 Google Hardware Store views on YouTube, and reached 155M earned social impressions.
In our design - we wanted to build a space combining retail with experiential demos in a way that felt as effortless & human as the products themselves. Our palette was soft vs sharp. Wayfinding signs were hand-painted locally. Custom paint cans in Google Hardware colors and murals decorated the space. In a voice-activated treehouse guests could try smart home demos; in a perfectly-to-scale tiny kitchen, the Google Hub. Hand illustrated ‘project’ cards shared everyday use cases, while people designed wrapping paper with the Pixel Slate and used Google Lens to play music in the ‘unlabeled record store’. To make 1:1 trial more comfortable, we created ‘toolboxes’–beautiful kits with a single product and project cards to be used anywhere in the space. The design reinforced Google’s belief that tech should serve people, not the other way around.