AKQA Lobby Display (2014)

Role: Concept, Development, Hardware Design

Tools used: Objective-C, AppleScript, Arduino

When we opened the Atlanta office of AKQA, we wanted a statement piece for our lobby, one that could show off our work in a fun and tactile way.

So in what I now consider the ultimate IKEA hack, I created an RFID-based installation where visitors could pick up an object representing a particular piece of work and place it in a designated spot to learn more.

The core of the installation was built around a macOS app that coordinated between an Arduino MEGA (RFID Reader, LED Strip, Motion Detector) and Keynote (via Apple Script). So when a visitor placed a certain item into range of the RFID reader, it would advance Keynote to a predesignated slide based on the tag id. Visitors could then advance the slides using a light-up capacitive touch button built into the cabinet.