David Giammarco

Inspired by Bogotá’s weekly ciclovía, CicLAvia temporarily closes streets to car traffic and opens them to Angelenos to use as a public park. Our class challenge focused on: How might we change the perceptions of CicLAvia as a “just cyclists” event to one that celebrates city exploration and all forms of non-motorized transportation including foot, skateboard, scooter, wheelchair and even bystanders.

CicLAvia’s current demographic is mostly cyclists and the organization is looking for a marketing strategy to communicate to the general public that their events are pedestrian friendly, and not just for bikes.

Over fifty percent of CicLaVia’s marketing outreach contained bike-centric content. We noticed missed opportunities for sharing location specific features that would attract participants interested in covering smaller sections of the route. Through surveying we further discovered fascinating stories of participants and their passion for attending events.

Our solution to utilize evergreen user generated content is key to form a stronger connection with the communities that CicLAvia passes through. CicLAvia Stories consists of fixed and mobile bases where the organization collects meaningful stories from community members that highlight their individuality and express what the events mean to them. We also crafted a content creation strategy composed of challenges and prompts that allows for the organization to generate content easily that calls attention to the fun the events bring to its attendees.

Meow Wolf is an arts and entertainment company that creates large-scale interactive and immersive art installations. MaCher, Inc. is a Certified B Corporation among the top 1% of sustainable businesses in the world. Together these two industry partners asked us to develop a sustainable product that would add value to gift shop purchases and extend the exhibit's content and storyline through a digital companion solution.

We were tasked to develop an interactive user experience that bridges the physical and digital world, with the goal of driving audience engagement with the brand, further extending the storyline and content from the exhibit, driving foot traffic to the exhibits and increasing sales from the stores.

We discovered that Meow Wolf attracts a wide range of people, including art enthusiasts, families, young adults, creative professionals, and tourists seeking new and engaging entertainment. Meow Wolf's installations tend to ignite visitors' own creativity, often resulting in dedicated ‘inspired by Meow Wolf’ online art forums. The sense of discovery at the exhibits motivate people to return and delve deeper into the experiences. However, we found multiple instances of users visiting during hours of high foot traffic who left feeling frustrated and confused about the story.

The Sidereal Connector is an interactive wallet that can be purchased online or in-person at the Convergence Station exhibit. It interacts with ‘Memports’, bringing clues of the story directly to the apps memory vault for future reference. At key locations and progress, prompts to move physical pieces on the wallet appear. With the correct arrangement artifacts and characters relevant to solving the story are revealed through the app in AR. The wallet also includes a Field Notes pad and pen to jot down clues or sketch whenever inspiration strikes.