Engage your Professional
Audience at a Congress Booth

Explore in this case study, how virtual reality
technology and a model of an immune cell can
turn a congress booth into a learning experience

More than just an eye-catcher

You will, of course, have had similar requests:

Please find me the one special idea for our congress booth that will capture the visitors’ attention and convince them of the benefits of our product.

This is how our client stipulated from the outset that interacting with their potential customers should be paramount: We need you to create something tactile, something visitors to the booth can touch and feel. At the same time, we want to go beyond simply catching the eye. We want visitors to go away with information about phosphodiesterase 4 that is truly worth knowing.

We don’t want a linear, one-dimensional film. Everyone has them these days, and people just walk by. That’s not the way to inspire our audience.

Our client’s initial idea: An interactive, tactile cell that plays relevant videos on a monitor as its components are touched

First ideas

In response to these requirements, we came up with first ideas for a cross-sectioned, tactile, football-sized immune cell. Visitors to the congress would be able to touch and explore it. By pressing various objects inside the cell, they would start a sequence of relevant animations on a display monitor. All the time, though, we had a nagging feeling that ­– sophisticated as our tactile immune cell undoubtedly was – today’s technology should really allow us to go even further.

Results

So, together with our client, we chose to go down a new path, employing the technology of virtual reality. The interior of the immune cell was constructed as an interactive 3D world, allowing the visitor to move about freely with the help of a device for entering commands, working in very much the same way that an endoscope does. With this endoscope, the user can seek out certain elements within the cell such as, for instance, PDE4. This then starts an interactive sequence which explains the disease pathology. Pressing a button on the endoscope transports the active substance of a novel PDE4 inhibitor into the cell, and its mechanism of action is explained.

Implementation as interactive virtual reality application for congress booths

From Script to Screen

Right from the start, the tight timeline specified by our client and the technical feasibility of our ideas were a challenge for project management and production team. After detailed preparation involving sketches and technical drawings, the cell was first modeled using a 3D program and then printed in 3D by an industrial partner of ours. Subsequently, a sophisticated mechanical and electronic control unit was integrated, enabling interactive navigation in the virtual world. Construction was carried out in close collaboration with our client and also with the booth builder, who in the end had to integrate the virtual cell into the existing booth.