Salesforce Hybrid Dreamforce Event

Sponsored by Salesforce

Reimagining Dreamforce from the comfort of your home during Covid-19.

Overview

So, here we are. Working from home. Quarantined. Wondering about the future of live events. During Covid-19, Salesforce’s Dreamforce team wanted a fresh perspective on their biggest event of the year and challenged ArtCenter to tackle Dreamforce: an annual event that brings together the global Salesforce community for learning, connection, fun, and giving back. It's an experience that celebrates Trailblazers and customer success.

I served as a UX Designer in a transdisciplinary team working on an end-to-end solution that involved developing a hybrid event that attendees could enjoy from the comfort of their own home. A experience that would maintain the same ethos of their biggest event of the year.

Role

UX/UI Designer

Skills

Product/Interaction Design

Advanced Prototyping

Design Systems

Product Strategy

User Research

Team

Dreamforce Design Team

Devin Lee-Jones (Product

Designer)

Rose Kim (Product 

Designer)

Ana-Paola Laveaga

(ENV Designer)

"Dreamforce is an annual event that brings together the global Salesforce community for learning, fun, community building, and philanthropy."

But due to Covid-19, attendees can no longer come together in person...

— Business Goals

So, we asked...

How might we create new digital attendee experiences that maintain the integrity, brand experience, and expectations of Dreamforce to everyone from anywhere?

Dreamforce

comes to you

With Dreamforce going digital during Covid-19, our goal was to bring an exciting at home experience for all attendees from anywhere in the world. An experience that included a multi-sensorial pre-activation filled with appetizers for the main event, and a post-event experience that everyone can get behind as a Dreamforce Ohana.

We took a look at the largest social gatherings across the globe in search of the key ingredients that made them so special.

Based on our interviews and research we were able to condense our findings into 3 core pillars for each part of the event.  

With 3 key themes surrounding humanity, community, and environmental aspects weaved through the entirety of the project.

— Event Overview

We decided to break up the event into 3 distinct journeys that followed a cadence that was more digestible for our attendees. We used Temporal-Based Event Architecture to situate our event through a pre-activation, main event, and post-event reflection. Allowing for attendees to ease in and out of the hybrid event. Emphasizing comfort and confidence when navigating through an event of this magnitude.

Part One:

Challenges

Nostalgia, multi-sensorial experiences, and unexpected scenarios.

— Key Insight

We collect information about our environment through all five of our senses to form connections. This means that stimulating all five is really important in not only collecting information but creating memories.

Your Package is here!

— Multi-Sensorial Sustainable at Home Kit

Multi-sensorial + Sustainable

Kick off the event with a curated package filled with surprise and delight, smells, tastes, and the feeling of warm campfire nights. All packed into a sustainable pre-activation kit to arrive at your door 4 weeks prior to the event, setting you up for an immersive customer journey.

— Attendee Onboarding Experience (Mobile)

NFC

Activated

Experience

Scan your personal passport from the pre-activation kit on your phone to kick off your personalized experience.

Multi-

Platform 

Take your unique code from Astro to the site and begin your very own personalized camp experience.

— Attendee Onboarding Experience (Desktop)

Choose Your Camp 

You are then welcomed into the campground through your activation code. Select your trail guide, who is a Salesforce character assigned to you based on your industry role. Your business guru, travel companion; nearly anything you could need from a personalized travel experience.

Appetizers Before The Main Event 

Once you are settled in your new camp, a menu of appetizers will be available to showcase all the awesome sessions that will be on display for this year.

Plan Your Trip 

Your character wants to set you up for success and will welcome you into your own agenda. Here's your travel guru Codey, set up in boss-mode with his cafe music vibes going. In the window behind him is your personal white board agenda that will transport you to camp.

Conquer Each Mountain

This playful agenda is symbolic of the trail iconic to your Salesforce adventures. The visual of the mountain range changes according to the location Dreamforce is traveling to. Its specific to where in the world this year is celebrating, whether it's Mt Everest in China, Jeju Island of Korea, Mt Fuji in Japan, or Kangchenjunga in India. 

Part Two:

Challenges

User Driven Narratives, collaboration and innovation, and new perspectives and hitting milestones.

— Key Insight

We've all gained new perspective and had to innovate, re-invent, and re-evaluate the way we do business through the pandemic. How might we spark conversations that inspire us to share and tell our stories?

Interactive Campground

Explore intimate conversations around the campfire by selecting a tent that is specific to a session you attended, or selecting a topic of conversation that is important to you. Transport into that compground environment under a starry night.

Campfire Speakeasies

This is an opportunity to embrace and share the skillsets and insights you offer as a unique individual through your experiences and perspectives. A community whiteboard is created to allow all attendees to share resources in real time, and allow for digital records of these insightful ideas to become easy to come back to long after the fire is out.

Digital Swag Passport

By now, attendees have acquired a ton of digital swag for their digital passport. A place where a collection of milestones and memories from past events, and badges earned that have been digitalized and made eternal.

Part Three:

Challenges

Reflection, specific disputable purpose, and legacy under on Dreamforce Ohana.

— Key Insight

The pandemic has really allowed so many of us to go back to our snow covered mountains, warm sandy beaches, and rocky mountains. As a result, we were reminded of the beauty this world provides us if we can take care of it.

Dreamforce for Sustainability

Dreamforce wants to invest in it's ohana by kick starting each members sustainbility goals. Salesforce has a huge opportunity with its roots in every nation to make serious change for our globe.

Globalforce

Dreamforce can enable a global force to act on the 17 UN's sustainable goals. A partnership with Tableau would enable us to track and share our efforts globally and explore what was most important to the Dreamforce Ohana each year.

"I’m going to do something weird, you can’t really do this virtually, but this is an standing ovation. This was incredible, I don’t know what you do better... How you interpreted the brief, the creative writing, or the agency class presentations. I love the end to end experience, and how it was so buttoned up. You checked off all the boxes in such a wonderful, fun, brand relevant way. The spririt of dreamforce is alive and well here."

Special thanks to Dave and the wonderful Dreamforce team on the opportunity, mentorship, and collaboration!

"I feel like we found our people... I love that you applied so much collective thought into an unorthodox means of holding an event of this magnitutde. Congrats on truly thinking outside the box and what makes up a true experience.  I love the speakeasies by the way, that was really clever."

"I really love the approach here, love how you tied the characters into your story. Taking in how each individual feels throughout the experience. Exploring the emotions and senses was so wonderful. I loved the idea of choosing your own adventrue, and the digital passport providing a place for memories and gives gravitas to digial awards. Something we are definitely going to have to look at."

"I think I heaped enough compliments in the past. What a joy it has been to see this evolve and it’s been so enjoyable going on this journey with you. I have to applaud you on how you presented such complex ideas down to a very convincing business proposition. This was about the most complete presentation you could hope for in this situation."

"This has given me goosebumps... you can really tell that you thought through every little detail. You really thought about it holistically in a beautiful way. I can’t wait to pick apart this presentation later. The NFC chip, personalization, and the journey of self was wonderful."

"I love that you guys focused on the positive and how we could uplift and provide hope. Designing for the senses is terrific, its intelligent to think about our senses and how we can explore through them."

"Are you guys coming for our jobs? Should we be afraid? You guys really understood the emotion and values we as Dreamforce try to convey. You really nailed this in the virtual aspect that we have been really struggling with. I love how your approach started on a positive spin on covid-19. You guys really hit on this so perfectly."