Strategize

Connecting with Consumers: How do you get people excited about a “Chevron Process Flow?” Or explain the details of a “Retail Execution Cockpit”? These were a few of the challenges we faced when the Microsoft Consumer Goods team asked us to design and produce a Silverlight marketing demo to explain the theme of “Connected Experiences.

Conceptualize

Creating the Story: Our first step was to streamline the Microsoft Consumer Goods team's data to find the story underneath. This helped us better understand the value their products offered and the way their products should be used. We proposed creating a “day in the life” scenario that would focus on the product lifecycle themes of Concept & Design, Development & Launch, and Adoption and Consumption.

Execute

Accessibility is Hard Work: Creating a long-playing animated demo that needed to run in a Silverlight environment was no easy task. We did most of the design work in Flash, and then developed a process for converting QuickTime files to a Silverlight compatible format. To add closed captioning we used Expression Encoder, embedding .SMI file transcription data directly into the video. Our developers used Expression Blend 3 to customize an existing player template, adding functionality until it was able to meet our own unique needs. The pieces came together in the end to create a smooth, engaging, easy-to-use demo.