The Office Project

The challenge

Have fun. Show users our offices. Test new technologies. Invent.

The solution

As we were brainstorming one day about new possible ways of interacting with users one idea popped up: hey, why don’t we show people around our offices. With a webcam. Oh, and let’s make it cooler: let’s put the camera on a car which people would drive around.

As cool as it sounded the project was a real challenge. We have this great idea. How do we make it happen? So we started working. We tested three remote cars before settling on one that was big enough to drive around and small enough to still let us work while users smashed it against the walls and our feet.

We rewired the remote, attached it to a computer and programmed a special server for it to let users drive it around while at the same time streaming real live video. A flash application would let users drive it for only two minutes (we had a lot of them lining up and only an hour each day for the test drive).

It was ready to go.

The teasing campaign

We teased our visitors for a week. The trailer would show video-cuts of pre-launch footage with the camera (giving it a “Blair Witch Project” feel) and announce the news ... on a computer screen near you.

The results

Response was huge. We launched the project on twitter, using a live chatroom. People lined up and started driving. In less than 40 minutes we already had 3000 unique users viewing “The Office Project” and lining up for a drive test.

We could not believe the success it had. The news spread fast and soon most of the local blogs had a post about it asking for a premium position in the driver seat.

We closed the project after exactly one week with a promise to get back with something better next time.

Have we mentioned we got calls from people asking us for more?