Work/SIMONAExperience center · Goods & Services · 2024

A factory tour that fits in one room

SIMONA makes engineering plastics, and its best sales pitch has always been a walk through the plant. For its new sales center in Atlanta the brief was a touchscreen wall in a conference room. We designed a room that gives the tour instead.

Rendering of the SIMONA Experience Center: a host and five guests around a wood multi-touch table on a red scissor lift, a factory video projected on the wall behind them
Client
SIMONA
Agency
Goods & Services, Atlanta
Role
Experience design, with Matheus Meneghel
Year
2024
Scope
Room concept, a multi‑touch table, a wall projection and the content system behind them
01The brief

SIMONA’s plastics end up in semiconductor fabs and on boat decks. The fastest way to understand that range is to stand where the sheets come off the line.

That is why the company’s strongest sales tool was the plant tour. When SIMONA opened a marketing and sales center in Atlanta, the ask was a touchscreen wall for a conference room. Workshops with the team turned up the real goal: the room had to replace the tour.

Visitors in hard hats and red safety vests walking the floor of a SIMONA plant between production lines
The pitch to beat. Visitors on the floor of a SIMONA plant.
02Three decisions
  1. 1

    Start the factory at the door.

    Office finishes stop at the threshold. Speckled rubber flooring, floor‑marking graphics and directional sound tell guests they have stepped onto the shop floor. The visit was choreographed before any visual design started, so the room would feel industrial and real.

    Turned down: the original brief, a touchscreen wall in a finished conference room.

    Top-down rendering of guests standing around the table on a dark speckled floor with hazard-stripe floor markings
    From above. Hazard stripes and a floor arrow mark the room as shop floor.
    Rendering of the room: the table on its scissor lift, padded rolling stools and the SIMONA wall with Factories, Applications and Company
    The room. Rubber floor, rolling stools, the table and the wall.
  2. 2

    Build the table out of the plant.

    The centerpiece is a multi‑touch table on a red scissor lift, the kind of equipment that works SIMONA’s own floors. Guests gather around it, and the wall above carries the big picture.

    Rendering of the wood-topped multi-touch table on a red scissor lift in front of the SIMONA wall
    The table. A wood top and a touch surface on a red scissor lift; the wall offers Factories, Applications and Company.
  3. 3

    Put a host in charge.

    Every visit has a host. The table and the wall greet each guest by name, a sizzle reel plays, and then the room follows the conversation.

    A hand touching the table screen, which reads Welcome John Deere over a factory video and a large SIMONA wordmark
    Welcome by name. The table opens on the visiting company before the tour begins.
03The room

Everything in the room had to belong on a working floor.

  • The rubber floor absorbs sound and is easy on people who stand for an hour.
  • Directional speakers keep the audio inside the room.
  • Rolling stools double as storage for samples and safety gear.
  • A pegboard shows finished products at eye level.
Isometric rendering of the full room: wall projection, the scissor-lift table, padded stools, a product pegboard and floor graphics reading SIMONA Experience Center
End to end. The wall, the table, the stools and the pegboard, with the floor graphics leading in from the door.
Over-the-shoulder view of a perforated pegboard holding material samples, a product photo and sketches
The pegboard. Material samples and finished products where guests can pick them up.
The pegboard beside a rolling stool with its drawer open to show material samples
Stools that store. Each one opens into a drawer of samples.
Clay rendering of hosts and guests in hard hats around a table with live data floating above it
A clay study. Guests around the table, with data floating above it.
04The visit

One host, one table, three ways in.

  1. Welcome. The wall and the table greet each guest by name, and a sizzle reel plays.
  2. Choose. Factories, Applications or Company.
  3. Factories. Tours of SIMONA’s three North American plants, each with its own interactive sizzle reel.
  4. Applications. Stories of the material at work, such as medical prosthetics.

Behind it sit five module types that combine into a template for each kind of story, so SIMONA can add a plant, a product or an application without new design work.

Factory tour screen: a plant map with Line 5 highlighted in red beside a photo of the line and the caption Originally dubbed the Son of Beast, Line 5 was commissioned in 2015
Inside a factory tour. The plant map finds Line 5, and its story runs beside it: commissioned in 2015, first nicknamed “Son of Beast.”
05What was built
  • The roomBuilt in SIMONA’s Atlanta sales center, and it reads as shop floor: rubber flooring, floor graphics, directional sound, rolling sample stools and a product pegboard
  • Table and wallA multi‑touch table on a red scissor lift and a wall‑sized projection, run by a host
  • Content systemFive module types and story templates for Factories, Applications and Company, with an interactive sizzle reel for each of three North American plants

The images on this page are the design renderings.

06My role

I was Associate Design Director of experience design at Goods & Services. Matheus Meneghel was the design director on SIMONA, and we worked on it hand in hand, from the workshops that reframed the brief to the room and the visit.

Images from Matheus Meneghel’s case study, used with his permission. Read his version at meneghel.design.