Ten Thousand, A Crescent Heights Community
Location: Beverly Hills, California
Work: Agency
Year: April 2016
A Creative Approach to Information Architecture
Due to the luxury property still being under construction, the project had to move forward with limited resources. With access to only a handful of renderings, it would have been easy to conventionally organize a website that consisted of the typical Residences, Amenities and Gallery pages but we wanted to do more with less. Rather than categorize information page by page, we decided to distribute information equally throughout one unified experience. This information architecture laid the groundwork for interactive dial design to follow.
Elevated Living
From a design perspective, the challenge was to simply and effectively convey the elite status of living at Ten Thousand. Fortunately, the high quality renderings that were provided to us told a story among themselves offering a taste of the residents' daily lifestyle. So why not give the user a taste of what it's like to experience a day in the life at Ten Thousand? This sparked the creation of the interactive dial on the home page of the site that weaved a meaningful narrative into otherwise simple information and functionality.
Data Capture Funnel
The client showed keen emphasis on selling their signature "predictive and personalized service" which we wanted to begin to display even on the most initial of interactions with the Ten Thousand brand. For qualified users, we designed a detailed data capture funnel that led them to a personalized web experience. Once in this funnel, a series of touchpoints and user interactions would notify their corresponding leasing representative of valuable benchmarks. Did the user receive their email, open it and view their personalized URL? What floorplans and amenities was the user most interested in? With this information, a leasing rep could then have a better gauge of how to personally reach out to future residents.
WebGL Experience
The essence of this experience lied in the most simple and obvious point of the Ten Thousand brand--literally the number 10,000--which is how many dots we used in our WebGL experience to virtually build a 3D blueprint of the property before the user's eyes. As the user explored personally tailored floorplans and amenities, these dots would shift and reshape in response to their actions.
Notify Personal Representative
The design reinforced the property's signature "predictive and personalized service" and was designed to seamlessly be "one step ahead" of the user. At any point throughout the experience, a future resident could directly notify their representative and ask for more information and exclusive access to the property.
Kohanaiki, Hawaii
Location: The Big Island
Work: Agency
Year: October 2016
Navigating a Story
Unlike other exclusive luxury communities, Kohanaiki encourages a uniquely relaxed and open "barefoot" luxury approach. Everyone on property is part of a community family and all are welcomed to join in and share the experiences, residents and alike. We felt the site could extend this philosophy by sharing content as if it were story. This inspired an interactive, side-scrolling approach to the site, reminiscent of an illustrated book.
Culturally Inspired Icon System
Additionally, we crafted a custom icon system inspired by historical petroglyphs that can be found across the property.
Modular and Scalable Design
We knew from the get-go that our most important pages of the site would be the real estate listing pages as they contained the site's most valuable content. We used these pages as a benchmark to flexibly hold varying amounts of content starting from the maximum and working our way down. We decided that a 2-column, card system could suit this need as main copy could universally be housed in one column with featured stats, sections and galleries that could be called out via cards and optional image spaces as needed. This scalable design solution ultimately supported pages that could each have their own feel while still living in the same family.
Mr. C Hotel
Location: Beverly Hills, California
Work: Agency
Year: July 2016
Visit Site
A Streamlined Experience
One of our biggest goals in updating the Mr. C website was to overhaul a confusing, outdated site map and navigation experience. We identified the top 3 goals of the site with the client to hone in on what was most important: booking, dining reservations and local happenings. With these identified, we were able to simplify the hierarchy of the site and build the framework for a more streamlined, tactful user experience and design to follow.
An Approachable Luxury Hotel
Mr. C Hotel is an offshoot of the internationally recognized Cipriani restaurant brand, a family-run business inspired by classic Italian tradition. Despite their rooted background in historical Italian classicism, the client wished to convey a more simple, approachable and modern elegance for their consumers. This along with their whimsical brand icon--the "fat man" with a bowtie--were the building blocks that inspired a light and clean design accented with animated line art.
Informative Booking
Mr. C's previous booking experience was incredibly clunky, and while we could not overhaul the entire experience we did our due diligence to keep as many steps within the Mr. C environment before sending a user to their external booking engine. This meant designing a clean and universally accessible way to quickly view and select rooms and dates so that a user could feel comfortable with their decisions before checking availability. More importantly, that data was now being remembered and stored so that it did not need to be re-entered upon reaching the external booking engine.
Nathan Adelson Deciding Tomorrow Today Project
Location: Las Vegas, NV
Work: Agency
Year: September 2015
Visit Site
Back to a Better Future
Upon initially taking on this project there was a lot of hesitation about the forboding idea of the hourglass, something the client had already been using frequently across their initiative to promote advance care directives. The moment where we (literally) flipped this project upside-down for a new perspective, a nervous topic suddenly became light and hopeful.
The home page of this site features a reversed video of an hourglass that progressively gains sand as the user scrolls down the page reaching its brim upon reaching an invitation to "Take the First Steps."
Bringing Light to a Heavy Topic
The topic now brought to new light, the design that followed had to support it. Light and airy pages with organic, hand-written strokes made even the most copy- instensive pages digestible. A subtle nod to the Nathan Adelson brand also complimented the site with the occasional appearance of an abstracted butterfly that serves as the silent narrator of the site.
Mountainside Community at Northstar
Location: Lake Tahoe, Nevada
Work: Agency
Year: March 2015
Visit Site
The New Frontier of Modern Living
Inspired by Manifest Destiny and the spirit of American adventure, the Mountainside brand was created to appeal to Silicon Valley professionals seeking a luxurious Lake Tahoe home. Epic imagery, action-oriented storytelling and a compass motif throughout the work convey a freshly modern sense of discovery.
Luxury Property and Floorplans
With various custom-built properties accompanying the community's more standard living options, multiple page designs were necessary to provide access to both overarching highlights from a broad sense as well as custom details and availability for the more exclusive user.
The Compass
Launched in tandem to their brand campaign, an NSEW-inspired navigation was implemented on the Mountainside home page to complement the compass motif. Additionally, a preload transition throughout the site, prompting the user to "Get Lost In All The Right Directions."
Interactive Explore Map
The most challenging part of this project involved creating a custom interactive map completely from scratch that featured dozens of recreational trails and key points of interest surrounding the Mountainside community. In this experience, a user can explore hiking, biking, skiing and other activities to find information ranging from trail highlights to lift locations and panoramic views.
