BB-9E Trainer

This project is an example of a time when I worked across departments, outside of normal marketing/creative capacities, with Sphero's Star Wars product team. With the latest release of BB-8 and BB-9E, the product team wanted to add a new augmented reality (AR) experience in which the droids could be stationarily driven while app-users virtually controlled the droids' movement on an in-app exploration.

The AR experience required the use of the user's phone camera to determine the droid's direction of movement (and thus its navigation on screen). For the in-app controls to work, the camera needed to be able to recognize, through distinguishing graphics, the various orientations of the trainer. Based on my vector illustration skills and proven knowledge of the Star Wars universe visual language, I was recruited to help the product team establish a design that the app software could interpolate for use in the AR experience. I interacted with the industrial designer and software technician who had begun the project, and then drafted their needs into a 2-D vector design that tested successfully. I was then required to pass off my solutions to the product team for finalizing. The design graphics released on the final product are a result of close communication with their team on a creative, yet technical goal.