COKOON: Experiental Spaces for business
NTT DISRUPTION | San Francisco, CA | 2020-2022
Business Case
According to Forbes, NTT is the 43rd largest company in the world (350K employees).
Disruption is the NTT's innovation boutique that has the role to identify IPs that can worth a Billion or more -and- make it real (prototype and pilots).
COKOON: "Immersive experiences for business" is a transformative technology to reinvent workplaces. The positioning is totally B2B and the target clients basically are large companies.
NTT is already addressing most of the Fortune 100. After the "incubation process" Cokoon should be brought to the market by a parent company.
The NTT ZONE is a unique 16K sqft Cokoon enabled facility located in SF, just in front the Moscone Center. One block from MOMASF.
Role
Dec 2020, I was hired as Exponential Technology Director. The main idea was embed a "design mind" at the core of Disruption engine.
I was 100% focused on COKOON, contributing to:
-
Cokoon Strategic Design
-
Cokoon Digital environment concept and prototype (AppStore)
-
Cokoon Use Cases definition
I identified the need of creating authoring tools, classified and named various solutions and approaches.
In synch my my CEO I chosen to start the development of a "powerpoint" like authoring tool. For this task I hired and personally coordinated a very small team.
I navigated corporate and technology dependencies in a situation of extreme resources lack.
Impact
When I joined NTT Disruption, COKOON was a vision but not a product.
The most important impact I had, is on the product strategy. My decision to focus the Authoring Tool to empower a broader users' cluster, avoiding non creative users or tech specialists, impacted the entire architecture and positioning.
Together with the team I hired, we shaped the identity of the product: from the ontology to the product naming, from the design system to each UI component.
We delivered the authoring tool on time, in March 2022.
The internal AT-Kerney review and the group stake-holders considered this Authoring Tool "LIVE DECK" as the main COKOON's asset.
A tool born for business environments
An early strategic contribution was the identification of several other potential use cases (Apps) and the Cokoon Store prototyping.
Miro, Teams and most of the browser based collaboration tools were natively supported by Cokoon.
We did several experiment trying to extend the local physical space, using scenery pictures as well as 3D navigable environments, to simulate remote environments.
Cokoon technology is a great enabler, and what inspired me to leverage the space for even more interactive and collaborative practices.
Together with my design team, we reshaped most of the everyday office habits: Each meeting became a performance, and offices evolves into theatres.
Movable smart wall from the design to the installation. :D
Deep cameras are curiously watching to us.
This is the NTT ZONE core team based in San Francisco.
Roboticist (former MIT, Jibo), Me, Planner/alliances (NTT), Event Managers (formerly BurningMan), Creative Technologist (formerly Autodesk).
