Cox Purpose, Fueled by Community
Few honor their guiding principles as passionately as Cox Enterprises – a company committed to taking care of their employees, serving their customers and improving the quality of life in the communities they serve. Embodying these beliefs, Cox Enterprises partnered with us to create its inaugural Cox Purpose experience – a fun and engaging expression of the Cox Purpose Principles.
As partners for nearly a decade, we were originally brought on to design Cox’s Discovery Center, located at their corporate headquarters in Atlanta, GA. With the new Cox Purpose experience, the desire was to engage their employees more directly with a social media-powered, interactive approach.
We led everything from concept, to design, to the production of the interactive (using our open-source software development framework GA::kit), tapping Inspired Action Design to create the experience’s CMS and 1220 for fabrication. The visually striking four-walled, mirrored edifice masterfully sparks engagement and further empowers the Cox community.
The first wall functions as a social media feed which pulls employee posts from Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter tagged with #lifeatcox and #purposeatcox. These messages and photos appear as threads, weaving together social media posts that react to the viewer’s presence and activity. Users can view and traverse messages via gestures, choosing which messages they’d like to read more closely.
This experience is designed to provide an open space for employees to organically express what Cox Purpose means to them in their daily lives and work.
The second wall hosts a separate interface where visitors can use a stylus to hand-write their own Cox Purpose messages directly into the experience. Users can fill in a range of pre-programmed phrases (ex: “Cox is a place where I can __________”) or contribute their own brief thoughts. Prompts and instructions for this are included on a third narrow wall.
The final wall features a range of dynamic media, showing the Cox principles in large bold type meant to attract users from afar and evoke a sense of fun and playfulness. Handwritten messages from the second wall are also displayed here, showcasing more user-generated content. The entire experience also features a “takeover mode” to display branded content or programming as needed. It is also built with accessibility in mind – able to be used and viewed at different heights with various types of aural feedback.
This deft use of technology also proved impactful. The result is a design-led interactive installation that celebrates the depth of connections that exist between the people and ideas that have always made up Cox.
