Transforming a white-label platform into a cutting-edge digital experience for the CES tradeshow.
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is the world's premier stage for showcasing the latest breakthroughs in technology and innovation. Attendees expect a digital experience that reflects the tradeshow's cutting-edge reputation—yet most white-label event platforms lack the level of polish and seamless usability required for an event of this standard. The challenge was to transform Notified's white-label events platform into a highly engaging, immersive digital venue that embodied CES's spirit of innovation and state-of-the-art technology. As the UI/UX Lead at Jennergy, I was responsible for designing and executing the CES digital venue, ensuring an intuitive and seamless experience for both remote and in-person attendees. I collaborated closely with product managers, creative directors, designers, and developers to bridge the gap between platform constraints and CES's high standards for design and usability. Beyond UI execution, I also played a key role in developing the brand identity for the digital venue and ensuring consistency throughout the product. By balancing stakeholder expectations, product requirements, and technical limitations, every design decision contributed to an experience worthy of CES.
- Client Notified / Consumer Technology Association
- Industry Event Technology
- Team Jennergy
- Role UI/UX Lead
- Product Enterprise Level Event Platform (B2C)
Aligning Notified's white-label event platform with CES's digital venue requirements for a seamless user experience.
To ensure the digital venue met CES's high expectations, we first identified product gaps—ensuring that existing platform capabilities supported a seamless, high-quality attendee experience. Collaborating closely with product managers and CES stakeholders, we defined core features, attendee touchpoints, and functionality requirements for the 2023 digital venue. From this, we began by creating an initial sitemap to assess how existing platform components could be utilized to fulfill requirements while also pinpointing any gaps that would require new pages, features, or custom-built solutions. This foundational step ensured alignment between the platform's technical feasibility and CES's expectations while shaping the overall attendee experience and defining the scope of work for the product team.
Translating the CES 2023 'BE IN IT' theme into an immersive, cutting-edge digital experience.
CES developed the "BE IN IT" brand and theme for the 2023 tradeshow primarily to support the massive printing needs, ranging from environmental graphics to attendee handouts. However, the brand guidelines, while effective for print applications, lacked the flexibility needed for a complex, interactive web environment and needed to be adapted to the complexity of an immersive digital experience. To bridge this gap, we expanded upon the existing brand system, ensuring it translated effectively across interactive components, UI elements, and other attendee-facing digital touchpoints—with the overarching goal of creating a dynamic, technology-forward aesthetic that captured the spirit of innovation that defines the CES tradeshow. By conducting interviews with CES's marketing teams and key stakeholders, along with a comprehensive audit of the existing brand assets and guidelines, we crafted an enhanced visual system and UI kit. This work served as a robust foundation for designing the core pages and features of the digital venue and ensured seamless branding across the white-label platform. Following numerous design iterations and stakeholder feedback, we arrived at a visual direction that was as dynamic, cutting-edge, and immersive online as it was in person.
Crafting an end-to-end seamless and intuitive attendee experience.
As attendees accessed the digital venue from mobile devices on-site or remotely from their homes and hotels, it was crucial to ensure a seamless experience across both mobile and desktop platforms. The focus was on highlighting key event features while simplifying content discovery. Our objective was to create a digital platform that not only emphasized essential event information but also fostered interaction and engagement with virtual programming and in-person tradeshow experiences. Utilizing the updated visual system and comprehensive component library, we crafted custom digital "lobbies" that showcased core areas of the tradeshow. One of these lobbies was a unique day-of-event experience that integrated multiple live stream channels, allowing remote attendees to fully immerse themselves in the CES tradeshow floor and daily festivities in real time. By prioritizing intuitive navigation patterns and leveraging the component library, we created a seamless experience that enabled users to quickly locate everything from featured exhibitors and keynote sessions to highly anticipated product demonstrations.
Bridging the gap between virtual and in-person exhibitor engagement.
While much of the digital venue focused on attendee engagement, it was equally important to create meaningful opportunities for exhibitors to connect with attendees as well—both in person and virtually. To achieve this, we designed customizable virtual exhibitor booths that elegantly bridged the gap between physical and digital experiences, enabling virtual attendees to seamlessly discover brands, explore products, and also interact with exhibitors through an integrated live chat feature. Beyond driving virtual attendee engagement, we also developed a custom Power BI dashboard to provide real-time insights for both virtual and in-person booth visits. This dashboard tracked crucial metrics for potential leads, including visitor insights by title, industry, country, and areas of interest. Styling the dashboard, however, proved challenging due to Power BI's limited customization options. To overcome these limitations, we implemented innovative workarounds, such as artfully designed images and custom development, ensuring the final dashboard was not only functional but also visually cohesive. The end result was a powerful tool that exhibitors were highly satisfied with—allowing them to measure event success through actionable data while being just as polished and cutting-edge as the rest of the digital venue experience.
