Science in the City (San Francisco) Conference app for STEMCELL Technologies
Scientists are the most scheduled people on earth. We built the one app that respects that — and cut the printed program by 70%.
CHALLENGE
Biotech runs a multi-track conference for several thousand researchers. Every year they printed a program the size of a paperback, fielded a steady stream of "which room?" emails, and had no idea which sessions people actually attended.
Attendees had the mirror-image problem. A researcher lands in a city she's never visited. Her schedule lives in a PDF, two emails, and a website that won't load on hotel Wi-Fi. She wants to meet the author of a paper she read on the plane. She has no idea where to eat.
The science was world-class. The experience around it was not.
The brief was blunt: replace the paper, keep people in sessions, and make networking happen on purpose.
INSIGHT
Conference apps fail by trying to be a city guide, agenda, social network, and sponsor billboard at once.
Scientists want the next room at 9 am and dinner at 6 pm — in that order.
So the app is 90% science, 10% city. Agenda is home. Everything else earns its way in by time of day.
APPROACH
Offline-first, native. Every core screen works with the radio off.
Agenda as home. Your day, your rooms, what's next.
City content appears after the last session.
Scientists don't network by accident anymore. One app. Less friction. More science.
RESULT
Less paper. More science.
Prototype, tested with 35 researchers. Not launched.
The design targets three outcomes for STEMCELL: eliminate the printed program, get most attendees into the app on day one, and make the personal agenda the default way to navigate. Testing showed that every participant found their next session in under 10 seconds without prompting.
The design targets three outcomes for STEMCELL: eliminate the printed program, get most attendees into the app on day one, and make the personal agenda the default way to navigate. Testing showed that every participant found their next session in under 10 seconds without prompting.
