Designing Simplicity:
A User-Friendly Control Panel for a High-Tech Pavilion
EXPO2020 Dubai / Swedish Pavilion
At EXPO2020 Dubai, the Swedish Pavilion required a centralized solution to manage and control a complex network of audiovisual systems—including sound, lighting, and image technologies. While these systems were technically advanced, the goal was to create a control interface that did not require technical expertise to operate.
My team and I were tasked with designing a simple, intuitive, and accessible control panel that could be used by a diverse group of Pavilion participants—ranging from staff to guest operators—on multiple devices. The panel also needed to be straightforward for developers to implement within our existing Blocks system, ensuring both usability and technical feasibility over the six-month duration of the event.
This project was carried out during my time as employed at Adapt Event & Expo.
My role
UX & UI design
Research
I started out by identifying the requested features and grouping them together to map out the essential tools that was requested.
The panel had to be easy to understand for anyone visiting the fair, supportive of all technical tasks to be carried out by our on site technical team and not the least beautiful enough to be an integral part of the pavilion interior.
After I determined the needs of our users I could design and provide the main prototypes of a future user flow.
Wireframes
I moved on to sketching out wireframes and researching other technical panels and what a commonly used interface looks like. I pretty promptly landed in using tabs to group content and tasks together as it has proven a successful navigation model. It leaves the user with all options available and doesn’t require back-steps.
As this project was on a tight time schedule I made my lo-fi wireframes digital so that I could send them to my development team for review while I started working on the visual design system.
Early usability tests revealed a few issues that were immediately resolved:
Hiding a few technical features behind more clicks as they would confuse the user
Using less technical language for better understanding
Enhancing the size of sliders
Interface design
I used our clients, the Swedish Government Offices, visual identity and extended it to fit the UI to match the visuals of the rest of the Pavilion.
Our solutions are based on the idea that anyone should be able to control the functions of an installation without any prior knowledge. With the touch of a button on a touch screen, or your ordinary mobile phone, you can control an entire experience in a room.
As there were no previous guidelines for digital design I created a UI design system to ensure consistency for future features that would enable the developers to work independently. It was important that it had high contrast for good accessibility which was one of the established success factors.
All equipment was connected via a network managed by the control system BLOCKS. This allows control of all connected equipment from one single piece of software. With BLOCKS, our technicians and pavilion staff have been able to easily control all equipment from their usual mobile devices; mobile phones, tablets and computers.
Project outcome & learnings
The interface was implemented and used on the panels throughout the entire pavilion and duration of the EXPO2020 in Dubai. Some iterations were made during the active phase as we ran into small challenges and added new features as new technology was added to the pavilion.
This project delivered a wealth of knowledge and learnings that helped me grow as professional in my field - I was presented with immediate feedback and user data as the project evolved which was helpful in practising making quick design decisions.