Cal Poly CAFES Experience Industry Lab
The Experience Innovation Lab is a dynamic hub of creativity and innovation at the intersection of education and industry. Our mission is to shape the future of the experience industry by empowering students, professionals, and organizations to create, deliver, and measure extraordinary experiences based on data-driven design. Our lab is where creativity meets cutting-edge technology and research, where students become industry leaders through Learn by Doing projects, and where innovation thrives. It is the gateway to unlocking the full potential of the experience economy.
The lab is prominently located in the William and Linda Frost Center for Research and Innovation in the Boswell Ag Tech Center in the heart of Cal Poly’s campus. Utilizing knowledge and expertise across campus, including disciplines of experience industry management, computer science, graphic design, engineering, and marketing, the Experience Innovation Lab will provide unparalleled opportunities for partners to research, predict, create, and execute the next disruptive engagements and solutions to experience design and marketing barriers before they occur.
The 1,500-square-foot space will enable students, faculty, visiting executives and researchers to explore, create, and experiment across every channel of the guest experience, with state-of-the-art technologies.
Cal Poly’s Learn by Doing environment features an innovative research experience due to our potential pool of tomorrow’s consumers, students who are readily available to collaboratively prototype your next “return on experience.” We provide organizations evidenced-based solutions within the transformational model of structured experiences.
THE EXPERIENCE INNOVATION LAB
In the lab, we will intentionally design and test human interactions in immersive experiences. The four-walled rapid prototype lab evaluates and executes touchpoints from scratch to finish, co-creating theory to practice in support of a unique maker space for the human element.
By engaging in applied research to industry-focused applications, we have
a systematic and creative framework for designing experiences such as the
following:
1. Producing cohesive, provocative, and self-relevant narratives for your brand through events, destinations, travel, hospitality, sport, recreation, and transformational experiences.
2. Designing personalized experiences supporting learning opportunities and experiencing success.
3. Creating absorbing experiences for guests, clients and participants.
4. Designing intentional co-created experiences including active participation both on the part of the providers and the participants to create a custom and personalized experience.
5. Applying analytics in advancing brand-immersive experiences through effective cues, sensory engagement and alibi.
6. Collaborating and identifying the latest disruptive experiences and technology
before the rest of the world recognizes any disruption.
7. Applying new technology to your most pressing creative challenges —
virtual reality, artificial intelligence, biofeedback and metrics, robotics, registration, accessibility, augmented reality, and digital, physical, mobile, and social creative experience design. In essence, creating a new world of holistic data analytics ecosystems.
Today, we seek founding partners in the Experience Innovation Lab to help us make this space a reality. A space to problem solve, create and test the innovative experiences of tomorrow.
Thank you for your consideration. Please contact Dr. Sandy Shen, EIL Director, EIM Department Head Dr. Kevin Lin, or CAFES Advancement Director Erica Norby for more information or visit our giving page here >>