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Interactive Apps & Experiences
Custom 3D apps & interactives that turn heads and start conversations.
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Interactive Apps & Experiences

We create truly unique experiences for virtual and physical exhibit booths that are proven to drive HCP engagement: educational gamesdisease state simulators, experience wallshologramsphoto boothsvirtual reality (VR)augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR).

Need a mobile app for your customers, medical liaisons or sales team? We’ve got you covered with engaging interactive content for disease education, mechanism of action, product training and marketing. Deploy one engaging application to multiple platforms: iOS, Android, Web and congress kiosks.

With one-of-a-kind immersive experiences, we’ve given dermatologists psoriasis, rheumatologists arthritis, shown neurologists activity in their brains, let oncologists battle cancer cells, and put HCPs face-to-face with virtual patients.

What can we do for you?

Why invest in an Interactive App or Experience?
  • Stop people in their tracks. Our well-designed, visually-rich 3D interactive experiences are proven to increase visitor traffic and engagement when compared to passive booth materials
  • Interactive is simply better for engagement. Experiential learning is more effective at holding attention and facilitating retention than didactic learning from video, reading or oral presentation
  • Reach your audience from virtually anywhere. Mobile apps are cost effective and easily distributed to your team’s devices, your website and congress booth—virtual and physical
  • Invest in your visual brand. High-end assets can be repurposed in multiple channels, including web, presentations and publications
  • Our apps and experiences track user engagement, giving you valuable insights into disease state awareness and a measure of your ROI

The AXS Studio difference

We’re a specialized, multidisciplinary team of scientifically-trained designers, using human-centered design to ensure a rewarding user experience and high levels of engagement for your customers.
axs-studio-medical-congress-booth-interactive-dermatology-experience

Medical science expertise

We bring decades of science visualization expertise to every interactive project and use an evidence-based approach to creating content and visuals. Working with AXS, you’ll never again worry that your agency doesn’t get the science.

Best of both worlds

Stand out from the crowd in the virtual exhibit hall and give your booth visitors an experience they’ll remember. Our 3D interactivity is optimized to perform on mobile and desktop through your virtual booth or portal as well as in-person on touchless screens. Keep ahead of the competition in a world where scientific meetings are increasingly hybrid.

We design for outcomes

Other agencies often start with a technology and work backwards to create an interactive. At AXS, we prioritize your desired outcomes, choosing the technology—be it VR, AR, touchscreen, or hologram—that will deliver the best user experience. Technology should serve your objective, not the other way around.

Measurable results

At congress exhibit booths, we deliver results for our clients, time after time: increased traffic, longer stays and smiles on the faces of booth visitors. Our analytics engine measures engagement metrics and provides you with data to understand impact and ROI.

Valuable insights

Years of developing interactives for physical and virtual congress booths. Countless visitor interactions at our exhibits. Our insights are hard-earned and built upon over a decade of experience—we know what works to attract and engage busy HCPs.

Prepared for success

When it comes to referencing and annotation, we’re very thorough. Whether you’re using Veeva or another content management platform, we will ensure that review materials are expertly prepared to your organization’s exact specifications for smooth medical-legal-regulatory (MLR) reviews.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are interactive experiences?
Interactive experiences teach medical science concepts via applications such as touchscreen kiosks, video games and virtual reality (VR). The “interactive” part means that the user makes selections and takes actions that enhance the learning experience.

Can I use an interactive experience for both my virtual and physical booths?

Yes, we develop responsive interactive experiences for deployment through your congress website, virtual booth or portal. Users can access the experience on their phones, tablet, desktop and laptop computers.

The application can also be run on a computer in your physical congress booth. This has been especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic when our clients have had to pivot to virtual congress booths. The applications we develop for virtual booths can be deployed to physical booths as well and, in many cases, be deployed as native iPad or Android apps.

How long does it take to make an app or interactive experience?
The timeline depends on the scope and content of the experience, but is typically three to six months. When we prepare a project estimate, we include a timeline with key milestones. We recommend contacting us at least 6 months ahead of your due date.
Will you coordinate with my booth vendor?

Yes, we routinely work with our clients’ booth and AV vendors to coordinate application testing and deployment. This holds for virtual booths as well as physical booths. Once your interactive application goes live, we provide support and deliver analytics reports after the congress exhibit closes.

Who uses apps and interactive experiences and why?

Scientific affairs and medical communications managers commission interactive apps and experiences to engage congress booth visitors—both virtual and physical—and inform them about disease state information and drug mechanism of action relevant to their therapeutic area. Oftentimes, interactive applications will be repurposed for use on disease state websites.

Marketing and Product managers use interactive applications to engage healthcare professionals and teach them about therapeutic mechanism of action at congress booths and on product websites.

Medical science liaisons (MSLs) and sales representatives use interactive tablet apps (iPad, for example) to demonstrate medical technologies and devices to healthcare providers.

What makes a good interactive experience at a congress booth?

Interactive 3D graphics are a proven way to engage visitors to a virtual congress booth. We recommend keeping apps and experiences concise and short. The longer the experience, the more likely users are to leave before it’s finished.

Our data show that users frequently exit an interactive during a lengthy introductory video or tutorial. Keeping the intro short results in higher engagement.

What do clients say is different about AXS Studio?
Our clients say that we’re unlike other agencies they’ve used in terms of our medical knowledge and our attention to detail. The words most used to describe our work are beautiful and accurate. After struggling with other agencies, clients who work with us are blown away by the beauty and accuracy of our work time and time again. We’re known for designing highly original apps and interactive experiences for virtual and physical exhibit booths.
Why hire AXS Studio instead of another digital agency?

There’s nothing random about our scientific knowledge and expertise. While many healthcare agencies produce interactive applications for their pharma and device clients, most don’t use medically trained artists to develop the content and visual assets. Instead, they use “generalists” without specialized science training. As a result, it’s common to see interactive content with obvious errors in scientific accuracy. These mistakes can be glaringly obvious to healthcare professionals and scientists.

In contrast, at AXS Studio, all of our content and visual assets are created by medically trained digital artists. Each holds a Masters in Biomedical Communications (MSc. BMC) from the University of Toronto, one of only four CAAHEP-accredited programs. This specialized training is the reason AXS delivers interactive applications with a higher degree of accuracy than typical agencies. For our clients, this translates to credibility with a scientific audience.

What determines the cost of interactive experiences and apps?
When pricing an interactive experience or app, we account for experience design, visual asset creation, animation, programming, custom hardware/electronics, testing, deployment and support.
I see your booth interactives have some pretty interesting physical structures. Does AXS build those kiosks?

We don’t build the kiosks, but we do supply design drawings to your booth vendor and work with them to ensure everything is built to specification. We also design and fabricate custom items and electronics (for instance, our VR microscope). And we work with our clients’ audio-visual vendors to determine optimal hardware and pretest applications on computers and monitors being used for an exhibit. We ensure everything is tested and production-ready ahead of its release.

What is a wireframe?
A wireframe is a planning document that describes the flow of the interactive experience, including input from and feedback to the user. Wireframes vary in detail from company-to-company. An AXS wireframe functions the way a storyboard does for an animation. We include drawings of the proposed visuals, on-screen text and audio. This document is used by our digital artists and developers to create the application and also by our clients for content review and approval.
Can I provide my own wireframe?

A wireframe serves two purposes:

1. To previsualize the entire experience for our client, and
2. To detail the structure and functionality of the application for our artists and developers.

We will gladly review your wireframe to see if our team can use it in our workflow. If not, we can build on it to create a document that works well for our team and yours.

Is a dedicated facilitator necessary to run an interactive kiosk at my booth?
We strongly recommend assigning a facilitator to engage visitors and assist them with the application. While our interactive experiences are designed to be used without support—we keep them simple to use and provide on-screen and audio instructions—the human touch always results in more visitors and better experiences. Many companies use trained facilitators for this purpose.
Can I supply a voice-over script?
Yes, we regularly work with scripts provided to us. After we review your script, we can advise on how to optimize it for the experience we’re designing. A general rule of thumb when composing your script: 100 words of voice-over for every minute of content.
Do I need to supply a medical content expert if I work with AXS Studio?

While we welcome input from our clients’ medical experts and opinion leaders, it’s not a requirement. A key advantage of working with AXS is our in-house medical science expertise. Our content developers and digital artists all hold Masters degrees in Biomedical Communications (MSc.BMC), which entails formal training in pathology, physiology, anatomy, cell biology and molecular biology. On staff we have 6 Board Certified Medical Illustrators (CMIs) and have been visualizing complex medical science processes for a discerning healthcare professional audience since 2004.

A lot of companies “offshore” interactive development to low cost producers. Do you do this?

We do not. All design and development is done in-house by our experienced team. This allows tight control of quality and timelines to ensure we consistently meet our clients’ deadlines. This is especially important when working within fixed conference timelines. Furthermore, unlike many services and products that can be offshored to cut costs, the interactive experiences we create require specialized knowledge and a tight-knit team to bring them to life. 

Our content creators and digital artists each hold a Master of Science in Biomedical Communications (MSc.BMC). This specialized training is what allows us to design rich interactive experiences that explain medical science more clearly and accurately than teams without formal medical training. There are companies in North America and the UK that use low-cost outsourcing for medical interactive applications. If you are looking to hire one of these outfits, we recommend seeking information on the science training of their creative and production team.

Can images from my interactive application be repurposed for other purposes like a website and print?
Yes. We can “capture” images from any interactive experience. The limiting factor is resolution, which determines how big you can make the image. Most captured images are sufficiently big for small print materials and slide presentations. If you require a large image— e.g. for a booth panel—we can create this and charge separately for the output. We can also render images of individual elements from an interactive—e.g. a ligand and receptor binding.
How do you work with clients to navigate MLR (medical-legal-regulatory) reviews?
Our content creators ensure that all material we provide for MLR review has been referenced from the scientific literature. Depending on a client’s procedures, we may provide a bookmarked and annotated PDF with supporting passages linking back to the annotated wireframe. This allows reviewers to easily reference supporting evidence. We will also dial in to review sessions, at our client’s request, to address questions about the proposed interactive content.