Entrance to the ResMed Sleep Lounge at CES 2025
Brand Activation, Case Studies, Custom Development, Event Interactive, Gamification
September 29, 2025

Why Persona Quizzes Were So Effective for ResMed’s Sleep Lounge

Trade shows are loud. Shiny booths. Fishbowls full of business cards. Swag everywhere. Cutting through that takes more than a pretty build. You need something that earns a few extra minutes of attention and makes someone feel like they got something personal out of the interaction.

That’s where persona quizzes shine.

Grab your creativity, mix in some sharp persona ideas, and you’ve got magic.

At CES 2025, ResMed sponsored a lounge designed to give foot‑weary attendees a place to pause and reset. This space offered more than a quiet respite; it made space for a conversation—one that was memorable, human, and relevant to the visitors who wandered in.

So we built a quiz. Plain and simple.

It wasn’t a gimmick; it was designed with intention:

    • Visual Hook: Bright, curiosity‑driven design, as easy to start as scanning a badge.

    • Fast and Approachable: Five multiple‑choice questions, no wrong answers.

    • Shareable Payoff: A fun reveal that made people want to compare results with colleagues.

The result? People stayed longer. They leaned in. They applauded each other’s results. And instead of drifting to the next flashy booth, they opened conversations with ResMed’s team.

And the quiz didn’t just end on the screen. Each persona nudged attendees toward the next step—an AR face filter game we call Munchies and dedicated landing pages with persona‑specific educational content. Most importantly, all of it fed directly into ResMed’s CRM, turning playful engagement into trackable leads and measurable ROI.

In a hall where attention is the scarcest resource, a well‑designed quiz doesn’t feel like marketing. It feels like discovery. And discovery is what makes people remember.

TL;DR – Top 7 reasons the ResMed persona quiz worked:

    • Visual intrigue – Bright, curiosity‑driven design pulled people in.

    • Instant payoff – Fast results kept people hooked and satisfied.

    • Personalization – Tailored outcomes felt more meaningful and relevant.

    • Shareability – Results sparked conversations and got shared.

    • Guided choices – Each persona pointed attendees to the right next step.

    • Active engagement – People thought, laughed, compared—not just scrolled.

    • Useful data – Every response fed back insights for smarter strategy and stronger ROI.

Check out some further insights in this recap video.

Team Houdini
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AR / MR / VR, Brand Activation, Event Interactive, Product Activation
September 9, 2025

“Immersive” Is Bigger Than AR and VR

At Houdini, we build experiences that don’t just sit on a screen — they pull you in. They spark curiosity, invite interaction, inspire conversation and sharing, and leave a mark. That’s the power of immersive experiences.

An “immersive” moment fully engages someone by blending story, design, and technology into an environment they can feel. It might stimulate multiple senses. It might blur digital with physical (heaven forbid we use the buzzword ‘phygital’). It might transform a passive observer into an active participant.

From AR bottles and gamified booths to interactive museum exhibits, immersive experiences aren’t a single format. They’re a mindset: designing with depth, presence, and play in mind.

What we have compiled here is by no means an exhaustive list – it is a snapshot, and a great inspiration-starting point.

🎭 Some Types of Immersive Experiences

Virtual Reality (VR)

Headset-driven worlds that transport you completely. Used in branded storytelling, training, education, and gaming. Could be tethered headsets like the Valve Index, or untethered like the Apple Vision Pro or the Meta Quest Pro.

Augmented Reality (AR)

Digital layers on the physical world — often delivered through WebAR, so no app download needed (that’s generally what we recommend). We’ve used it to turn packaging into story triggers, festival pillars into playgrounds, and retail displays into portals.

Mixed Reality (MR)

This is where the physical and digital stop competing and start collaborating. In MR, virtual objects don’t just float on top of reality — they interact with it. A person can pick up a real product and see digital data layered around it, or gesture toward a booth display and trigger responsive 3D content.

Gamification & Branded Games

Immersion doesn’t always need goggles. A well-designed game can hold attention and deepen brand connection. We’ve built web-based mini-games, tradeshow challenges, and VR gameplay that also drive organic reach.

Event Interactives & Installations

Projection mapping, sensors and buttons that trigger experiences, touchscreen kiosks, and AR woven into physical space. From science museums to CES booths, these activations make environments explorable and alive.

360° Video & Virtual Walkthroughs

An accessible entry point to immersive storytelling. Tourism, journalism, real estate, and culture-driven brands all use this to transport audiences anywhere. Great for a splash at an event in unique viewing mediums, and extensible to web-based experiences.

Immersive Theater & Live Storytelling

When narrative meets environment. Guests step inside, move through, and sometimes change how the story unfolds — a format that’s inspiring brand activations and cultural exhibits alike.

Pop-Ups & Themed Exhibitions

Temporary worlds built with set design, audio, lighting, and interactive tech. From Fenty’s playful product experiences to Lärabar’s 20th anniversary build-out, these pop-ups invite exploration and delight.

Why Immersive Matters

Immersion isn’t just flash. It’s functional. Done right, it:

  1. Builds emotional engagement that lasts longer than a click
  2. Boosts recall by letting people experience an idea, not just see it
  3. Creates deeper connections between people, stories, and products

That’s why you’re seeing it across industries: education, healthcare, retail, enterprise training, entertainment, and consumer marketing.

At Houdini, we live in that blend of art and tech. We’ve helped brands activate at CES, turn bottles into interactive canvases, and transform museum floors into story-driven journeys. For us, immersive isn’t a category — it’s the baseline for how audiences want to engage.

Want to Explore an Immersive Concept?

If you’re in CPG, events, retail, pharma, or enterprise innovation, the question isn’t “should we do immersive?” It’s “what version of immersive works for us?”

Let’s figure that out together.

Team Houdini
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Brand Activation, Custom Development, Event Interactive
July 23, 2025

Build Once, Engage Twice: How Web-Based Interactives Extend Your Event ROI

Let’s face it – a lot of digital event activations disappear the moment the booth comes down.

You spent months designing an experience, launched it on the show floor, maybe got a few reposts on LinkedIn… and then it’s gone.

That doesn’t have to be the case.

Web-based interactive experiences aren’t just faster to develop and easier to deploy—they can stretch your event spend long after the badge scanners power down.

Why Most In-Booth Experiences Die After the Show

The problem is simple: most interactives are custom-built for a moment in time. They rely on onsite hardware, local installs, not connected to the internet, and often don’t even have a plan for life after the booth.

That means a killer user interface, engaging motion, or brand story that took weeks to get right is packed up and mothballed in a Pelican case.

What’s worse: post-event follow-up may fall flat, or gets lost in the mix of planning for the next event. A templated PDF or recap email can’t recreate the energy and interaction of what someone just experienced live.

Web-Based Interactives Are Built to Live On

If your interactive is browser-based, it can be reused, re-skinned, and re-shared.

Whether it’s a guided product tour, a gamified quiz, a story driven visualization, or a data capture flow—if it lives on the web, it doesn’t need a trade show floor to function.

Same UX. Same animations. Same story. Just delivered via hyperlink or QR code, not touchscreen.

This means:

  • You can use the same (or expounded) experience for reps to demo in follow-up meetings.
  • Embed it in an email campaign post-show for those who missed the in-person fun.
  • Host it on your site or microsite as part of your long-tail lead capture.

Real Work, Real Life: Houdini Examples

ResMed CES 2025 Booth
We built a web-based interactive sleep persona quiz founded in actual science that linked a user to a cohesively branded landing page where the user could learn all about their sleep persona and play an AR filter game in browser. After CES, these same landing pages still lived and were available via email blasts.

Virtual City Sales Explorer
Originally designed for in-event kiosk interaction, this branded explorer app was deployed off the trade show floor as a tool for the customer’s sales reps. Teams used it to walk buyers through the experience over Zoom, or even in person on any device they had handy because it was fully responsive.

Thinking Beyond the Booth Starts Early

The trick is not to tack this on after the fact. In our discovery process with our clients, this is one of the questions we ask, and is a direction we encourage our clients to pursue (as applicable).

If you’re thinking about doing a digital interactive experience, ask yourself upfront: “How could we use this beyond the booth?” “What other campaigns could we inject this into?”

Web-based doesn’t mean boring. It means flexible.

The ROI Isn’t in the Floor Space—It’s in the Follow-Up

At Houdini, we design interactive experiences that can outlast the venue.

Because the value isn’t just in the impact of the booth moment. It’s in being able to conjure that same feeling weeks later, when the decision-maker actually opens your email.

If you want a second life for your next booth build, let’s come up with some ideas for you.

Team Houdini
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AR / MR / VR, Brand Activation, Event Interactive, Gamification
May 28, 2025

🎩 Why Persona Quizzes Work Like Magic (What They’re Really Doing in Your Marketing Funnel)

And Some Experiential Ways to Activate Them

Let’s be honest — nobody needs to know which AI archetype they are, or what kind of office snack best represents their leadership style… but people click, they take the quiz, and they share their results. Over and over again.

So what’s really going on here?

It’s not just internet fluff. Persona quizzes are quietly some of the most effective engagement tools in experiential and digital marketing, and there’s research-backed psychology to explain why.

If you’ve ever wanted to pull more meaningful interactions out of thin air (🎩🐰), here’s why persona quizzes might be your next best trick.

1. 🧠 Self-Discovery: People Love a Mirror

At the core of it all: people are deeply curious about themselves.

Psychologists call this the need for self-assessment. In simpler terms, we all crave moments of reflection and insight — even if it’s wrapped in a Buzzfeed-style bow. A good quiz doesn’t just tell you something; it confirms something you already suspected (or maybe suspected)… and that’s addictive.

“You’re the Visionary Strategist Warlock”

Well damn, maybe I am.

2. ⚡ Instant Gratification = Instant Engagement

Quizzes provide something few other content formats do: a fast feedback loop.

You answer a few questions → get a flashy result → and it feels like a win.

That reward system taps right into the brain’s dopamine center — same one that gets lit up by slot machines, social likes, or checking off a to-do list. It’s light effort, high payoff. And that’s a recipe for stickiness.

Bonus tip: use AR head tilt mechanics for decision making like we did in this recruiting tool for Eastern Washington University, and you not only have instant engagement, you have something that is unique and draws a crowd.

3. 🎯 Personalization Without the Creep Factor

People like things that feel tailored for them, and quizzes deliver that in a friendly, opt-in way.

Where most personalization feels like an algorithm watching you through a peephole, quizzes say:

“Hey, you tell us who you are, and we’ll build something cool around it.”

That’s powerful — especially in experiential marketing, where interactivity and agency are part of the magic show. Then, when you use scientifically backed personas like we did with ResMed, it is super charged.

4. 🪄 Choice Architecture (a.k.a. Making It Easier to Say Yes)

We’re all juggling too many choices. Quizzes solve this by simplifying the path to decision.

Want to recommend a product, experience, or activation flow? Wrap it in a persona quiz. You’re not just suggesting something — you’re guiding them there with a wand made of relevance.

“You’re a Social Explorer → This AR scavenger hunt was made for you.”

That’s not just fun. That’s frictionless UX in disguise.

5. 🤝 Social Sharing Is the Final Spell

When someone shares their results, they’re not just broadcasting the quiz — they’re broadcasting their identity. And that’s gold – especially because it is associated with your brand.

Good persona quizzes trigger the “Hey look at me” instinct without feeling self-absorbed. They become conversation starters. And with the right visual design and brand voice? They go further than you might expect.

TL;DR: A Good Quiz Feels Like a Magic Trick

  1. It turns self-reflection into entertainment.
  2. It turns passive audiences into engaged participants.
  3. It turns one-time visitors into qualified leads, data points, and fans.
  4. And in the right hands — say, a digital creative agency that’s spent years making interactive experiences that don’t just look good but work — persona quizzes can be part of a deeper immersive strategy that builds connection before the user even steps through the door.

If you’re looking to turn the “waiting room” moments of your brand into something spellbinding, let’s talk.

We’ll bring the wand. You bring the brand.

Team Houdini
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Brand Activation, Event Interactive, Workflow & Process
May 15, 2025

5 Tips to Maximize Your Digital Interactive Experience

In the world of experiential marketing, creating memorable digital interactions is key. Whether you’re setting up an immersive trade show booth or launching an interactive campaign, these five tips will help you enhance engagement and leave a lasting impression.​

1. Pre-Stoke the Stoke

If you’re planning an exciting and magical experience in a physical space, start building anticipation early. Share teasers and sneak peeks to generate buzz. For instance, if your trade show booth features a supplemental engagement that’s sure to delight, let your audience know in advance.​

By teasing the experience, you not only attract those already interested but also pique the curiosity of passersby who might not have considered engaging otherwise.​

2. Information / Lead Capture (If Possible)

Capturing information and securing opt-ins are invaluable, making digital interactive experiences particularly effective. As guests interact, providing their details becomes seamless.​

While some industries may hesitate, many find that collecting basic information like names and emails is well-received. You can implement a “pay to play” model, requiring contact information for participation, or a freemium approach where engagement is frictionless, and details are needed only for takeaways like swag or user-generated content (UGC).​ Like what we did with the Treefort Music Fest.

This stage is also ideal for introducing a photo waiver, especially if you’re offering takeaways (see the next point). Ensure your terms and conditions, along with a privacy policy, are in place and approved by your legal team or client.​

3. What Is the Takeaway? Get More Views!

Experiential marketing’s power lies in its emotional impact. Witnessing people engage with your experience, smiling and expressing gratitude, is immensely rewarding. However, this impact shouldn’t be limited to those physically present.​

Provide guests with content they can share—be it self-documented moments, materials you supply, or content captured by your team. Ideally, incorporate all three. At a minimum, ensure there’s at least one method for guests to take and share their experience.​

While making meaningful impressions is crucial, quantifying them is equally important. Sharing these impactful moments through social media and other channels can amplify your reach, turning hundreds of in-person smiles into millions online.​

Bonus: Consider offering a digital experience that guests can take with them to further educate or create additional touchpoints. For example, in the ResMed Sleep Lounge project, after completing a sleep persona quiz, guests could scan a QR code to learn more about their persona and access additional resources. A web-based AR Munchies game with a live leaderboard added a layer of friendly competition.​

4. Analytics

Data collection is vital for measuring ROI and identifying areas for improvement. Whether your experience is simple or complex, local or web-based, tracking metrics like the number of guests, engagement levels, content interaction durations, and areas with low engagement provides valuable insights.​

Analyzing this data helps refine future experiences, ensuring they are more effective and engaging.​ A great example of this is the talent acquisition kiosk we built for Riot Games.

5. The Afterburn

Your event was a success—congratulations! But don’t stop there. Post-event content can rekindle interest and extend the experience’s lifespan. Share behind-the-scenes footage, recap videos, sizzle reels, interviews, or reimagined versions of the experience. Consider email campaigns to keep the momentum going.​

The possibilities are vast and limited only by your imagination and planning. Keep the success of your engagement alive, ensuring it has a lasting impact rather than fading quickly.​

Final Thoughts

Maximizing your digital interactive experience involves more than just the event itself. By building anticipation, capturing valuable information, providing shareable takeaways, analyzing engagement data, and maintaining post-event momentum, you can create a powerful and enduring impact.​

Remember, the goal is not only to create memorable moments but also to extend their reach and longevity. With thoughtful planning and execution, your digital interactive experiences can continue to resonate long after the event concludes.

Team Houdini
0
Brand Activation, Custom Development, Event Interactive, Product Activation, Productivity, UX / UI Design, Workflow & Process
January 27, 2025

5 Best Ways to Get Ahead of Your Next Interactive Web Experience Project

While we work with a lot of very experienced teams around the world on digital experiences, activations and web-experiences, we work with just as many teams who aren’t regularly doing digital. For those clients, it can be daunting, and there is a lot of information out there that may or may not apply to you and your current situation for B2B and experiential marketing (and plenty of other scenarios, really). Here are 5 regularly consistent points that come up that can save a lot of time, heart-ache, and can seem like a magic wand waving over a project to get it to the finish line efficiently.

The Top 5 Things to Have Prepared

1 of 5:  Privacy Policy / Terms & Conditions / Cookie Policy – “The Legalese,” as they say

  • Ensuring you have your legalese i’s crossed and t’s dotted is about the easiest thing you can get the ball rolling on early, and stay ahead of launching your website or experience. It is way more exciting to see your designs coming together, and playing around with the staging link and doing QA – it just feels like you are making progress and checking off tasks left and right. 
  • But once we get right to the finish line, and the Privacy Policy isn’t ready, or the Terms & Conditions aren’t there, or a fully approved Cookie Policy isn’t sourced (assuming we aren’t the ones providing that), everything comes to a screeching halt and those seatbelts engage in full force. Youch!
  • So, as soon as you know you are doing a website, whether it is a simple landing page, a small interactive, a web AR experience, start getting these 3 things in motion and approved so that once QA is all done and the kit and kaboodle is ready to launch, you get to roll right into that launch and start cheersing some butter beer.

2 of 5:  The Right People in the Room

  • Nothing is more disappointing than working on an activation that is ready to go live and have some stakeholder who was not included come in and shut the whole thing down, or introduce nearly insurmountable hurdles in the final hour. Sadly, this happens despite our best efforts to avoid this, even after establishing processes to hedge against this.
  • Some questions to ask as you get into a digital project or activation to help grease the wheels:
    • Who from the IT team do we need to include in this discussion/project during production to make this as smooth as possible?
    • Who has the veto authority over this project and any of its deliverables? How can we include them at the right times?
    • Is this the kind of project that the legal team needs to review? If yes, then get a debrief meeting set asap and get the guardrails defined.
    • Who from the Brand Management team needs to be included, or the Creative Directors who will have final say on look/feel? They need to be included at the outset of any interactive experience.

3 of 5:  Brand Guides and Approved Assets (and the right file types!)

  • This is one of the first questions we ask when collaborating with an existing brand/IP/company when we are engaged to design an experience. True to having the right people in the room, if we aren’t starting with the right material, things get derailed and potentially shut down. 
  • Every now and again, we encounter a brand/company that doesn’t have a fully fleshed out Brand Guide, or even a curated library of assets that is central to an organization. In these scenarios, lots of questions and check-ins with the Right People in the Room helps to smooth over any potential hangups this can introduce. 
  • Similar to the Brand Guide, what are the approved assets that can be used, or the content that will be implemented into an experience? Who owns them, and are they in a sharable location with our team? This conversation can get started even before signing an SOW with us, and can be refined during a kickoff call so that any and all assets that could be used are prepped and ready for us to run with by the time we get to design.
  • Now, the prep part of approved assets is potentially a much longer conversation, but a few quickies to pre-heat the cauldron:
    • In the digital world, we are often trying to work with the largest versions possible, and then we can scale them down. Like a haircut, you can always take hair away, you can’t add it back.
    • Vector art is what we prefer for brand assets. 
    • Powerpoint is not a design file…
    • Videos can be compressed/optimized on our end, but it is always helpful if they are compressed for us prior to implementation.

4 of 5:  Necessary Access for Integrations

  • Almost all the web experiences we build have some degree of 3rd party integrations. Whether it is analytics through our partner’s/client’s accounts, CRM integration, or a career embed, we often need to have access to the platforms we are integrating to effectively implement and then test. 
  • For our much larger clients, they have procedures that need to followed to allow either the proper access or the proper permissions to be able to set up the integrations, i.e. API integrations.
  • One workaround for this for some integrations is to set them up for our clients and pass them over/migrate them to our clients upon launch. That said, the note about procedures/permissions applies, and this approach can’t work for the majority of the integrations we work with.

5 of 5:  PII – Who’s Responsible

  • We work in a lot of different industries, and one thing that is consistent across all industries is respecting PII and everything associated with it. For example, there have been quite a few pharmaceutical projects we have worked on where they strictly do not collect any contact information.
Penn Brownlee
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Brand Activation, Custom Development, Event Interactive, Gamification, Product Activation
January 27, 2025

Transforming Brand Engagement: The Houdini Interactive Journey

In an increasingly digital world, traditional marketing tactics are no longer enough to capture and retain the attention of today’s consumers. Brands need to find new and innovative ways to engage their audience, to create experiences that not only grab attention but also leave a lasting impression.

At Houdini Interactive, we understand the power of immersive experiences in capturing the hearts and minds of consumers. That’s why we’ve dedicated ourselves to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) technology, web-based experiences and gamification (and so much more) to create experiences that are not just seen but felt.

Our journey began with a simple idea: to transform brand engagement through the power of interaction. We believed that by creating immersive experiences that blur the lines between the physical and digital worlds (insert buzz word “phygital”), we could forge deeper connections between brands and their audience, connections that go beyond transactional interactions to become meaningful relationships.

From the very beginning, our focus has been on innovation. We’ve invested in cutting-edge technology and assembled a team of creative minds and creative technologists who are passionate about pushing the limits of what’s possible. Together, we’ve developed a broad range of immersive solutions that are designed to meet the diverse needs of today’s brands, from digital interactive permanent installs at museums to virtual product experiences.

But our journey is about more than just technology; it’s about people. It’s about understanding the needs and desires of our clients and their audiences and using our expertise to create experiences that resonate on a deeper level. It’s about collaboration and partnership, working hand in hand with our clients to bring their vision to life.

As we look to the future, our commitment to innovation remains unwavering. We’re constantly exploring new technologies and techniques, seeking out new ways to create experiences that captivate and inspire and tell a meaningful story. We’re excited to continue our journey, to push the boundaries of what’s possible and to redefine brand engagement for the digital age.

So, if you’re ready to transform your brand engagement and create experiences that truly resonate with your audience, we invite you to join us on this journey. Connect with Houdini Interactive today and let’s create something extraordinary together. #BrandEngagement #Innovation #ConnectWithUs

Penn Brownlee
0
3D Tech, AR / MR / VR, Brand Activation, Custom Development, Event Interactive, Product Design, Productivity, Workflow & Process
August 1, 2024

If you really want to change everything, you have to use your imagination

best prac·tice | noun

commerical or professional procedures that are accepted or prescribed as being correct or most effective

🤔 Recenly, I sat in a meeting with a think-tank team made up of capable, invested and determined-to-get-things-right-this-time-people. The question for this particular session was: what are the blue-sky ideas that you would implement if you had the power, authority and resources to do so?

10 minutes into our discussion it hit me… we were over-valuing experience and under-estimating our imagination. All I was hearing were best practices. Simple, low-hanging fruit, easy win ideas that honestly could be implemented simply by someone choosing to do it at a regular rhythm, with follow-up that involved collaboration with at least one other person. That’s not to say they weren’t great ideas. I just wasn’t hearing them as original.

🧙 Then I tossed out what I thought was the first truly blue-sky idea I’d heard all meeting: we need a magic harry-potter sorting hat that helps guide people to where they should be based on more than just logistics, ie, time, place, etc.

What I was getting at is we need to lean into our creative strength and turn that weird but strangely accurate wizard hat into a digital product. That it needs to be so good, so precise and so well built for the long run that you can’t deny how spot on it was in leading you to where you needed to be.

We do a lot more reimagining of best practices than actually using our imagination.

Have you ever tried to Google a question like this:

  • Tips for building a great website.
  • How much does a mobile app cost?
  • Keys to marketing that works.
  • Ways to skin a cat.

What do you usually get as results in your search? Stuff like this probably…

  • 7 Keys that Don’t Work for Business Today
  • 12 Ways You Can Improve Your Website
  • 19 Essentials to a Great Mobile App
  • (According to most, there are 50 ways to skin a cat.)

‘Best practices’ are simply the average of what everyone else has already done. Here’s the reality: you’re never going to find innovation rooted in a best practice.

So here’s the question for you this week: if you had the power, authority and resources — what would your blue sky idea be? Use your imagination.

James Clair
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Copyright Houdini Interactive 2025. All Rights Reserved
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