Beck’s Hybrids
Interactive displays

A company’s story.
An experience you can touch.

The short version

I was the product designer behind Beck’s interactive display experiences—from the UI and content structure to touch interactions and BrightAuthor programming. I worked with leadership and internal stakeholders to turn company stories, agricultural information, and facility-tour presentations into experiences people could explore on screen.

My role: Product design · UI · Interaction
BrightAuthor development & management
In collaboration with: Leadership & internal stakeholders
Content and presentation partners
The work: Exhibits · Facility tours
Farmer stories · Historical archives

Presenter using the podium touchscreen while the same map appears on the room’s wall display — From a touch at the podium to a story shared across the room.Original project footage · 02:08

Touch navigation on the Practical Farm Research exhibit — From a touch at the podium to a story shared across the room.Original project footage · 02:08

01 / Structure the content
Goals → navigation

Make the company’s story navigable.

For the facility tours, I worked with leadership and internal stakeholders to shape interactive presentations around the material they needed to communicate. I connected those goals to the choices a presenter could make and the content a group would see.

Across the displays, that meant giving photographs, history, technical information, and films a structure people could explore. The station outlines show how the content was broken into topics, thumbnail groups, and individual screens.

An example / Seed Treatments

Topics first. Detail within reach.

The outline separates the home screen from three subject areas. Within a subject, it specifies the heading, copy, and image for each slide, then groups those slides behind thumbnails.

Those content groups became the navigation: choose a topic, then browse its stories.

Content plan → navigation

Seed Treatments Home screen

History of Innovation
Values and Benefits
Testimonials

Within each subject

Thumbnail group Slide

Subheader: The story’s title or date
Body: The supporting explanation
Media: A named photo asset

Structure redrawn from SeedTreatmentsOutline.docx.

02 / Design the interface
Navigation → screens

A familiar way to explore.

I translated the content structure into a consistent set of controls: topic navigation, media thumbnails, previous/next buttons, and a way home. The same browsing patterns carried across different exhibit subjects and screen formats.

The Seed Treatments home screen makes that relationship visible. Its bottom navigation follows the subjects in the outline, while the Photoshop file separates page content from navigation and selection states.

Original Seed Treatments Photoshop home screen with a photograph, touch instruction, and Home, History of Innovation, Values and Benefits, and Testimonials buttons — Original UI artwork · rendered from SeedTreatmentsTemplate.psd.

Try the interaction

Small choices. A story unfolds.

Explore a selected path through three experiences. Tap a highlighted control on the artwork, or use the buttons below it.

The UI defined the visible choices. Each choice also needed a destination, a playback sequence, and a way back.

03 / Program the behavior
Screens → interactions

Make every choice work.

I built the interaction logic in BrightAuthor, connecting the artwork to media states and the events that moved between them. A touch could open a story; the end of a film could return to the selection screen.

For Why I Farm, the portrait gallery was the interface. I connected each person’s image to a rectangular touch region and a story sequence. Reveal the saved touch regions below to see how the artwork became an input surface.

Original Why I Farm selection artwork, a collage of named portraits and agricultural scenes divided by angled black gutters — Original WhyIFarmInteractive.jpg artwork; companion InDesign source survives. The optional overlay uses the 22 coordinates saved in WhyIFarm.bpf.

Follow one story from touch to return.

Scott’s portrait opens his transition clip, then his film. A touch or the end of the film returns to the gallery.

Portrait galleryChoose one of 22 touch regions
Touch
Transition clipEnter the selected story
Media end
Farmer’s filmPlay the story

Touch or media end → return to gallery

The full program also connects an attract screen and selection introduction to the gallery. Simplified from the saved Why I Farm connections.

That logic extended across the whole experience.

Every selection and return path had to be connected. The saved programs show the scale of the authoring work behind two of the installations.

Why I Farm

47 states / 91 transitions

45 touch events · 46 media-end events
BrightAuthor 4.3.0.16 · WhyIFarm.bpf

Purdue FarmHouse

94 states / 266 transitions

173 touch · 71 timeout · 22 media-end events
BrightAuthor 4.7.2.18 · Version labeled 4.22.22

Totals describe media states and event connections in the saved projects, not unique screen designs or visitor metrics.

Explore the BrightAuthor filesFull connection maps and a focused test configuration

A focused test configuration

Three states. Six connections.

The archived FarmHouse test file connects two composites and a menu animation. Six UDP events—network messages—switch between them. It is a compact example of the state-and-event logic behind the displays.

Recreated from test.bpf. Each two-way line represents two saved events. The file’s date and place in the development sequence are unverified.

Reconstructed Why I Farm media states and their event connections in the saved canvas layout — All 47 media states and 91 transitions. Blue: touch event. Gray: media-end event.
Recreated from the saved project.

Reconstructed FarmHouse media states and their event connections in the saved canvas layout — All 94 media states and 266 transitions. Blue: touch. Gray: media end. Dashed amber: timeout.
Counts describe these saved configurations, not unique screens or measured visitor activity.
Recreated from the saved project.

04 / Bring it into the room
Interactions → installed use

One body of work. Different ways to engage.

The content, UI, and interaction logic came together in physical displays. Some supported a presenter guiding a room; others let visitors choose a subject, a person, or a point in history. The footage shows those choices working in context.

Facility tours
Presenter-led exploration

Guide a room, one topic at a time.

The presenter could select maps, charts, product information, and video at the podium while the room followed on the large display. Topic menus and in-topic thumbnails supported movement beyond a fixed slide sequence.

Choose a topic at the podium. Share the same content with the room.Muted loop · 00:51–01:01

Experience Center
Visitor-led exploration

Explore different subjects with familiar controls.

The topic-and-thumbnail structure supported research, seed treatments, agricultural processes, and company history. The loops show the browsing patterns from the design files operating on wall-mounted, angled, and portrait displays.

Research & historyTopic navigation, thumbnails, and previous / next.Muted loop · 00:00–00:09

Seed treatmentsA history of innovation, organized into dated stories.Muted loop · 00:10–00:21

Agricultural processesStill images and video within one browsing experience.Muted loop · 00:21–00:36

Giving backThe content pattern adapts to a portrait display.Muted loop · 00:36–00:45

Why I Farm
Personal stories

Choose a person. Let their story take over.

The portrait artwork and touch regions become a simple invitation on the wall: select a person, then watch their film. Here is the interaction sequence from the programming chapter in its physical setting.

Touch a portrait to select a story.Muted loop · 01:16–01:25

The interface gives way to the farmer’s film.Muted loop · 01:34–01:43

Purdue FarmHouse
A browsable archive

Find a decade, choose a year, explore the photograph.

The archive uses a different hierarchy, with return controls on either side of the composite. The saved program also contains timed returns and a later version with composites through 2022.

Browse by decade, then select a year.Muted loop · 01:54–02:02

Read the composite, with a return control on either side.Muted loop · 01:47–01:54

Read the FarmHouse archive case study →

The result

From what needed to be said
to an experience people could use.

My role connected leadership and stakeholder goals, content structure, visual design, and technical implementation. The result was a family of working displays that supported guided presentations, self-directed learning, personal stories, and historical exploration.

Watch the complete display walkthrough ↗

Shown through original artwork, archived design and BrightAuthor files, and demonstration footage uploaded in April 2023. Diagrams are labeled reconstructions. The chapters explain the work’s development; they do not establish a dated sequence of concepts or installations.

A company’s story.
An experience you can touch.