The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

Experience is one of those terms that's being heavily used and sometimes abused these days, as companies in the digital signage ecosystem talk about what they can do for end-user customers.

Everything, it seems, is somehow experiential or immersive. But what does that really mean and how does it manifest itself in projects that use display technology?

I had a really good chat with Chad Hutson, who very much qualifies as an experience design expert and has the project portfolio behind him to back that up.

He ran a well-respected agency in Chicago called Leviathan, stuck around for a few years after it was acquired, but this past year hooked up with a company that would have been a competitor in the past - Dimensional Innovations.

He's now DI's Chief Strategy Officer, and spends his time working with the DI team and with customers - working a process to understand needs and then develop solutions that deliver on those needs, and realize an experience that can be everything from simple to elaborate.

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TRANSCRIPT

Chad, thank you for joining me. Can you give me a rundown on what Dimensional Innovations is all about and what your role is there? 

Chad Hutson: Yeah, you bet. We’ll call it DI for short, to make it easier for both of us. DI is an experience design and build firm, based in the US, down in Kansas city, and they are really robust at not only designing and building the physical experiences but all the fixtures that can be built out with the wood shop, metal shop, paint and a giant two-story, high 3d printer, which is pretty amazing, we also use, but also on the digital side, we have deep roots in technology, both in being able to figure out what's the right technology for the experience and then creating the content and the interaction that goes within those experiences as well. 

So I'm the new Chief Strategy Officer, it's a new role at DI, I started about eight months ago with the organization and that role just organically evolved. They were kind enough to say you're making a positive impact and we'd like for you to do a bit more. It's good stuff so far. 

So it sounds like the company bridges a few things like there's some traditional AV integrations side to the business. There are some elements of a creative technology agency, but there's also a fix-your-fabrication kind of company as well. So you're into a whole bunch of things. 

Chad Hutson: Yeah, that's a pretty good encapsulation and it’s a team of about 300 people, so they're not messing around.

And you're up in Chicago, right?

Chad Hutson: That's correct. I'm in Chicago when I sleep at home. I travel around quite a bit, both down in Kansas City and wherever the clients are as well. 

And Kansas City is what, like an eight-hour drive or something like that?

Chad Hutson: From Chicago, that's not too bad. I think like maybe six and a half, but I’m always flying though, always in the air.

You don't wanna drive in the middle of the winter? 

Chad Hutson: No, flying in the middle of winter is already a challenge enough. 

So people are gonna wonder, people who know you that you came from a company that you founded called Leviathan in Chicago, much more of, I would say, a creative technology shop, at least that's the term I use. 

I'm curious, as somebody who founded that company, what compelled you to leave? 

Chad Hutson: Yeah, that was an existential issue, I guess you could say, just trying to debate with myself, what can I do in the future? Yeah, Leviathan is still a great shop, although it's going by a different name. My partners and I sold it to another digital agency called Envoy back in, I think, 2017 and I was happy to stick around for a while. I think it's been close to five years since I decided to stay put and continue to run the organization. 

But I'd say where Levithan was just all about that hybrid of digital and physical experie