Google IO 2025 is a celebration all the latest developer builds and experiments across Google’s breadth of tools and services. After the keynote, the demos are a highlight for both employees and visitors. We were tasked to translate these tools into playful experiences that turn complexity into a playground for creativity and collaboration.
The Lyria API allows musicians to shape and warp tracks in real-time to create novel sounds and beats that can be sampled and layered into their work.
We created a giant mixing board inspired control panel that ensured visitors could understand how the API worked at glance. Interactive, whether in a group or solo, the knobs functioned like endless encoders that controlled the influence weight of each prompt.
Sitting or pressing down on the knobs changed the input to a new sound. Guests enjoyed spinning , hopping, and dancing along to their own music.
In 2025, the Google Quantum team was not only celebrating 100 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics, but also highlighting the incredible advances of the Willow Chip. Willow performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years.
We created a simple arcade game to express a complex but fundamental principle to quantum mechanics: Superposition. Guests had limited time to find tokens within a maze. Each token came with a fun fact about quantum computing or the Willow Chip. At the end of game, guests discovered how a quantum computer would solve the maze more efficiently by exploring all possible paths at the same time.
While it’s not hard to incentivize Googlers to try and see everything, it does make it more enjoyable to gamify the experience. We turned the event into a treasure hunt with a delightfully illustrated and interactive map that not only helped attendees navigate the grounds, but also learn about Google projects and win some collectibles while they were at it. Entirely browser based, guests were able to hop right into their quest with no downloads required.
Responsibilities
Pitching
Concept
Creative Direction
UX Design
Design Direction
Motion Direction
Protoyping
Experience.Monks Team
Creative Director
Nat Janin
Group Creative Director
Jeffrey Limon
UX Design
Nat Janin
UX Design
(Adventure Quest)
Sjoerd Vijfhuizen
UI Design
Xiaocha Zhang
Juan Castro
Motion
Ivan Rys
Nat Janin
Production
Kelly Belchere
Christopher Kramer
Nick Cicchetti
Development & QA
(Adventure Quest)
Ruaan Uys
Jonathan McKinnell
Gabriel Santos
Maureen Höfferle
Fabrication & Dev Partners
(Lyria Live & Quantum)
Pixel and Texel
Pitching
Concept
Creative Direction
UX Design
Design Direction
Motion Direction
Protoyping
Experience.Monks Team
Creative Director
Nat Janin
Group Creative Director
Jeffrey Limon
UX Design
Nat Janin
UX Design
(Adventure Quest)
Sjoerd Vijfhuizen
UI Design
Xiaocha Zhang
Juan Castro
Motion
Ivan Rys
Nat Janin
Production
Kelly Belchere
Christopher Kramer
Nick Cicchetti
Development & QA
(Adventure Quest)
Ruaan Uys
Jonathan McKinnell
Gabriel Santos
Maureen Höfferle
Fabrication & Dev Partners
(Lyria Live & Quantum)
Pixel and Texel