They asked for a terminal. We gave them a city service.
Methods & deliverables
- Physical UX audit
- Inclusive design considerations
- Service design reframing
- Phygital concept design
- Modular system design
- Monetisation strategy
- Anti-vandalism strategy
- Prototype build
Context
A major Italian public energy utility needed to replace its aging street electrical cabinets with a new-generation smart enclosure. The brief was technical: better materials, smarter grid integration, updated specifications.
Why this mattered
These cabinets sit on some of the most visible urban real estate a city has, every street corner, every neighbourhood, every hour of the day. And they're currently invisible, because they offer nothing to anyone who isn't fixing them. Solving only the engineering brief would have meant replacing one forgettable object with a newer forgettable object.
Constraints
This was a concept-stage engagement built from the technical brief and expert input, not from direct citizen research. That research is the planned next phase, once the concept moves toward real deployment.
What I discovered
Before questioning the brief, we looked at the object itself the way the people who actually touch it every day experience it: maintenance operators working in all weather, often in cramped or awkward physical conditions the existing cabinets had never been designed around. That physical UX lens was the opening.
The same location that made maintenance awkward was also, unused, one of the most exposed surfaces in the city.
From there, the team's reasoning shifted from what the cabinet contained to where it sat. Every one of these enclosures occupies a fixed spot on a street corner, visible and physically accessible to anyone who walks past, all day, every day. And yet almost none of that exposure was doing anything for anyone except the handful of people who opened the panel to fix something inside. If the enclosure could be rethought for the people maintaining it, the same physical presence that made maintenance awkward could work in the object's favour instead.
Key decisions
The client asked for a terminal box. We proposed a city service. The physical redesign for operators, better access panels, integrated shelving, weather protection, became the base layer of something bigger: a phygital object combining the physical enclosure with a digital layer of wayfinding, transit information, local city services, and emergency access, configurable by neighbourhood. It's the same object, doing its original job better, while also becoming useful to the thousands of people who walk past it without ever needing to open it.
We also brought monetisation into the concept early, without waiting to be asked. Space on a city-wide network of street cabinets has real value to municipalities and local businesses, and building that in from the start meant the concept had a path to funding itself, not just a design proposal asking for budget.
Trade-offs
Simpler, cheaper physical configurations were on the table early on. We set them aside because they couldn't support the range of services the concept depended on, a smaller, single-purpose enclosure looks cheaper on paper but forecloses the digital layer that makes the whole idea worth doing.
Solution
The final concept is a modular phygital cabinet. The physical layer responds to the original engineering brief and the operator experience: panel height and reach were reconsidered around how operators move around the object, not just where the components fit. The digital layer adds wayfinding, transit and local information, and emergency access, with the mix configurable by neighbourhood rather than identical citywide. Inclusive design considerations informed readability and interaction choices, although the concept had not yet been validated with citizens. On the client's request, we also developed anti-vandalism proposals, both technological and behavioural. A physical prototype was built to explore the concept beyond renders.
Impact
The concept expanded the original technical brief to include service, anti-vandalism, and monetisation considerations. At this stage, the result was a broader concept and a physical prototype, not a validated public-service outcome.
My role
I worked on this reframe as part of a phygital team, alongside my design team and engineers on the client side, turning a technical terminal brief into a phygital city-service concept. Making the case for that shift, from morsettiera to city service, was a joint effort across design and engineering, not a solo pitch.
What's next
The next useful step would be user co-design with citizens and other relevant stakeholders, using direct research to refine the digital layer and test assumptions around context, accessibility, and value.