/ Work
NFC App
/ Overview:
Client
Material Bank
Year
2024 - Present
Role
Product Discovery
Platform Design
A physical sample sits on a designer’s desk. It could be the beginning of a sale, a specification, a project. Or it could be picked up, admired, and forgotten.
Until now, brands had no way to know which. Material Bank embeds NFC chips directly into physical samples. One tap opens a digital experience. No app to download, no login, no friction.
The material in your hand connects instantly to everything you might want to do with it. What began as a material sample becomes something more: a connected product experience. The concept is simple. The execution wasn’t.
A single tap opens the material’s world. The home screen surfaces the five actions designers actually need in the field: order a sample, visualize it in your space, share it with your team, contact your rep, or explore similar products.No digging. No menus. No friction. The goal wasn’t to add more features. It was to make the next step obvious.
The tag carries everything a designer needs: specifications, finishes, dimensions, ordering details, and supporting information. Everything required to move from consideration to confident decision-making.
The most expensive mistake in specification is ordering the wrong material at scale. A sample in your hand tells you texture and finish, but not how a material reads across a space, in the actual light and context it will live in.
“See It In Space” closes that gap between holding a sample and understanding how it will perform in context. One tap from the sample page opens the camera. A photo of the space, and AI does the rest: mapping the material onto the surface as it would truly appear.
It's the difference between imagining and knowing.
Before NFC, brands shipped samples into the world and hoped for the best. They knew what was ordered. They rarely knew what was considered. Every tap changes that. For the first time, physical engagement becomes measurable.
Which samples are being shared. Which are making it into projects. Which are being visualized. Which are being ignored entirely. Behavior becomes visible, and with it, the ability to restock on evidence instead of instinct, and to build new products around what people actually reach for.
A physical sample used to end the conversation. Now it’s where the conversation begins.
