Laboratorio de Innovación Digital · Government of the D.R. · 2021–2022

A website you ride through

The government's innovation lab needed to prove it could make more than forms. This is the story in order: first a brand, then a website, then a 3D world where every facet of the lab is a place — and at the end of this page, the live site itself, embedded. Ride it.

Role: Brand creator · product designer · 3D concept & product owner · UX research
Timeline: 2 months brand · 3 months web · 2 months 3D
Built with: Front end, back end and 3D engineers
Status: Live today

It started as a brand

My first job there was not a service. It was the lab itself: an identity that read as young people improving the state from inside it. I was the lab's brand creator. LID came first — a faceted mark pushing forward, in colors that refuse to look like a ministry.

Later, when OPTIC became OGTIC, I co-created the new institutional mark, and it deliberately keeps LID's pattern: the facets, the colors, the arrow. Two living brands, one family, so the mother brand reads as what the institution wants to be: progress, advance, future.

The mark, and the four treatments it had to survive. Beside it, the world it would become.

The LID mark beside the OGTIC mother mark that follows its pattern — One pattern, two living marks. LID was born first; OGTIC's mother brand follows it on purpose.

Then a website that had to earn trust

Three months on the site that showed how the lab works — well enough that ministries would bring it problems. It started where products start: by hand. Benchmarks of interactions and navigation, light and low-requirement technology, and a user in mind who had never used anything like it.

01Define the service before the interface. Who needs what, from whom, and what proves it.
02Design for the worst case: old device, slow connection, low bandwidth for patience.
03A AAA palette for low vision, with one vibrant color guiding each zone.
04Light, low-requirement, responsive — thought for a normal user with no prior experience.

The LID portal, first sketched by hand: home, portfolio and sub-sites — The portal, first by hand: home, portfolio, sub-sites. Paper is where the cutting happens.

Then the world

The second version was the bet: not a page but a place, drawn in a notebook before a single polygon existed. Each zone of the lab became somewhere you arrive on a scooter — the projects are billboards you ride past, the calls for proposals have their own plaza, and there is a building that shows how the team works inside. Two months, with 3D engineers building alongside.

The first notebook sketch of the 3D world's layout — The world before the world: zones drawn in a notebook.

The built 3D world: the LID monument, scooters and mission zones

Riding toward the main stage, announcing a public innovation call

What it changed

The lab started receiving proposals for games, AR and VR — things nobody had ever brought it — and projects arrived better formulated, with clearer purpose. Citizens at its events tripled. Institutions bringing it work doubled. The lab was formally established, open for business, with ideas arriving from all over the country.

3×: Citizens joining the lab's events after the relaunch
2×: Government institutions bringing the lab work
Live: Still online, still rideable, years later

The institutions that brought their problems to the lab: LID, OGTIC, national police, SDE, DGCINE, MOPC, migration, education — The institutions that brought their problems: police, city halls, film, public works, migration, education.

Ride it yourself

This is not a mockup. It is the live site, embedded — W to move, Shift for turbo, H for help. If your device prefers, open it full screen at 3d.laboratorio.gob.do.

It existed to break a mindset: to prove a public institution could make more than forms.