What if recruitment could feel like deployment?
Completed in 2024 & 2025 while Director, Experience Design at VML.
All content is owned by VML and the U.S. Navy.
What if recruitment could feel like deployment?
The U.S. Navy wanted to modernize its touring experience and show young people that service is more than ships and uniforms — it’s technology, collaboration, and purpose. As the lead designer, I helped create The Strike Group: a fleet of interactive trailers that let visitors pilot subs, respond to disasters, and explore the Navy’s world firsthand.
annual capacity
Increase in annual capacity
Days Active
Events
Recruits Registering for Follow Up
Overview
The U.S. Navy is one of VML’s longest-standing brand partners, known for powerful campaigns that communicate purpose, service, and pride. In 2023, the Navy set out to modernize its traveling recruitment experience — a touring set of trailers that visit schools, fairs, and major events across the country.
The goal was ambitious: expand reach, represent more diverse career paths, and reframe the Navy as a place for everyone— especially women and minorities. The Admiral overseeing recruitment challenged the team to create something more dynamic, tech-forward, and interactive than anything the Navy had done before.
The Design Problem
The VML brand team has been working with the U.S. Navy for years making amazing ads and activations. Over 10 years ago, VML created a traveling experience based off of life on an aircraft carrier. In 2023, the Navy and VML partnered to upgrade this experience. First with three aircraft experiences with updated VR technology and supporting with nine different experiences. This allowed the U.S. Navy to be in three places at once, carrying more experiences or bring them all together to show their might, so The Strike Group was born.
The Strike Group is a massive partnership between vast disciplines within VML, the game execution expertise of FastEffects, and the build, maintenance, and logistics capabilities of Event Link. Together the team built and launched amazing experiences. Starting with a new check-in system, potential recruits get a dogleg, fitted with an RFID. The tag is color coated based on initial interest in the navy to give recruiters insight to prioritize their time. This tag then is scanned at each of the seven experiences, tracking their data, scores, and interests. At the end of their day exploring the Navy, they will receive an email with a summary of their scores and career interests.
The ten experiences are broken up into three groups, or Squads, Alpha Squad, Beta Squad, and Charlie Squad. These separate groups allow the Navy to travel throughout the country in three regions, the often switch to bring new experiences to that region.
Experience Foundation
The VML Navy team worked with FastEffects and Event Link to identify the main experiences that make up The Strike Group and explored some initial feasibility. Each was anchored by a large trailer with supporting cubes with unique experiences.
All Hands
Built in a large pull-behind trailer, All Hands is a VR based collaborative game about life aboard an aircraft carrier. Users stand in a netted area with a VR set that has them launching jets, piloting helicopters, loading weapons, and driving carts. Each team is squad by this experience.
Achieve
Behind a large screen showcasing AI-generated images of actual recruits in Navy roles that suit their skills, recruits, take a photo and a short quiz to identify what Navy career is right for them, ending with the ability to literally see themselves in the role.
Train
Unfolding from a trailer is a small gym, recruits complete pull-ups, pushups, and a rope pull to train like a Navy Seal and even compete head to head against the Seal’s recruitment team. When you are finished record your scores and see how you stack up against other recruits.
Support
Step aboard a trailer built to look like the cargo bay of a Navy Sea Hawk, users explore the various humanitarian missions throughout the Navy’s history, seeing how unique ships and ships suited for battle respond around the globe in times of criss.
Dive
Launch from a dock and drive a boat to a damaged pier, avoiding rocks and other ships. Upon arrival, recruits can put on a diver’s helmet, grab a torch and weld a damaged pier on the touch screen in front of them, the better the weld, the higher the score.
FLY
Build to resemble the deck of an aircraft carrier, recruits step aboard and get into the cockpit of a jet. A flight simulator takes users on a training mission, launching from the carrier, following their lead through the air and a valley, before dropping a training missile on a target.
SEEK
Recruits take a look in a periscope before entering a closed off trailer. Red lights and alarms blare as four recruits take on different roles of a submarine mission, collaborating to get through the arctic and break through the ice’s surface, just beware of creature and ships nearby.
Recruitment
Speaking to a recruiter during any event can also get you the recruiter badge.
A Digital Identity
By the time I was asked to join the project, VML’s brand identity team had created a solid visual identity. Bringing new life to the Navy brand, renders had each of the cubes wrapped in a topographic style pattern and new Navy slogan tied to each experience. The tents and dog tags, even the pick-up trucks and jeeps were wrapped with Navy branding, creating a spectacle as it drives across the country.
However, the digital experiences tied to the work did not share the same cohesive vision. The first task was to help shape the various digital touchpoint to align them within a single lightweight design system that matched to the overall brand, this could then be applied to the sign-in form, touch screens where users interact within the experiences, and an app to bring the Achieve career quiz and generative-AI photos to life no matter where The Strike Group is sailing.
Train
At the train cube, recruits complete various physical challenges, since the main goal was to collect data for the recruit and for the navy, the exact scores of each person needed to be recorded. A large touch screen was located at each of the two stations just for the staff to use, they were however facing right toward the crowds and in clear sight of the recruits.
While the initial intent was a simple input system for the staff to update, it’s visual priority within the cube meant we needed to adapt a design language from the Navy’s updated brand that fit within new systems of inputs and calculations.
Achieve
At the achieve cube, recruits step up to one of four consoles and walk through a multistep process of taking their photo, giving information about their physical appearance, then taking a career quiz. With the implementation of generative AI technology, I was tasked with creating transparent user flows that clearly communicated data usage and image manipulation processes, building trust through ethical design practices.
The success of the Achieve career matching experience prompted Navy leadership to request an additional iPad application for recruiters to use independently from the main installation. This expansion required developing a streamlined authentication system for Navy personnel that balanced security with ease of use, plus implementing a compliant data collection mechanism for gathering prospect contact information to deliver personalized results. Throughout the project, I needed to maintain design consistency while adapting to these evolving requirements and technical constraints of mobile deployment.
Exploring Purpose
As the Digital Director for "The Strike Group" project, I was tasked with developing an interactive recruitment experience for the U.S. Navy that would showcase humanitarian missions across different naval vessels. The project centered on creating an innovative table-top experience where potential recruits could place ship-shaped pucks on an interactive surface to reveal mission histories and capabilities. Our team needed to represent four key naval assets: WASP-class amphibious assault ships, aircraft carriers, hospital ships, and destroyers, along with the Naval Construction Battalions (SeaBees). We faced challenges in creating an engaging, informative experience that balanced technical capabilities with compelling storytelling while meeting the Navy's recruitment objectives and maintaining historical accuracy. The project required close collaboration between digital design, hardware engineering, and Navy stakeholders.
