Haptic Wand Program
200 Bluetooth haptic wands for Warner Bros.' flagship Harry Potter store in New York — concept to installation in nine months, against a launch date set by the licensor.
Dreamscape Immersive · 2022
This case study is still an outline — the facts below are verified, the writing isn't finished.
The program
A ~$600K hardware program covering the haptic wands, VR broom ride vehicles, and supporting show elements for the store's immersive experiences.
The launch date was fixed by Warner Bros. and did not move. Everything else — scope, tooling strategy, vendor selection — got managed around that one immovable constraint.
The team
Two in-house engineers, one mechanical and one software. A third-party development partner. Two to three design contractors. That was the whole program.
Supply chain
Five vendors across two countries. Custom PCBs, battery packs, and the injection-molded enclosure came from China; final assembly and electronic components were sourced domestically, largely through Digi-Key.
BOM cost came down 30% across the program — roughly half from design refinement, half from restructuring who made what and where.
What I'd tell you about in an interview
Hard tooling for injection molding at a 200-unit run is an unusual call. The tooling-cost-versus-volume math on that decision is the most interesting technical conversation in this program, and it isn't something you can put in a bullet point.
The program ended when it was cancelled during the Warner/Discovery merger — unrelated to how the product performed.