My Role:
Product Design
Creative Direction
Overview:
2015 – 2016
Aviation Industry
IoT
Web App
Overview
From KY to Shanghai
In 2015, GE Aviation presented Forest Giant, the design agency where I worked, with an ambitious challenge spanning three continents. Their vision was to create a physical and digital collaboration space, enabling engineers and team members to work together in an immersive environment. These innovative spaces were to be built in Shanghai, Austin, TX, and Dubai.
As part of a small design and engineering team, I helped bring this vision to life. Throughout the project, I served as a lead Product Designer, focusing on the interactive wall experience and a suite of user-facing applications. Our mission was to seamlessly blend physical and digital spaces, creating an immersive environment that would spark collaboration and innovation.
The Shanghai skyline during one of the team's visits. Photo credit: Andrew Cenci
Interactive Wall
Data as art
Data is ever-changing and constantly shaped by human influence. In its raw state, data appears chaotic, but through human interaction, we can uncover patterns and meaning. With the interactive wall experience, I aimed to represent these concepts visually. The result was an immersive installation that invited viewers to bring data to life in an organic and artistic manner.
Conceptual renderings of four interactive wall installations that we would later bring to life.
The wall interactions were powered in part by small sonar sensors. By detecting the presence of people and their proximity to the sensor, we could created an environment that responded to their movements. This was an early prototype I built so we could test our ideas.
Imagine a filled line chart occupying the bottom third of the wall. Each line segment is moving up and down slightly in an organic & soft way so the shape is always changing. The data behaves as if it’s a living, breathing thing.
When the user activates the sonar sensors the data visual grows to create a colorful new apex within that sensor’s column. As the data grows, the organic movement becomes a bit more rigid, as if the user is bringing structure to the data. The height of the apex changes based on the user’s proximity to the wall.
Watch one of our early tests within the physical space as we were dialing in the sensor sensitivity.
A variety of content was ultimately displayed on the interactive wall. Here's one more example.
Ascend Platform
Controlling the space
A large part of this project focused on designing a custom software platform we built to control the immersive and collaboration spaces. The platform, named Ascend, allowed users to customize which apps and tools were connected to each physical space. The apps and tools built on top of the platform enabled users to collaborate in an immersive and impactful way.
At a high-level view, users could see all the areas within the experience and which app each area was paired with. Tapping an area-app tile took the user into the application for that specific area. In addition, the entire experience could be themed to the airline visiting the center.
When the Interactive Visualization app was pared with a space it allowed the user to choose which interactive wall experience to run.
The Collaboration app was the most robust. When connected to a space, it paired with a video wall and allowed teams to collaborate in an immersive way. It included six different collaboration tools. Users picked the tool they wanted, then defined the size and location to be shared on the video wall.
Here's a graphic to explain how it worked at a high level.
Here's an example of a few different tools being shared to the video wall.
The Flights tool allowed users to see flight totals, airport locations, and climate conditions for specific engines.
The Engines tool allows users to plot and visualize engine data to help with their analysis.
This is what one of the spaces looked like when running the Collaboration app. Users controlled the space by using the touch table or any connected mobile device.
Conclusion
Seeing it all come together
Watch the show reel. Video credit: Andrew Cenci
Reflecting on this project, I realize just how special that time was. Our small team of artists, designers, and engineers shared a unique creative chemistry, driven by a common goal—to make something truly cool and inspire each other in the process. We were experimenting with cutting-edge technology, constantly pushing the boundaries of what we thought was possible. Did we make things harder on ourselves than necessary? Probably. But that’s the nature of growth and staying inspired.
If you think there’s an opportunity for me to help you or your team, please get in touch!