GE Wind
First Person - San Francisco
My Role: Creative Director
At the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) conference in New Orleans, we built an eleven-foot wind farm model that included moving turbine models. Weather patterns and terrain were projected on the surface from a powerful projector hung overhead. This model served as the centerpiece for their booth along with three unique touch screen experiences, one of which was an immersive chair that allowed the user to interact with a live camera feed of the model with overlaid graphics. More about each experience below.
I collaborated with the staging company, engineers, marketers, and a team of ten artists and developers on our side. The success of these experiences was undeniable on the floor and social media surrounding the event.
Art Director: Cas Forlinski
Project Manager: Jessie Mizrahi & Sabina Luu
Technical Director: Brandon Blizard
Interactive: Chris Trinh & Sruti Harikumar
Animators: Angela Yu, Max Vegerin & Scott Bartholomew
Designing, Building and Coding the Experience
All three unique experiences were being developed in parallel. 32Ten Studios in San Rafel was building the wind farm model (with spinning turbines) while the UX was concepted and designed back in San Franciso. I watched over the model’s construction, ran a team of designers and developers, and even worked with the event company, Dottinger Design to shape the form factor of the space.
Once the model was ready, we spent hours in our warehouse space in Alameda testing the touch screen experiences and their interaction with the windfarm. The UX was built by orchestrating hundreds of animated assets in touchdesigner.
The whole thing came to life and was shipped to New Orleans for the show.
Wind Farm Maintenence: Chair Experience
User Experience
Here are a few moments from the actual chair story. At the show a live video feed of the wind farm model was used instead.
These sections represent the user interacting with the farm for diagnostics, predictive maintenance, and performance of the turbines individual and as a whole.
The Projected Model
The video below shows the grey model coming to life with animations coming from a projector hung 20 ft. above. Every detail is projected: rolling waves, water crashing on shore, and colorful streams of representing wind patterns.
Wind Energy Market: Touchscreens
Day in the life:
Two large touch screens flank the projected model and make the most use of the animated projections. Both “games” simulate the wind energy market at two time intervals: a single hour and a whole day.
The left simulation is called the “Day Ahead” and provides the user data based on past energy production and what can be expected for the next day. They are asked to “Lock In” their energy bid for the next day and see how it plays out in their screen and the model. Bid too much or too little and they are left to make up the difference. Just the right amount and they squeeze every dollar out of their farm.
On the right side, the user interacts with the real-time energy market driving the cost of energy. They make predictions about the performance of the farm and weather patterns. Based on those predictions the user simulates buying and selling wind energy on a minute-by-minute basis. Keeping ahead of production earns more for their wind farm.
Wind Farm Crew: iPad & Snowshoes
Build Your Team:
Utilizing a new technology called SnowShoes we took a simple iPad game to another level. This experience simplified the task of prioritizing and staffing maintenance for a wind farm using GE’s software.
A wind farm could have hundreds of turbines with varying levels of issues. How do you decide what your maintenance team should solve first? This game used ShowShoe “stamps” acting as your 3 maintenance teams and allowed the user to send out these teams based on the severity of the problems and their location throughout the farm.
The result was a hands-on approach to a familiar interaction.