GE What Works Conference Interactives

Interactive Installation + Gestural Interface

NOTICE – This project was completed while working at Unified Field Inc. All rights to the project belong to Unified Field Inc. and the client.
Unified Field Inc. Portfolio Link

On February 13-16, 2012 G.E. hosted a conference on the issue of American Competitiveness at the Mellon Auditorium in Washington D.C. Unified Field developed a number of innovative programs that included gesture-based presentations, multi-touch projection tables, mediascapes and an immersive interactive environment that connected the key job-creation initiatives of G.E. to its target audience. Visitors included members of Congress and senior G.E. managers in addition to the general public.

We used the Microsoft Kinect for gesture recognition in the two projected wall interactives and for the two top-down projected multitouch tables. I developed an app that could be used in either configuration and would communicate with the front-end Adobe AIR apps over UDP. The table touch-tracking app included a sophisticated masking feature that could accommodate the custom shapes of the physical tables. I also developed the front-end graphics software for the two tables. The tables were also 12 feet across so the projector and Kinect were mounted on a truss 25 feet and 12 feet above the table respectively. This project was completed on a tight deadline, the time we were allowed to install and test our software onsite before the conference was cut down from five days to twelve hours.

The second table I developed software for would display the countries that certain G.E. products were shipped to, and describe job growth for G.E. in the United States. © Unified Field Inc.

For this wall-based interactive we created a gesture library of about a half dozen different gestures that were specific to the G.E. content. The images below show an arms-out flying gesture to fly the fuel-optimized G.E. flight path, and a overhead rotation gesture that included stretching and pinching to explode and compress the parts of the new G.E. jet engine. © Unified Field Inc.