Credit: Sam Cossman
In 2016, GE partnered with the Nicaraguan government and explorer Sam Cossman at Qwake, a global expedition and technology company, to connect industrial sensors to a live volcano. The goal was to gather data and leverage GE’s industrial internet software to learn more about conditions in the volcano and create an early warning system.
ISSUE
GE is a leader in the world of big data and predictive analytics. But the industrial use cases if its technology are unrelatable and hard to grasp for the vast majority of us. How can we make the technology actually interesting to the masses?
IDEA
An immersive story broken out into a series of small, digestible chapters that would appeal to curious children, industrial experts, nature enthusiasts and everyone in between. The output was a single-page scrolling web-application with interactive text, video, photos, data, illustrations and 3D renders woven together to engage the reader and vividly show the expedition team’s journey into an active volcano.
GE Volcano
Gin Lane collaborated with General Electric and Qwake Technologies to create a digital platform that tells the story of GE's effort to develop a richer understanding of our Earth with data, starting with an active volcano in Masaya, Nicaragua
IMPACT
Aside from earning praise from the design community, the immersive site was featured heavily in both industry and mainstream press. But most importantly, the site was heavily trafficked by the general public, and the open source platform was used by hundreds of independent developers to create tools and apps with the data gathered by GE.
