In Touch with a Digital Oilfield

Touchscreen interactions have grown in popularity over the last several years. With interactive software exploding with new rich user controls, it’s no surprise that companies are transitioning from mouse to touch interactions for their digital media presentations.

Baker Hughes approached Saba Studios with the objective of creating a digital catalog of their offerings in the oil field. But they didn’t want some boring PowerPoint-on-steroids presentation, but rather something edgy that would represent Baker Hughes as an industry leader in technology. In other words, something cool. Well, Mr. Hughes, you have come to the right place. “Cool” is our middle name. Okay, seriously …

We saw this project as a fun challenge which we could really sink our creative teeth into. We decided to build a floating landscape of the oilfield with a cutaway to make way for onshore, offshore and even subsea. We thought it would be cool to animate the water and throw in a school of fish and even a whale for some visual deliciousness. Then we built and textured Baker Hughes’ assets and populated them throughout, including a production platform, FPSO, subsea system, rock formation, onshore labs and a satellite for could measure.

Our brain geeks programmed a three-tier navigation structure, which would allow users to drill down (pun intended) from the landscape, to the asset and finally to the tool. Once they got to the tool level, the interaction would spawn an animated rotation of the tool, accompanied by a short blurb.

From the overall look, to the transitions to the informative windows, the interaction did in fact have a real techie edge to it. It even had sound effects and an ambient music track to complete the experience.

The project was debuted at AIDPEC on a 45″ touchscreen and was a great success. Baker Hughes plans on making it a permanent exhibit at its learning center in Houston, as well as exhibiting at the Offshore Technology Conference this coming May.

If you’d like to see a video capture of the project in motion, click here.