by Pia Johannson 12.05.11 in Projects Comments (0)
Mainz / Stuttgart, May 2011. Bosch is inviting everyone to its 125th anniversary: via the BoschGlobe it is possible to send congratulations, upload pictures, express wishes for the future and to interactively experience history, presence and future of the company. In real-time the BoschGlobe aggregates social web postings, visualizes data concerning future developments such as climate change or mobility and presents videos made by some of the about 290.000 Bosch employees. Idea, concept, design and technical realization have been provided by mediaman in Mainz.
125 years “Technology for Life” – in accordance with this strategic focus, mediaman makes Bosch’s history, presence and future tangible on the web: the website http://www.125.bosch.com bundles all anniversary activities and enables communication between all relevant reference groups. Central element is the rotary and zoomable globe: it uses novel navigation mechanisms - among other things an interactive timeline - and leaves a lot of room for individual impressions. Users can explore the globe intuitively or begin with a self-running guided tour. The worldwide response in terms of congratulations, comments, pictures and videos lights a permanent digital firework on the BoschGlobe.
Already from the beginning, the microsite had been planned as the centre of the anniversary activities. In retrospect, Martin Gansert, person in charge of the project on the part of Bosch’s corporate communications, phrases the expectations as follows: “Innovation is also a key element of our festivities. Hence, next to our employees, the focus was supposed to be on the innovational strength of Bosch. The way of technical implementation emphasizes the innovational strength of the company. The medium is the message, as they say.” At the pitch meeting over a year ago mediaman persuaded with the concept to present the willingness for innovation and the technological leadership of Bosch by means of linking user posts and geological live-data from the social web effectively with the anniversary. “As we presented the idea, we were still not sure how to realize every aspect of it”, Christian Christiansen, conceptional head of the project, admits. “However, we believed in the idea. And even though we have had to master some difficulties, I think the result proves us right.”
Innovative idea, technical finesse, flexible design
Meik Mense, responsible senior art director, has had to master among other things the challenge “to design the numerous different elements in such a way, that they would work perfectly with the different backgrounds – and, in turn, to design the backgrounds in a way, so that the general impression would stay visually tangible. All elements – also the user-generated contents – have had to work in every imaginable constellation and to comply with the typical look-and-feel of the globe and Bosch, nonetheless.“ The design of the different epochs has been especially successful. There, the 125years of Bosch are depicted also in a stylistic way.
In cooperation with visualization expert Thomas Quring of deepartmend, the technical realization has been successful with a combination of flash and flax. “What makes this project unique is the way how complex and large amounts of data are aggregated, visualized continuously and vividly in 3D and become tangible and usable in an interactive way”, mediaman managing director Fabian Fischer explains.
Fascinating is the BoschGlobe’s flexible appearance which users can influence by means of their wishes and posts: all contents are locally positioned through data points on the globe. Their visibility is changing when scrolling the timeline to past or future or when individual layers in the navigation of the “Globe Options” are (de)activated. This way twitter messages and web search results on Bosch appear on the globe or Bosch branch locations and career information can be found. According to the same principle, the surface of the globe is changing when users choose different “World Topics”: on the basis of color intensity it is possible to distinguish between data on demographical change, mobility, climate change, innovation, security as well as comfort. Thomas Quiring emphasizes: “I like particularly the fact that the wishes and ideas from today will make the BoschGlobe colorful in the future – and that we have managed to do the programming. Here, we have developed a system with which we can link almost any number of data from the most diverse sources with almost any kind of media and almost any kind of geo- or time-related coordinates. Thereby, we have succeeded in illustrating this with 3D-globe and Wagner-VI-worldmap projects and making it navigable – i.e. sorted and filtered by any kind of topic.”
Employees light initial sparks
At first, with the Go live and pre-release at the end of 2010, Bosch invited the worldwide about 290.000 employees to the jubilee tour around the BoschGlobe: they took advantage of the possibility to be some of the first to get information, make statements, send congratulations and to post own contents such as numerous videos. Since February 2011 “Global Impressions of Bosch” complement the globe. 125 images taken at exactly the same time represent a snap-shot of a multi-faceted enterprise and are a highlight among the worldwide anniversary activities.
At Bosch one is very pleased with the site. Uta-Micaela Dürig, head of communications of Bosch Worldwide says: “We are very happy to have chosen this innovative as well as emotional way.”
About mediaman
mediaman is a privately owned and operated digital marketing network with over 100 employees in Germany, China the USA and Argentina. Core competencies of the company founded in 1996 are the development of digital platforms, apps and interfaces: user-centered, device-independent, technologically-neutral. Key customers are among others Daimler, Hyundai, Merck, Osram, Zurich.
About visual lab / deepartmend
visual lab is a cooperation between mediaman and deepartmend: under the lead of Thomas Quiring, experts in Mainz and Darmstadt visualize “rich internet applications” (RIA) in 3D, produce videos and experiment with Adobe Flash©, Flex©, AIR© und Microsoft Silverlight©.
Project Team
Idea and Concept: Christian Christiansen
Visual Idea, Creation and Design: Meik Mense
Frontend Architecture, Head of Flash/Flex Development: Thomas Quiring
IT-Management: Daniel Pehnec
IT-Development: Daniel Pehnec, Marco Rauschenbach
Flash-Development: Kevin Brand, Britta Weiland, Milen Yordanov, Thomas Quiring
Content: Achim Hoth
Mobile: Achim Hoth, Daniel Pehnec
Video: Michael Neumann
Accounting/Production: Fabian Fischer