Raytheon

Here was an interesting assignment: Create an interactive capabilities presentation to pique interest at trade shows…without being too specific about the products for purchase.

And what about when the client’s shoppers are private space enterprises and governments from across the globe looking into state-of-the-art missile defense systems, satellite communications, and other technology for national security?

Raytheon – one of the top aerospace solutions providers in the world – was looking to refresh its industry presentation, something that would stand out among other high-profile competitors like General Dynamics, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.

Standard operating procedure in this industry is to go big – cram as much capabilities data, media, and other information into a presentation to attract potential buyers. That gave us an idea when working up strategy for the new display.

Instead of information saturation, how about just a few crisp graphics and short text blocks to interactively “tell a story” of Raytheon’s expertise and breadth? After all, any exhibit in this category is simply a teaser for engagement – real details would need to be reviewed in private because of the classified nature of most products. Raytheon could differentiate with simplicity.

Using our complete, well, arsenal (user experience, motion graphics, development, and project management), we worked with the client to distill the presentation concept into a singular overarching business theme (constellation management). This would also help highlight their aerospace capabilities (rather than just defense) while also giving all divisions a voice.

Creatively, the presentation would be a laptop-run slideshow to be custom-piloted by a user via a clean vertical menu featuring some of Raytheon’s lines of business. It would be displayed on a super-sized screen at the tradeshow booth.

The motion graphics team created some terrific videos. The initial one (for idle-screen state) featured a stylized globe rotating one way, with a swarm of satellites firing “data” to each other and down and back to the planet while spinning in the opposite direction. Almost hypnotic in its form and function.

Subsequent slides represented systems engineering, hardware/software, data collection/protection, and more. Words can hardly do it justice, so we encourage you to check out the creative on this page for the true picture.

On the development side, the presentation was built using reusable modular components and the React JavaScript library. The content was defined in a configuration file that made it simple to make changes as the project unfolded, as well as accommodating future changes and additions.

The presentation’s core building block was a self-contained Scene component that could contain a video, followed by an optional looping video. This Scene could also have text content that would be displayed while the looping video played.

This core component was reused in several ways to build the various capability slideshows, the main menu, and a screensaver/attract mode that would play while the presentation was in an idle state. Scenes were defined once in the project’s configuration data, but were able to be reused multiple times across the presentation.

We used React Hooks to make handling complex states manageable, and also used Webpack to build the final production files that could be loaded onto the presentation computer to be displayed at events.

That meant a completely self-contained presentation with no load-time issues despite the large graphics files, important because security measures mean no off-site servers or Wi-Fi to access.

Even in a competitive high-tech industry, simplicity has a place.