Venture firm The Engine has created an ecosystem of companies, resources, and leaders focusing on complex environmental and social problems with the intent to create positive global change. Despite the transformative work The Engine’s partners do, they’ve always found it challenging to convey their mission and vision to the public. The Engine turned to SOSO to visually elevate the stories of its portfolio companies while also promoting and surfacing press and social conversations about the projects to passersby. 

SOSO created the Engine Story Wall, a digital wall installation that expresses the transformative significance of the problems that startup founders and their companies are tackling in a digestible way to employees, visiting investors, and the local community. Installed in The organization’s new Cambridge Headquarters, it visualizes the evolving convergence of founders, companies, disciplines, and resources enabled by The Engine. It also includes dynamically sourced content to provide an up-to-the-minute lens into its growing “Tough Tech” ecosystem.

According to The Engine, Tough Tech companies are transforming the planet by solving the world’s most complex and important problems through the convergence of breakthrough science, engineering, and leadership. What unites Tough Tech is that it exists in physical space, not just in code, and it has the potential to create more sustainable, resilient ways of living. Working with this focus of Tough Tech on physical innovation, SOSO sought to create a dynamic, kinetic presentation of content that felt like a physical machine in the way it was constructed and moved. To represent Tough Tech, the design layers mechanical data structures with textures that evoke physical materials and takes inspiration from the visual identity of The Engine itself.

The Engine Story Wall is located in the entryway of the headquarters’ event space but also faces outward to the neighborhood, sharing important Tough Tech information with the community. When an onlooker visits the Engine Story Wall, they’ll see top-level metrics within The Engine’s top three investment areas: infrastructure, climate change, and human health. 

The wall showcases a six- to an eight-minute loop of content that explores the importance of each investment area and provides an overview of the involved companies. The experience is different every time, as the media wall pulls in dynamic content from Twitter and other news streams, so visitors remain engaged in The Engine’s message. As The Engine grows, the team can also add new companies, stories, and themes, making it a flexible and dynamic experience. 

This project was driven by SOSO’s rich reputation for data visualization and creating unique, dynamic experiences. Both teams are committed to celebrating complexity without making it complicated, and they achieved their missions by delivering the Tough Tech message to viewers through the Engine Story Wall.