Through proprietary research insights and a deep understanding of business-to-business user behavior, it was realized how customized, highly-relevant experiences could support GE’s position as a “digital industrial company” and transform GE.COM to a search gateway as the primary destination for all of GE’s website traffic. The idea was to integrate Artificial Intelligence into the platform’s experience, as to dramatically enhance that experience based on insights about users’ needs. The trailblazing site is rooted in a circular rather than linear customer website experience. GE.com provides visitors with animated search phrases, questions and terms to incite them to engage and enter a search query of their own. In return, users receive contextualized content recommendations to improve and simplify their experience, while helping them to delve deeper and discover information far beyond their initial needs.

Content at GE.COM no longer needed to be “pushed” from brand to stakeholder. In fact, users no longer needed to navigate deep within the site to seek key information, but were empowered to find results quickly and easily. The traditional linear experience, defined by standard site navigation and menus, was replaced with an intelligent and proactive “circular” user journey. Interested site visitors never found a “dead end” as they were continually presented with relevant content to explore while advancing through one phase of their decision journey to the next— without ever seeing a typical “search results” page. Furthermore, by translating a user’s search intent into predictive search options and contextualizing their search results, brand content was suggested for related subjects that the individual may not yet have considered. ‘As for methods and process, multiple product concepting sessions were performed to define relevant use cases and journeys. This was followed by prototyping sessions and technical discovery meetings to understand functional capabilities. As a next step, multiple fidelity prototypes were produced. Wireframes as low fidelity iterations to multiple final visuals, which were used for multiple user testing workshops before reaching the final search experience.