skignzing your own holiday!

Everyone knows that at the top of your wish list each year is to be able to go away on holiday, whether it is with your partner, friends or family you would love that little break away. A week or two in the sunshine or away in the countryside is a nice little break for anyone.

But then when you go to a new place for a few weeks what do you instantly become?

Tourist

As a tourist you are excited to be in a new place, then there’s that word ‘new’. It’s a new place, you don’t know much about it, you don’t know where the best places are to go and you need to know your way around. It isn’t nice if you get lost on holiday and is much easier and time saving when you know where you want to visit on holiday and how to get there.

You will spend lots of time searching around, looking at maps, tourist guides and by no doubt looking to book maybe on a excursion to the place you want to visit and paying a lot more for the transport as you don’t know where you need to be, whereas if you probably made your own way there in a taxi it could maybe save you a bit of money.

The whole aim to try and make you understand across this blog post is – there is nothing easier and beneficial to do than skignzing up your own holiday, and this blog post will tell you why.

A member of staff from skignz recently went away on holiday to Ibiza. Before she went she wanted to know where to go and to also do something different while she was there. So she decided to skignz up her holiday. Previous to her going she placed skignz above places where she wanted to be, that way she knew where she wanted to go and also to have some fun around the pool while sunbathing.

skignzing up different places allowed her to know where she needed to be and it was also a fun way to do it rather than trying to figure out on a map where to be, it was already there on her phone. The good thing about skignz also is that recently it has been updated that now people can create their own skignz and personalise them. So previous to her going she knew that she was going to be heading to Ocean Beach, Ushuaia, Amnesia and Pacha.  Personally before she went she created her own skignz personally to Ushuaia, Amnesia and Pacha.

When she was there she said that it made her finding her way around Ibiza to all the main night clubs much easier as she could just see on her phone where the skignz was and also had some fun while relaxing around the pool she made her own personal skignz and took some screenshots of them while relaxing.

It shows that skignz isn’t just all about directing someone. It is helpful as well as fun and many other things such as very good for the environment. 

skignzing up  your own holiday is nowhere near as much of a task as it is trying to find your way around when you arrive at your destination. There is no hassle like trying to understand  a map abroad especially when sometimes the English may be very limited or hard to understand, you need your own fun way to find your way around your new destination.

skignz is free to download and extremely useful and fun for you to use abroad. We have showed you how much fun and easy it is to use from our member of staff having lots of fun abroad with it. Plus you can also now create and personalise your own skignz! What more could you possibly get? Well that will be coming very soon…

So you keep your eyes peeled, download skignz for free and start using it. Please do let us know and show us images/screenshots of how you decided to use it on your adventures or holidays this summer we would be very grateful of your pictures. You can contact us through our social media site and website if you have any queries.

Have a great summer!

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Live Events Weekend

Last weekend was a pretty big weekend for skignz as we had not one, not two but three different locations all testing out skignz. Now most people would be happy with one live event, in one location to make sure all goes well!

Not skignz, at skignz we believe in raising the bar as high as possible, pushing boundaries! Thats how we came up with skignz originally, by looking at what people really need and then looking for the right way to help them! The result is skignz! The result this weekend was skignz working without a 'hitch' at three very diverse locations across the UK.

First of all we made our debut at Glastonbury... we know plenty of aspiring bands, singers and DJs who would like to be able to 'scream and tweet' those words to the world. At Glasto' we had a specific audience we wanted to showcase skignz too and we hope those guys stayed sober enough to benefit from the technology.

That said, the skignz team also knew quite a few friends and family who were going to the what most people call 'THE best festival on the planet' so we asked a few of them, to download the app before they went and with a few text prompts and a few that must have wondered if it actually works? tried skignz and were delighted with the results so were not only sending us texts, but one or two posted 'screen grabs of skignz' live in action and a few have confessed that 'skignz' was quite the topic of conversation as the weekend progressed and no doubt the alcohol and festival atmosphere flowed!

Many thanks to all of our Glasto 2014 Guinea pigs who not only took the time to use skignz but also to share with friends and family on social media! Your help and support is greatly appreciated! Even more impressive is that none of the skignz team were at Glasto but our technology was being used by people to help them find friends, find the stages, find the entrances and even one or two were testing out a 'special channel' with a well known global spirits brand ;-), looking at how it can help brands reach and interact with their audiences in a whole new way, provide links to download/scannable offers but more on this in the near future.

The second event was also in the UK but across the south coast at Goodwood, for the world famous, Festival of Speed, where for those of you who are not that interested in Cars or Motorsport, is hosted by Earl March on his beautiful estate near .

A few members of the skignz team were present at their first FOS, and to say they were impressed is an understatement. Although the festival runs from Thursday through till Sunday, our guys visited on Friday and as they were looking at not only checking out the skignz in place for the event, they also were looking for video footage and images that can be used to help demonstrate to people what skignz is and what it can do, if they have never seen or heard of it before!

The first problem was actually getting out of the car park, only because right next to it was the 'super car carpark', getting Paul our photographer actually into the main area for the event was a challenge in itself! 

It was every little boys dream, with some wonderful cars that people visiting the event had driven to Goodwood FOS in and paid a premium to park alongside all the other 'awesome cars'.

The skignz team spent the day filming photographing the action as well as the amazing displays not only buy the cars but also, the RAF's red arrows, typhoon and other air display teams.

Couple that with all the manufacturer stands, the race up the 'Goodwood Hill' which included Sir Stirling Moss, driving one of his period racing cars in his old racing garb!

 

In addition their was plenty of business to discuss with the various brands on their wonderful yet very immersive and interactive stands.

Sir Stirling Moss, Mercedes

Discussing how skignz can help them with their many motor-shows across the globe, how they could use skignz as a 'product info trigger' (if you are a brand or an agency who work with brands contact us to know more about this!), how skignz could be used at motor museums/themed parks, as a way finder and content activator at events like we saw at Goodwood through to how this can be tied right through the whole sales process to the sale of the cars to customers and beyond....

 




The final instalment of the weekend moved north up to Croft -on-Tees where this weekend the latest rounds of the BTCC (British Touring Car Championships) was held alongside racing from the Ginetta, Ginetta Junior, Renault Clio Cup, Single Seater and Porsche Cups.

Again we had some of the skignz team in attendance, both for testing skignz purposes and to also catch some footage and capture some images of this type of live sports event. 

We wanted to see how skignz could be used by the live audience, there for a weekend of motor racing. We asked the race goers, what were their frustrations about live Motorsport? 

How it could improve? We showed them how skignz worked and we will publish these findings in future blog posts. But as always with live market research after a few questions to different people and a theme develops.

These themes were also very similar if not the same as feedback we have had from other live crowds at varying types of events, with varying types of people attending!

The key responses were as follows:

1. Its difficult to find your way around and know where everything is, If you have not been before and even with a map (in the programme)!

2. Meeting up with people either when you arrive or if you have split up with them during the event! Trying to get you both back together seems to be a nightmare!

3. When watching the race its hard to know who is winning? who's in what positions and what lap they are actually on?

Although none of these answers surprised us, it actually gave us immense confidence that what we have developed with skignz, not only addresses one of these key problems, but actually could address all three! 

All with a free app on peoples smartphone!

Everybody we spoke to had a smart phone and with the exception of a handful, ALL could have downloaded skignz and used it that very weekend, if only at this point to find their friends! We were not sure the attendance for the weekend end but if everyone we spoke to asked their friends to download the app and so on! we could have helped a significant amount of people find each other! That alone we find very cool and very humbling.

So as the weekend comes to a close, we have seen some wonderful sights, the red arrows perform during our lunch, an RAF typhoon amaze us during afternoon tea...


...see Sir Stirling Moss gracefully race up the Goodwood Hill, whilst a racing driver in a Brand New Alpha Romeo 5C totally write it off into a wall of hay bails. 

 

We have seen BMW eBay driver Colin Turkington win two of the three BTCC rounds at Croft and the thrills and spills of the smashes, scrapes and crashes in all the races, but whilst all this was going on, people were enjoying one of the greatest shows on earth at Glasto' 2014, watching Calvin Harris play the skignz tune of this 'Summer' using skignz to find their way around, and even the exits to find their way home!

Thank you to those who answered our questions, tested our technology and to the skignz team for a wonderful weekend of activity! who knows maybe next year 'every live event' will be using skignz to help people find each other, find their way around and discover brands who want to speak to them in a whole new way!

So if anything the weekend of 26th-29th June 2014 could (we hope it will) turnout to be the 1st time skignz was discovered by the select few, lets hope they share it with their friends and family, so as the summer of 2014 progress, more people can download skignz and 'never get lost in a crowd again!'

If you would like to know more about the key events from the weekend then please use the following links:

Goodwood Festival of Speed: 
http://grrc.goodwood.com/section/festival-of-speed/#/0

Glastonbury Festival: http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk

MSA British Touring Car Championships: http://www.btcc.net

If you would like to know more about how to download your own skignz app or how skignz could interact with your brands audiences in a whole new way, then please visit www.skignz.com or follow us on Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn or take a look at our YouTUbe channel for some of our latest content showcasing skignz use in varying settings, sectors and places.

The Teams Work - Matt Hui

Hi,

My name is Matt Hui, I’m a 2nd year student currently doing a summer internship at skignz.

I have just finished my first year studying Interactive Media Design at Northumbria University.

The course involves studying a large variety of interactive design elements, from animation, graphical design, web design, app design and product design. I am throughly enjoying the  course, and had a great first year.

It was the web design aspect of my course that I found the most intriguing, and that it was interested me about skignz.

At the moment I am helping to design a number of new webpages for skignz, to help bring some new features to the website and its users.

So far my time at skignz has been very informative, and I have already learned a great deal about various new coding languages I was unfamiliar with beforehand. This has proved a very useful for me to know, as I can create my design concepts to exactly how I want them to look, now I have the knowledge to code out my designs.

By the end of the internship I hope to of learned a great more about how apps and websites are created and run, and will be able to apply these skills within my course.

The knowledge of javascript and jquery I have learned here has allowed me to create impressive animations within my webpages, this makes the page more interactive and so more user friendly.

These sort of skills will be extremely useful for creating intuitive interactions throughout my career.

Matt Hui

Is this really Augmented Reality?

Recently one of the skignz founders came across an ad on Facebook with regards to the new app The Shard is one of the brand new sight-seeing attractions in London.

Built at a staggering 306M – 23 storeys, it’s fair to say that the views you will get from the shard will simply be amazing. Built with offices, restaurants, arcade and even a hotel, it has everything a person could ask for when staying at the Shard.

Complementing the skyline of London, the Shard is defiantly an attraction to be visited when visiting the great city of London.

With being one of the new great attractions in London, is it fair to say that they have created something cutting edge (pardon the pun) quite striking and wonderful.

However some of their technology is not the best attending to every visitor/customer’s needs. 

The Shard has a app for smartphones which you can view content on up the Shard which people can download prior to attending, however when at the Shard it was apparent that the app only worked when you signed up to their Wi-Fi which still did not work when we tried to sign up over a period of about two hours. 

There should be no restriction as to visitors having to sign up to their Wi-Fi when visiting the Shard and this is not stated and made clear to people prior to attending. Being the best attraction is great however technology is a vital aspect that needs to work for every customer attending or it immediately will make the Shard have that lower immediate rating, which is not what they will have aimed for.

Maybe the Shard should look at making the app useable when attached to any Wi-Fi or network.

The journey however that the customers will get from the moment they visit the Shard all the way to the top is very enlightening.

As you go into the Shard you have video screen in the main entrance. The video screens set the historic context of the Shard and the London Bridge location of it. 

Through short films being shown on the video screen guests who are visiting the Shard will be able to see London’s diverse communities, famous streets and places across the capital.

People can also get to know information about the Shard and London, as well as being able to watch the graphics and see how the building is closely linked to the cities transport system, showing the lifts move inside the building and the trains that run underneath both in real time viewing.

 

As well as having the video screens in the entrance showing a lot of information to guest’s, there is also the range of lifts that the Shard has with detail inside them all.

The lifts travel at six meters per second, making the total lift journey time from Level 1 to level 68 around 60 seconds. 

They each have constantly changing graphics on the ceiling of the lift including lighting amazing people as the make their way up the Shard. 

As guests exit the lift onto the corridor they are welcomed with a map of London extending from the floor up and across all the walls.

Guests follow an image of the River Thames curving along the floor and see the capital mapped geographically around them in 200 sentences scrawled on the walls and floor, each describing a different part of the city.

The second lift that the guests enter into is the same experience as they would have had with the first lift with the animated ceilings. The second lift takes guest out onto the floor with window views of London obscured with window images of the range of cloud types that you may see – not really stating a viewing point for guests and they are images they may see.

The third lift takes you to the triple-height, light-filled, main viewing gallery where breath-taking, 360 degree views for up to 40 miles (64km) over the capital are revealed.

Tell:scopes on the viewing deck

London city can be seen on 12, free to use, ‘Tell:scopes’ – ultra high-tech digital telescopes that are being used in Europe for the first time.  The Tell:scopes enable guests to explore the city around them in real time, as well as offering alternative (pre-recorded) day and night-time views.  Fully interactive, they are able to identify over 200 famous landmarks and places of significant interest and offer information about them in 10 languages.

However London can be seen from 12 free to use ‘Tell:scopes’, we question was this the AR they talked about or is this in the app that could not be accessed?

If it is these ‘Tell:scopes’ then they were awkward to use and certainly not AR in the live sense as they show views of London day, evening, night and back to various key times in history – Tudor, Georgian and Victorian etc...

Higher viewing deck - open air

Whilst watching people use these we managed to get close enough to listen and hear their comments which varied around:

"This is terrible, truly awful..."

"Its very hard to use?"

"This is not what I expected, the graphics are like an old school computer loading up!"

"My iPhone has better camera than this!"

"Why am I getting a countdown clock as the top?"

"The telescope viewfinder in Brighton, when I was a kid was better than this!"

"How can this be Augmented Reality, when they show me at night time, when it’s mid-afternoon and daylight?"

When we tried to use it the graphics loaded up in 'square blocks' so when you went from day to night, 2 parts of the image loaded up in the dark image, then the rest did, which gave for a very disjointed experience and not in keeping with the whole image we had for The Shard, especially everything else being so cutting edge and hi tech in the building.

A further lift and two flights of stairs takes you to the next viewing gallery on floor 72 where the experience changes and although you are surrounded by the glass walls, all of the ceiling is open and exposed to the elements and a nice breeze swept through the place!

No ‘Tell:scopes’ on this floor, again just lost more people using smart phones and mobile devices for photos, filming!

NO one we spoke to had managed to access the 'elusive' Shard app content.

So after a while of enjoying the view and trying to understand what key buildings were and especially those at the furthest part of our sight range and also those mixed up with the atmospheric conditions (London smog) it was difficult to pick out.

We decided to leave and make the long journey back down in the lifts to terra firma!

Although pleasant at the top and one to tick off the bucket list, we have no reason to return... especially not to pay £29 per person to see if their app works on another day!

In our opinion, having to access the Wi-Fi and it not automatically letting you pick it up with no login significantly hampered our visitor experience!

The clearly expensive installation of the ‘Tell:scopes’ were extremely disappointing, so much so that we did not just think, they were ok but more than enough that we would write this whole blog post to share our experiences!

We are massive advocates of innovation especially in information based AR, which this, we feel clearly is not!

We do wish however, that it was quite the opposite! As this is a beautiful building and a key focal point for visitors from across the globe, yet the whole 'shard experience' engages you from when you walk in, right up till you leave on the escalator to street level, yet the 'key' (advertised on facebook) offering of helping people view London in a new way, in a way that’s informative and engaging was not only 'not good enough' it was a disaster of biblical proportions.

We can say this because we know what we were expecting and the rest of the journey was so good and this part was so bad that it amplified the gap between the rest of the offering and these stainless steel Armadillos with tablets welded into their backs with a 1980's user experience on them!

Using skignz instead!

We have also looked at our own technology and what 'The Shard' currently offers and we realise we are not just a step ahead of their offering but quite a few steps ahead. Will 'The Shard' read this and change things; we doubt it, not because they don't believe what we are saying or because they don't want to improve the customer experience but probably more to do with the budget already spent on the ‘Tell:scopes’ system!

In our research into how people are using AR for navigation and identifying places of interest we wrote a blog article...... (http://skignzblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/advancement-in-technology.html) regarding the installation at the Santander Banks HQ in Santander, Spain.

Again we found similarities with 'The Shard' offering, with the hundreds of thousands of digital images, the fixed access through pre-determined equipment, restricted in their range use and function.

Now compare this to what skignz offers and you can see that there is a gulf in the offerings! Why is this?

Were they engaged to provide these installations quite some time ago? Did they not consider people accessing it through their own devices or had skignz simply not been invented yet?

In the work we are exploring with other similar offerings across the globe, we aren't only looking at how to increase and improve the overall visitor experience but also the business model surrounding it, so that the owners of the 'visitor experience' can generate additional revenues that will allow them to 'reinvest' year on year in their attraction!

Keeping it relevant for every customer and not something that was maybe cool a year or two ago or that becomes 'so last season within a short time!'

For more information on how skignz could revolutionise the 'visitor experience' for your brand, please get in contact through our website www.skignz.com