The
advancement in technology over the previous years has grown and extended
enormously. People and companies are always looking for a way in which they can
improve the next stage, create something new that everyone will want to get on
board with, or develop further themselves.
Creating the next best advancement in technology can include, being able to
consider the behaviour of people, the current technology and the environment around, then putting all three together and
seeing what can be done to create advancements in technology to satisfy and be
the best in the field.
Each and every day people will look at how they can take
current technology and see what can be done to create the next best thing.
Let’s take
an insight into one of the top and biggest companies in the world, and look at
how they have used the advancement of technology within their business to help
themselves and the custom that they receive and aim to satisfy. Santander is one of the most well-known and successful banking
companies of our time.
Let’s take their headquarters in Spain and see how they have made this the best
they can. They have looked at the advancement in technology, and used that to
create some innovative developments in how they can improve their business and
to attract as many visitors to their company.
Santander
headquarters has many buildings spread across the vast campus style site,
Pereda building, training and development centre, data process centre, services
and restaurants area, business centre, sports centre, golf course, exhibition
hall, el Bosque, an outdoor sports area including 10km cycle track, a nursery
school within the Eastern zone, including the media centre for all staff, and
last of all the visitors centre.
The visitors centre is the central focus for the whole campus. Santander has
spent huge resource into styling this
building in a way that will impress visitors when they arrive. The technology
advancements that they have used have made the place outstanding, and will
certainly impress people when they visit the headquarters. They have managed to
look at communicating with the visitors in their own way, letting them be
intrigued at the same time as interacting with them.
Let’s start
off with looking at their first creation in technology and what they have come
up with for their business.
Robots, who
are interactive guest assistants – naming them Robotic Butlers.
The Robots have been designed for Santander to communicate with visitors when
they arrive to the building. They are little red robots that have been created
using GPS technology to guide the visitors around the building facilities. The
robots are only small/medium sized, but have a lot of information stored inside
them, they are even fluent in various languages.
The way
that the robots have been designed to work is that when a visitor arrives to
the Santander headquarters in Spain, they will be able to find a touch screen
console where they can choose their language and where they wish to be going.
Whether that be a meeting room, another part of the building or campus, or just
to find out some general information. The robots will assist visitors to find
where they need to be, through the touch screen control, they ‘show you the
way’.
Besides the
robots that Santander have had designed, they also created the Augmented Reality
model of their campus facilities: the Augmented Reality Explorer.
Santander got a designer to build a massive architecture model of their campus,
and then translated the model into a 3D space.
Four
screens were designed to go around each side of the model which slide from side
to side. Santander decided to use Augmented Reality and make it look like the
four screens are transparent. When a visitor or someone wants to look at the 3D
model, they will look through the screen and see additional information that is
not already displayed. The screens provide a digital layer of information when
you look through them, so that users can explore the aspects that we don’t see
or understand about the campus and that is not already visually relevant.
Santander
also has an interactive wall that they created for visitors coming to Santander
headquarters. The wall has been created as a motion-sensing video wall out of
touch screens. The wall can function on different stages given the distance
that the user has to the wall itself. The application can react to what is
around it and adapt to different situations. Visitors can also interact with
the touch screen wall to find out information on Santander and the headquarters
itself.
Santander
has aimed to create this exploration of technology to distinguish it from its
competitors as a forward thinking bank and be seen as one of the finest in the
business, through interactive robots, augmented reality and touch screen
interactive displays.
But how much
will all of this cost them? Potentially costing Santander millions to create
all this technology, yet limited to use inside its reception area within their headquarters
campus.
What if
there was a different and more cost effective way in which all of the above
technology could be brought together in one simple app available on any mobile
device.
skignz is a
new app invention through which signs and 3D objects are placed in the
environment and can be viewed via a mobile camera device. Through using the
free viewer app, you can view the Skignz that have been placed in the real
world in real time.
An example
of where skignz has been used effectively in a similar type of environment is
Teesside University (UK). Around Teesside University, skignz have been set up
and placed around campus, so visitors, students, staff and even suppliers are
able to navigate their way around the campus. They can simply load up the app
through their mobile device and then view where the skignz are with the
information of what they are looking for.
Similar to
the Santander headquarters campus in Spain, helping people to navigate about
through their robots and interactive augmented reality model, skignz does this
for Teesside University. skignz is not restricted to Santander or Teesside
University but can be implemented for any campus environment across the globe.
The skignz
technology is not restricted just to campus navigation; imagine if every pin on
Google maps was transformed into a skignz, it could be extended to villages,
towns, cities, countries and continents or anywhere on the planet! There is no
limit to where skignz can be placed and where it can be used. It adapts and has
all the same advancements of technology just like Santander HQ visitor
experience, however with no geographic location restrictions.
As mind
blowing as skignz is to navigate around, it can also be used socially. It can
be a way for people to keep in touch with others, such as social media, but
instead of having Facebook they could set up their own profile right above
their own heads.
You can
place a skignz with all the information on, such as a status or what they wish
to say along with an image, and have people see this or who they wish too by
setting their privacy settings to either public or friends.
What do you
think? Have a see for yourself using the following links.
With
this in mind we have set about increasing the capability of skignz to work
indoors. 
Imagine you are in your favourite store, and you want to find out what
the offers of the day are. Open up
skignz and scan the indoor area. 
