Leading IT

A Restaurant with Just the Right Mood

jonsinasac — Sat, 30 Mar 2019 12:55:54 +0000

In the restaurant industry, you are not just selling food but a total experience. From romantic dining, business luncheon, and dinners with friends and family setting the right mode is vital to the customer experience. Many restaurants need to change the atmosphere with the time of day or for special events but how do you ensure consistent experience when you are always changing things? This is when a control system can make a lot of sense. Setting the lighting, music, temperature, and changing them automatically at the right time of day improves customer experience, ensure consistency and reduces the chances of staff error.

This all leads to happy customers and like our client Ous we know you will be happy too.

Training Room that Matches your Brand

jonsinasac — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 16:54:21 +0000

Training your employees is a way of communicating your commitment to them and their professional growth. It is an ideal time to communicate your corporate brand and culture. This client asked us to provide a simple user interface that matched their corporate brand and identity. This is what we provided them.

Notice how the interface colours match the company’s logo.

Using subpages is an ideal way to provide a clean and minimalist main page. It provides natural groupings of similar controls providing the best possible balance between the number of button presses per action and the required time for the user to make a decision.

Simple Classroom Controls with Advanced Lighting Features

jonsinasac — Fri, 07 Sep 2018 18:24:40 +0000

Over the years we have done a lot of work in the education sector. What we have learned is that classrooms are core to the mission of all educational organizations. They are the primary locations that schools, colleges, and universities serve their customers. It is for this reason that a special attention to design and quality is required. Professors and teachers of all ages must be able to quickly and confidently operate the technology in the room. It can quickly become embarrassing to the teacher if things do not go well when operating the technology. Second, students judge the value of the education they receive in part by the quality of the facilities where they learn. this makes classrooms an important marketing tool to recruit new students and keep existing students engaged.

This project had 4 identical rooms all running the same program to keep consistency between the rooms. Remote monitoring of the classrooms and their technology was provided through Crestron Fusion to the central support department. Crestron lighting controllers were used to provide daylight harvesting and maintain a consistent lighting level in the room throughout the day.

For some devices there are too many controls and a lot are rarely used but still must be provided. This is when it can make sense to provide a second page when the full controls are required. Compare the two screenshots below for the Blu-ray player.

Moving similar controls to a subpage helps to provide order and improve the user decision time.

High-end Apartments

jonsinasac — Fri, 20 Jul 2018 12:25:20 +0000

There is a trend in high-end apartment design to make them more like 5-star hotel living. This approach impacts the services that are offered including 24-hour concierge and even the control system design to provide smart integration so staff can better respond to requests without intruding on resident’s privacy.

Residence Interface

Concierge Interface

The concierge staff can provide additional services and control access according to the resident’s request. In this project, the developer wanted to be able to provide additional displays and inputs upon request of the residential owners without having to make changes to the control system or facilities. With a click of a button, new functionality could be provided via the touch panels. This is just one possibility of what can be done.

Skype for Business Design

jonsinasac — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 17:59:06 +0000

When designing your user experience consistency is an important element to consider. With so many manufacturers using Skype for Business colour and interface design it can make sense to follow a similar standard in your meeting rooms. Here are the touch panel designs we created for one of our customers who wanted their interfaces to match the Skype for Business look.

User Interface

Technician Interface

So many projects overlook the technical support experience and don’t spend enough time considering the technical staff who support users and make changes to rooms when devices fail. In this design, we provided a simple single page for technical staff to make changes to room configuration without having to reprogram the control system. This also enabled this single program to be used across all the clients small and medium-sized meeting rooms. This makes it easier for users and technicians. It enables technicians to make changes without the help of senior IT or AV staff making the support more efficient.

Auditorium with Live Broadcast System

jonsinasac — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 20:04:29 +0000

Auditoriums come in a wide range of shapes and sizes. Each is purpose designed and built for the customer’s unique needs. Many of them function as multipurpose spaces for a range of events, conferences, and meetings. This can lead to complex control systems to meet the diverse needs of the users leading to a poor user experience. At Leading IT, we work with you and your contractors to develop a user-focused approach that keeps the user experience front and center from design to implementation. We help balance the need to provide controls while keeping the complexity right for each type of user.

User Interface

Technician Interface

There is a fully integrated broadcast system featuring a Blackmagic 4k (UHD) production switcher and control surface; Redundant 4k video recorders and live streaming; 4k robotic cameras and camera controller with presets, expansion capacity, and standards converters to allow non-UHD content to be used. All remote devices are powered using Power-Over-Ethernet (POE) to provide centrally monitored and regulated power and simplified wiring. This enables a single set of twisted pairs to provide power, networking, and control. All broadcast controls are available through the Crestron room controller and any computer on the network.

Leading IT are experts in broadcast production and provide state-of-the-art system design using the latest technology and techniques. This enables us to design a system to meet your needs and budget.