An oil field services company, employing personnel working across 120 countries, selected Barco to assist with the development of an internal meeting space and experience centre within its UK office. The brief was to create an environment that would inspire and nurture creative thinking and idea sharing in a collaborative and engaging setting, aided by state-of-the-art audio-visual technology.
To complete the complex installation to the highest standard, Barco commandeered the expertise of three leading design and technology companies. The alliance included Urben, a tech innovator in delivering all-in-one meeting room and video conferencing solutions; CCOMM, specialists in defining the optimum furnishing and layout for productive work environments, and U-Touch, a leading innovator of multi-touch screen technology.
The customer wanted the space to provide intimate meeting areas where colleagues could break away to run brainstorming sessions and collaborate on team projects, while delivering a larger seated area where audiences could interact with visual content and on-screen presentations.
Despite challenging building restrictions, an existing space was transformed by CCOMM to create a calming sanctuary, designed to encourage productive interaction between peers within intimate huddle areas. An open area at the front of the building was re-configured by Barco and Urben to facilitate the installation of a giant, multi-tiled, HD video wall and supporting audio-visual equipment.
As the focal point of the multi-purpose space, the video wall needed to allow for various usages (including collaborative software, video conferencing, and town hall presentations) and a high-spec system was required to translate the images with little-to-no latency. It also needed to be freestanding with touch screen capabilities to enable real-time ‘swipe, pinch and zoom’ interaction.
Barco realised that its UniSee 800 was the best solution to deliver the rich depth of colour and image clarity required by the customer, added with a near seamless canvas most suited to accommodate a touch screen overlay. As a result, Barco mounted a freestanding 6 x 3 55 inch tiled video wall with Barco IP, complemented by a touch screen overlay solution installed by U-Touch. Urben’s expertise ensured that a free-standing structure was designed to house the equipment, not only taking the weight of the half-tonne custom overlay, but also ensuring an extremely true installation; an exceptionally flat surface to enable a flawless touch screen experience.
The video wall was able to fulfil the customer’s criteria as it presents a uniformity across its bezel-less panels resulting in almost imperceptible gaps between each tile to deliver a greater flexibility and clarity of visual content. It also enables superior functionality of the U-Touch technology as the user is able to swipe from one tile to the next with ease to fully utilise the touch screen capability. In addition, Barco’s SenseX calibration technology ensures that the entire 18-panel wall is consistently calibrated to a uniform quality, colour and brightness. The near seamless design ensures that regardless of the configuration, the uniformity of the images remain the same.
“We now have a fantastic, flexible meeting space that reflects the quality of our brand. The state-of-the-art video wall has not only improved our own employee engagement; the stylish, collaborative environment helps foster creativity and attract the new talent. We’re delighted with transformation; from the innovative solution design and seamless installation, to the capabilities of the touchscreen technology itself.” - oil field services company
