Case In Brief
- NZX was moving offices in Auckland. This created an opportunity to reimagine the office experience for customers and employees.
- The NZX wanted to make a statement to the market and tasked Eyemagnet with recommending digital solutions to embrace the digital age.
- We took a software-first approach. Deploying our powerful Content Management software as the central command centre for managing the content on each of the 20 screens installed on the floor. This enabled us to achieve a level of flexibility and seamless user experience that would have been impossible with a traditional approach.
- The project included the first commercial installation of the Samsung Wall (a large format ultra high definition screen) to make a signature statement.
The vision
For NZX customers, it was a statement of the market's commitment to them, Auckland and prosperity - they wanted to shatter any views that NZX was a Wellington focussed company. For employees, it was a statement of their commitment to providing the best possible workplace where they could thrive.
The situation
Eyemagnet has a long-standing relationship with NZX – having managed the digital signage solutions that drives the NZX ticker on their building exteriors for the last 9 years.
The NZX team approached us with a wide brief: make this space as compelling as possible (within a defined financial envelope) for our customers and employees.
Three key principles governed our design decisions during the initial phases of working with NZX and the architects.
Seamless dual-use of the main foyer space
NZX wanted the main area (about ⅓ of the total floor plate) to be capable of serving dual purposes. A statement atrium for when customers use the environment for listing events – and a set of meeting rooms for staff to use as they conduct their everyday business.
Note: the architectural elements were relatively straightforward – for example, bi-fold doors between the foyer and the boardroom. But it created a lot of complexity from a digital perspective, with the screens and audio in each space needing to behave differently depending on what purpose the space/s are being used for.
Multipurpose displays
This involved a shift from thinking of the displays as static screens to portals for information. The team acknowledged that each screen had primary and secondary uses – like displaying a team dashboard and/or presenting a presentation.
The team wanted to extend beyond this – and identified having the ability to communicate internal comms via a news feed and enable streaming of live events for the behind-the-scenes crew and TV broadcasts of important content as a priority.
The media room
NZX has a progressive view of the importance of digital content. So much so that they wanted a dedicated, functional, and flexible media room available for video and audio content creation – such as YouTube videos and podcasts.
Their options
Their options boiled down to a question of approach. Did they see this as an audio and visual challenge to solve – or as an experience challenge to solve?
NZX had a long-standing relationship with a traditional IT provider. They could have gone down this route with ease.
However, they felt this traditional path would be limiting for them – for a couple of reasons:
- The need to define specifications for use cases upfront would limit the freedom of what was possible in the future.
- Their vision for a statement experience for customers and employees did not support a conventional approach – they wanted to push the boundaries of what was possible.
Our solution
A software-first approach to visual digital experiences.
The solution encompassed our software driving state-of-the-art screen technology from Samsung – combined with our engineering team’s expertise to develop bespoke mounting solutions.
The Eyemagnet CMS
The central content command centre handles all of the content for the 20 screens installed on the floor, including:
- Integrated use cases: the ability to switch between displaying a dashboard, streaming a video, delivering a presentation, watching TV, or conducting a Teams call.
- Switching the main space: treating the foyer, boardroom and main meeting room as three separate spaces for day-to-day usage – but enabling the treatment of them as a single space for events. As mentioned, this is relatively straightforward from a space perspective but more complex from a digital management one. How do you easily switch from each screen in each room displaying what the local user needs to displaying a synchronised presentation delivered in the atrium – while also making the audio in each room shift from playing local content to syncing with the microphone of the central presenter? How do you do all of this in the software layer, in the cloud? Our solution solved this significant complexity.
- The media room: the curved screen is something special – but also dimensionally challenging. Our software needed to handle the new dimensions and definition levels required to run content optimally.
- The remote application is a tablet version of the end-user interface – mounted in each room – to enable rapid switching between use cases.
State-of-the-art digital screens
There are 20 screens installed on the floor. Most notable is the first commercial installation in NZ of the Samsung Wall – an X by Y latticework of screens that enables very high definition content to be played on a very large canvas. This is the focal point of the atrium.
The X by Y curved screen is located in the media room. This creates an impressive environment and integrates technology similar to a TV studio to enable broadcast quality background video to be combined in the live feed.
Our design team
Whether it be the first commercial install of the Samsung Wall, the giant curved screen in the media room, or the in-roof 98-inch screen in the boardroom, this project needed our design team.
The nature of doing something this bespoke is that it pushes the boundaries. How do you make sure that the Wall has less than a 2 mm deviation from side to side? How do you hang a 98-inch panel from the ceiling and make it earthquake-proof? How do you get all of this in the lift so you can get it onto the floor?
Sorting this was the job of our designers. And we nailed it.