Steelcase is known within the office furniture industry for its commitment to innovation and reputation for quality. As collaborative office spaces are becoming more connected and automated, Steelcase has continually ratcheted up it's offerings in the Internet of Things and cloud-enabled device space. We took full advantage of our role as Steelcase's I.D. firm of choice to update, upgrade, and uplift the RoomWizard scheduling and wayfinding device.
We designed the RoomWizard with the future in mind. Contract furniture products are typically created with a 10-12 year shelf life and often remain in an office space environment for decades. So, RoomWizard not only needs to function well and look beautiful now, it also needs to do so well into the 2030s and beyond. We gave RoomWizard more function and a futuristic look by decoupling the primary signal lighting (which indicates whether a conference room is available or busy) from the device housing by "floating" it around the perimeter of the device on the edge of the display glass. This is a significant functional benefit as the lighting can be viewed from all sides of the product and can be seen from much further away than competitive products. The indirect edge lighting is also more subtle with less glare and hotspots than the direct LED signal indication of competitive products. The RoomWizard also appears to levitate and look much lighter and thinner when mounted because of the larger glass display bezel and the reduced size and angular surfacing of the rear enclosure. Visually decoupling the lighting from the device helped us emphasize the high-resolution display and interface for clear and direct interaction with the RoomWizard.
Our RoomWizard design had to be backward compatible with existing mounting hardware and had to play well with Steelcase's proprietary V.I.A. wall system. The client also wanted to reduce overall tooling costs and simplify mounting for the many installation scenarios that a third party installer or I.T. person might encounter. We achieved this by getting rid of all external accessory mounting brackets and incorporating knock-out panels with internal attachment points into the molded plastic device enclosure for mounting to drywall or to a metal V.I.A. wall frame extrusion. For glass mounting we redesigned the pressure sensitive adhesive area to be a thin perimeter band instead of a large circle of adhesive as on past devices. This eliminated bubbling and substantially reduced the visual impact of the adhesive area on the glass as viewed from behind.
Since the mechanical mounting features of the RoomWizard are justified to one side of the enclosure assembly, we took advantage of the Android-powered software and allowed the device to automatically rotate and reconfigure the screen when the RoomWizard is horizontally mounted left or right, or installed vertically. This offers the customer more mounting and display options.
