Announcing the latest Launchpad revolution from Sprocket….the iPOS iPad Point of Sale display system that gives the biggest bang for your bucks in a retail environment, exhibition space in fact anywhere an iPad is used in a public environment.
Incorporating the highly secure Launchpad iPad case, this highly flexible and fully demountable iPad stand has been designed to provide additional promotional area around the iPad using high quality vinyl prints that are easily replaced and updated. Power to the iPad is internally routed and the device can be positioned as a movable device on a heavy duty base or fixed to the floor in more permanent deployments.
The iPOS can be further be optioned with illuminated signage, brochure holders, speakers and headsets and is available for ordering now!
Based on design concepts by Hive Creative, Sprocket engineered a customised enclosure for the City of Melbourne Christmas display in the the city square. The aluminium and steel housing was in the form of a giant story book and featured dual hi brightness46″ LCD screens displaying an animationof the story of the nativity in picturebook form. The presentation played day and night leading up to Xmas and was an instant hit with children and adults alike.
Hive Creative also did a wonderful job on the animation and a special thanks also goes to Atco Pickering as the manufacturers who worked tirelessly on the project [check out the video].
The entire project was great success and Sprocket are looking forward to expanding the concept further for the following year.
Ian Wong, that intrepid industrial designer of renown, continues his passionate determination to educate the wider public on the history of Australian design has created a fabulous historical haven of orange Aussie design. Move over Orange People this exhibition is a joyous celebration of product design that works so well I am going out to buy something orange.
Sprocket supplied a Launchpad to secure Ian’s iPad allowing visitors to the Gallery to browse his blog and peruse items not on display [and almost all the items are from Ian's extensive private collection of design classics].
The Orange exhibition is showing October 6th – 28th
Design Gallery
10am-4pm Monday-Friday
Design Institute of Australia
Level 1 – 175 Collins Street, Melbourne
The Art Gallery of NSW is using Sprocket’s Launchpads in their interactive gallery to securely house iPads as part of their Contemporary Art Zone.The Contemporary Art app was developed in house by the Gallery’s IT and design team and is aimed at encouraging visitors to explore a selection of artists and artwork from the contemporary art collection at the Gallery through browsing the app in the
Retailers, exhibitors, galleries, museums now have another iPad enclosure option with the release by Sprocket of its all new totally clear Launchpad secure iPad kiosk.
Listening to its customers the Sprocket design team has worked hard to precision engineer this brand new innovation enabling the fabulous Apple iPad to be seen in all its form and beauty yet fully protected from unauthorised use or theft in a public environment.
Definitely for those who want to show off what they have got..safely and securely. Orders are now being taken for mid November delivery!
A Melbourne Videographer contacted sprocket to assist in a project for the Geelong Gallery. Ryan O’Hehir needed an small, robust ipad enclosure to play video documentaries of local artists at an exhibition at the Geelong Galley. The project called for looped video and audio to be played from a wallmount LaunchPad. In this instance Ryan decided to connect headphones to the LaunchPad to create a ‘listening post’ so that gallery visitors could hear the audio without distracting other gallery patrons.
LaunchPad is ideally suited to this purpose; it is discreet, strong and stylish.
There is not enough room in cyberspace to detail the impact Steve Jobs has had on the way we communicate and the way we engage with the virtual world.
In my small case, it was the iPad that impacted with the force of a supernova on my thinking and my business and sad to say at first it was more a dismissive “this thing hasn’t got a defined user case” that entered my head on day one of its release. How wrong was I [and I am not alone] and how quick did this technology would revolutionise my business direction.
As a designer and manufacturer of interactive kiosk devices for the past 15 years I am on the constant lookout for any new technology that has the capability to redefine the interactive marketplace. 3D technology?..still doesn’t excite…flexible LCD panels?..good but limited use…bigger and bigger LCD panels?…there is a limit to one person’s viewing area. On and on,…new technology releases one after the other and each one less exciting and revolutionary than the previous.
So then the iPad came in my life and lights went on in my head [ok a few people helped turn them on but why spoil a good story]..”the traditional kiosk is dead” I thought or at the very least it was gravely endangered! Why not put the iPad to use as a kiosk? The large lumps of metal and plastic we carefully designed and crafted, winning Design Awards along the way now seemed foolish and clumsy by comparison to the iPad which we safely ensconced in our sleek Launchpad housing.
The iPad kiosk has helped reposition my company and dare I say it, reignited the design passion in me, something that Steve Jobs never lost and for that I alone I am eternally grateful.
As David Pogue said in his great article in the New York Times [see link below]” Steve Jobs, “imitated, never duplicated”
At the recent Food and Wine Show in Melbourne, Fisher and Paykel, the market leader in the design of innovative household appliances, chose Sprocket”s Launchpad iPad kiosks to highlight their new product range. The Launchpad was selected because of it”s elegant yet robust design that perfectly complemented Fisher and Paykel”s sleek product range and provided visitors to the stand with a truly personal retail shopping experience.
The many and varied uses for iPads has even spread to public transport and Sprocket”s Launchpad iPad Kiosk is being deployed ”on the buses” by Redline, Tasmania”s leading bus company. The secure and versatile iPad enclosure developed by Sprocket was selected by the software system developer Bert Post and incorporated as both a self serve ticketing kiosk at the sales counter and an on board 3G powered passenger manifest system.
Sprocket has delivered a new lauchpad to ‘Chess kids’, an organistion dedicated to the popularisation ?of chess as an educational and recreational pursuit for children. Founded in 1997 by David Cordover, Chess Kids worked with 645 schools last year and is the largest chess organisation of any kind in Australia. Sprocket collaborated with David to brand and configure a Freestanding Kiosk for his in-school presentations. The system displays the ‘Chess kids’ own hosted software that is accessed via our PadLock secure browser.
This system tracks and displays the scores of multiple players in chess tournaments. Each time a game is concluded the player enters his result and this can be tracked in real time on the internet. Potentially several LaunchPads configured this way and be placed at a tournament, allowing participants to enter their results quickly at any kiosk. Sprocket went along to observe a tournament at a Victorian Primary school. What was striking was the speed which the school kids worked with the software and hardware. There was no hesitation to interact with LaunchPad; the kids enthusiastically embracing the this new method of chess play.
Sprocket and LaunchPad had a significant presence at the Australian International Motor Show. The LaunchPad iPad kiosk is ideally suited to exhibitions. Companies can feature their own content or run application to perform specific tasks. At this exhibition the iPad LaunchPad Kiosk assisted in helping 6 major car manufactures to deliver their marketing message on over 35 individual LaunchPads. Featured heavily on the Nissan, Mazda, Hyundai, Suzuki and Better Place Australia stands Launchpad integrated seamlessly into these companies overall stand designs.
On the Better Place Australia display sprocket was commissioned to develop software specifically for the event. This software collected valuable marketing information for the company.
Sprocket and Omnecom have recently teamed with Hog’s Breath Cafes at Noosa and Mooloolaba on Australia’s stunning Sunshine Coast to fast track their customer loyalty program right in store where it counts. Using Sprocket’s LaunchPad iPad kiosk solution, Omnecom deployed the Chimpadeedoo mail App with custom graphics to enable customers to sign up for special offers at the point of purchase. The system is so simple and intuitive that it takes no more than a minute to register your name and email address to receive free dining vouchers and other offers on a regular basis.
Phil McKercher, CEO of Omnecom said ” this system empowers the Hog’s Breath franchisee to engage with the customer using the latest technology, provide great value directly to that customer and at the same time building a growing data base of regular clientele, the value of which cannot be underestimated.”
The key to the success of the deployment of the system is Sprocket’s secure and robust LaunchPad enclosures that deliver the message to the customer in an engaging and visually appealing form.
Posted by gerry | Posted in Sprocket News | Posted on 04-10-2011
After spending quite a deal of design time in China including guest lectures at Colleges and Universities, I still am regularly disappointed when I discover blatant ‘interpretation’ of successful international products.
This image is of a television in my hotel room in Shanghai and probably even more surprising than the unashamed alignment of the brand name [certainly not the tag line…] is the fact that a renowned hotel, famed for its Art Deco design would promote this product to its guests.
In my opinion China can and should and must change its international badge from ‘made in China’ to ‘designed and made in China’ if it wishes to value add to its exports. Then and only then will it really become an accredited member of the international manufacturing community and a powerful one at that! I hope that my company here can in some small way contribute to this transformation.
One another note, having invested time and energy into the design of our products, one is always bemused if they are copied by rival companies [and I am not just talking about China] but what is even more annoying is when the copying is done badly…and all the hard part was done for them!
We are not talking about the limited offerings of Motorola or Symbol scanning devices euphemistically termed micro kiosks but fully featured, content rich interactive systems that provide a wide range of customer functions including transactions and are powered by iPad type devices.
Why “iPad type” well, whilst we at Sprocket are certainly avid followers of the Apple train the reality is that most of our clients in the corporate world are PC driven. Swapping platforms to a somewhat restricted OS for an enterprise based micro kiosk solution may prove a bridge too far for many. Add to that the flexibility of peripheral connectivity [at least in a Win 7 world] and the iPad 2 in all its beauty and simplicity may be overrun by the dark side, well at least in some volume critical deployments. We love the new size, weight and cameras of the iPad 2 and for some applications we will take full advantage of these features and the LaunchPad Mk 2 about to be released [see next post] will be no exception!
Our R&D team are working behind securely closed doors to develop the latest in Micro Kiosks so what this blog for latest goss.
Launchpad Mk2
Apple never rests and neither do we! We are about to receive shipment of our updated LaunchPad bristling with new and improved features, many of which came from our many customers and some of course from our hard working design team! A sneak preview will show you that we have added greater flexibility to the fixing of the LaunchPad to desktops and walls; added anti rotation lugs to give even greater protection against damage and developed an optional anti-cutting protection sleeve for the highest level of security. All in all we are very excited with the Mk 2 and even more so when we start shipping them in a few weeks from now.
There are numerous reasons for looking at the iPad as an alternative Micro kiosk?device to traditional pc powered kiosks and one of the primary reasons must be the benefit to the environment.
Greenpeace and others have mounted an environmental argument against the iPad and its various clones but this has less to do with the device itself and more to do with the increased reliance on, and use of, the energy hungry computing cloud centres to communicate with these mobile devices.
What is indisputable however is the green credentials of the iPad manufacture itself when one looks at it’s low embodied energy, material efficiency, minimal use of hazardous substances and recycling strategy. It is simply a leaner device when it comes down to manufacturing credentials compared to incumbent public interactive technologies.
That leaves us with the question of the efficient use of energy during the life of the product and in particular the comparison with current technologies using larger format LCDs, touchscreens and computers in kiosk enclosures. In basic energy terms the iPad in normal operation consumes around 4 watts per hour whilst the traditional kiosk rates at around 150 watts per hour. Over a year of operating 10 hours a day 7 days per week that can equate to an energy saving of 520,000 watts or 520kwh per kiosk which adds up significantly over a deployment of 100 kiosks.
It is hard to mount an argument against the micro kiosk on environmental grounds and add to that the numerous other deployment benefits, it is no wonder the excitement is building.
