The challenge
Juniverse's problem is movement. Children aged 6 to 14 have to get into the entertainment area and out of it again, and into attractions that fill up, in a park that runs its own governing system — and logistically, the Digital Companion on a child's wrist and the readers it is scanned on are crucial to all of it. A scan admits a child or lets them leave, gets them into an attraction, or books them entry for later if it is currently full. The same scan returns information about that attraction.
A themed venue is not a fixed installation, though. Zones get reprogrammed, attractions change and events come and go, so the way a reader answers a tap could not be frozen into firmware on the day it was mounted. And the whole interaction had to work for a child, first time, without instruction.
The work
The readers
The readers are the fixed half of that pair. Brightly lit and eye-catching, wall-mounted or free-standing, every one of them shares the same hexagonal shape and the same bright blue light. Each has internal and external speakers, makes a chirping sound and changes colour when it is activated, and connects to the central computing system over wifi, Ethernet and USB. What it reads is NFC — the short-range RFID technology in the Companion that lets it communicate with the readers throughout the park.
Tekt developed the connected reader solution around an Intel Edison compute module, which is what put wifi and a full software stack inside a unit small enough to sit behind a hexagonal faceplate. The audio and visual response to a tap is rich, and it is programmatically controllable from the central service system: the cues a reader gives can be reconfigured for a new attraction or a new event rather than being fixed in firmware at install.
The readers were designed and mounted to be ergonomic for children ranging from 6 to 14 years old, including those who use wheelchairs.
The Companion and its docks
Tekt created the Companion with Adabisc and the industrial design firm Catapult Design: a modified Android phone with an 8MP camera, dual vibration motors, a waterproof speaker, a 280mAh battery, and a three-axis accelerometer and gyroscope, with LEDs on the sides and top and pinhole Power and Update buttons on the rear so they cannot be triggered by accident. Being Android-based, the Companion could give a child feedback and an interface of its own rather than relying on the reader for everything.
Tekt also designed and created the charging docks that go with it — 25 Companions to a dock, which is how a venue turns a wearable into something staff can actually hand out at the start of a day.
Manufacture and handover
Tekt built 250 custom reader units for the deployment, enough to fit out the site being installed. The client then engaged a contract manufacturer in Asia to take the wristband further and produce the volumes it wanted for the future, and Tekt handed the design over at that point, having met the quantity the venue needed. The design data pack went with it: the client owns what Tekt designs for it, which is what makes a handover to a third-party manufacturer a normal step rather than a negotiation.
About the client
Adabisc is a marketing agency in Qatar, and it was Adabisc that commissioned the work and brought Tekt in — the end venue is Juniverse, at Doha Festival City. Tekt did not follow the launch up; the team moved on to other work in Australia and overseas, so this page records what was built and delivered rather than how the park performed. Adabisc went on to further marketing partnerships and has since been acquired as part of an expansion into overseas markets.
