Atmos Energy Corporation, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, is the United States’ largest natural-gas-only distributor, serving about three million customers in over 1,400 communities in eight states. It’s no surprise that they would have numerous meetings, training sessions and other events where people need to find where they’re going quickly. They were already using Visix digital signage software for daily communications and wanted comprehensive event wayfinding for their Charles K. Vaughn Center. Visix Creative Services stepped in with a solution.
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The Visix RoomBoard™ is a pre-packaged interactive wayfinding solution that shows space availability, maps event listings to rooms, and can even allow room booking right at the screen. Room availability is instantly clear, with available rooms in green and booked rooms in red. The number of available rooms is also displayed prominently at the top of the screen.
- Combine wayfinding, directories and event schedules
- See room availability instantly with color coding
- Direct staff and visitors to their meeting rooms
- Include full-kiosk support for booking at the RoomBoard™
- Branded to the client’s specifications
The RoomBoard™ can be further customized with QR codes to get more information or turn-by-turn directions, as well as a voice user interface for touchless interaction.
Visix started with the RoomBoard™ package and customized it for the Charles K. Vaughn Center. Landscape interactive touchscreens show a branded floor map of the Center that includes an easy-to-read You Are Here icon, and custom icons for entrances and exits, restrooms, defibrillators, the center’s five tornado shelters, a landline telephone and a breakroom. Each type of location is color coded for easy identification. Above this, the current date and time are displayed as attractors to draw people’s attention as they go past.
On the right, there a list of the day’s current events. Each event includes a start time, the name of the event and which room it’s in. The list can be sorted by any of these three categories. Each room has a number as well as a name, which makes remembering the destination easier for the visitor.
Since there can be a lot of things happening on a single day, large up and down buttons help visitors and employees scroll through the listings. These are at the bottom of the screen, so they’re ADA compliant. Once a destination or event is selected, a Map It button draws a line path appears on the map, leading from the digital sign (at the You Are Here icon) to the destination, taking the quickest and most direct route.
The event listings are tied into the center’s Microsoft Exchange calendar system, keeping space booking and schedule adjustments easy and centralized. When something is changed or updated in Exchange, it automatically feeds into the event schedule of the screen. Since each field is mapped to one of the three categories in the listing, the start time, event name and even location can be changed at a moment’s notice.
Atmos is proud of their Charles K. Vaugh Center, named after the company’s founder, which is where they conduct their technical training, allowing workers to get certified or recertified on a regular basis. Part of this state-of-the-art facility is called Gas City, a simulated community containing dwellings and commercial buildings along streets that have infrastructure for delivering natural gas where it’s needed. There’s also a reconfigurable Flow Lab that creates realistic simulations of conditions technicians might encounter in the field. People can get more information about the history and sub-facilities at the Charles K. Vaughn Center by scanning a QR code on the RoomBoard™.
Recognized as one of America’s Best Employers, Atmos is proud to be people focused. By adding streamlined event wayfinding, they’re continuing to focus on modernizing their communications and creating a better visitor experience.