Blender collaborated with Visitor Rego to redefine visitor management. VR Flex emerged as a smart kiosk solution, leveraging Blender’s expertise in design and prototyping, enhancing visitor experiences with efficiency and innovation.
EXPERTISE
- Concept Design
- Industrial Design
- Mechanical Engineering
- Prototyping
- Design for Manufacture
- Manufacturing Support
The team at Visitor Rego discovered an opportunity to develop a small tabletop kiosk to add to their line of visitor registration systems. This new product needed to accommodate their unique software, OEM hardware and fit with their current brand identity but differentiate from the typical kiosk look. Blender was tasked to explore concepts which draw the line between a furniture piece and kiosk station. The product needed to look good in an office but also be secure and durable enough to be left unsupervised in hallways and foyers without components being stolen or tampered with.
Given the tight deadline, our design team got straight into it! We took measurements of all the required hardware and started to explore layouts along with early conceptual sketches. Everything in the product needed to be easily exposed so that it’s easy to install, wire and service for an efficient and simple user experience, therefore our concepts explored avenues to allow this. Due to the lower volume production, fabricated sheet metal was the most efficient way to manufacture such items. However, in order to avoid the typical sheet metal box look, we explored using large radius corners to create a more sophisticated design.
To achieve this practically was another issue we needed to solve. The tooling to create that design would require a rather large investment for a low volume production and requires an experienced supplier to achieve a high-quality result. Fortunately, because of Blender’s vast relationships with trusted suppliers, we were able to work with a supplier with the right expertise in this area who have done a similar bend in a sheet metal product before, bypassing any need for tooling investment.
To aid in a better outcome for the final manufacturing stage we sent an assembly report to our supplier outlining the assembly procedure. By doing this, both teams of experts were able to communicate openly and effectively to ensure no mistakes or oversight will occur later in the process and refine our design even more. The Visitor Rego team were able to use the prototypes that were made to gain some real market validation by displaying them at a tradeshow for some buy-in. The feedback was extremely positive, resulting in orders being placed for their new product.
Due to the unique and flexible design of the finished product, we created custom packaging to ensure easy and secure shipping. It’s a complicated product to ship on its own and we wanted a great “out of the box” user experience and for it to not require any assembly before use. The packaging protects the delicate components and guarantees a hassle-free setup. The VR Flex is currently being used in different settings, helping guests enhance their visiting experiences.
