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PEOPLE FLOW |
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A
warm welcome – from
your elevator – awaits
you when you arrive at
the office in the morn-
ing. It has registered
your movements and
knows exactly when to expect you.
Understanding your craving for caffeine,
it politely waits five minutes while you
visit the coffee shop. Your elevator, in
other words, knows you like an old
friend.
This vision of the not-too-distant
future is painted by
Timo Tiainen
,
Director of Design Solutions at KONE.
“Buildings are getting smarter and more
automated. They can think for them-
selves and respond automatically to
people’s needs.”
Tiainen describes it as inevitable
that offices and residential buildings
will eventually recognize the identity
of their occupants by mobile device
or name tag. “When this happens, the
building can guess where you might be
heading. It then starts to make things
happen for you. It opens doors, turns
on lights and shows you the most
convenient route to your destination.
Everything is done for you without you
even noticing.”
In essence, intelligent systems learn
from our behavior patterns.
This way, please
Intelligent building technology enables
centralized control of everything from
keyless access to temperature, lighting,
and ventilation. This is only the start of
a seismic change underway in building
automation.
“With GPS, people no longer get
lost on city streets, but they still lose
their way inside buildings. Intelligent
guidance is the hottest up-and-coming
trend.”
In the future, intelligent signage sys-
tems will serve as personal navigation
aids just like mobile devices, predicts
Tiainen. “People want easy navigability,
but they also value their privacy: not
everyone wants to provide free access to
their personal device. A face recognition
system may be able to track individuals
without needing to know their identity.”
By taking the stress out of navigation
in public spaces such as malls, intelligent
signage systems will offer abundant new
commercial opportunities.
“Shoppers will be offered personal-
ized tips borrowing strategies from the
internet. After tracking someone who
has just visited three shoe stores, the
system might suggest: Would you like to
see two more shoe stores, or how about
taking a break?”
Touchscreen world
Tiainen and his team of 30 designers in
Finland, Italy, China, India, and Mexico
carry out extensive conceptual research
on megatrends such as urbanization,
population aging, and digitalization.
“Intelligent
guidance is the
hottest up-and-
coming trend.”