Johnson Controls' OpenBlue Innovation Center - Milwaukee is an engaging, interactive environment showcasing the company's smart building technologies. Leveraging virtual reality, RFID technology, immersive settings and extensive interaction, it effectively demonstrates to customers how products can optimize their unique building environments.
Empowering the Future
Recognizing the crucial role of visualization in understanding the benefits of smart building solutions, Johnson Controls, a global leader in smart building controls, aimed to position its OpenBlue technologies and services as the forefront of future-oriented building management. Situated in Glendale, Milwaukee, the OpenBlue Innovation Center - Milwaukee serves as a platform to showcase products and educate both customers and employees about the advantages of OpenBlue solutions.
The company aimed to utilize experiential technologies to optimize the customer experience in the Center and create an environment for demonstration that would be relevant to customers with diverse building control needs.
Johnson Controls actively pursued a technology solution that would enable customers to see, touch and feel how OpenBlue solutions firsthand. By incorporating tactile elements, customers could witness how these solutions seamlessly integrate into their environments, effectively addressing critical business and environmental challenges.
Immersive environments and virtual reality
The solution for the OpenBlue Innovation Center created an immersive, experiential environment that incorporates virtual reality, high levels of interactivity and personalization and other experiential technologies into an 1800-square-foot space.
Interactive portals
Visitors enter the Center through a series of five portals where sound and light interactions set the stage and build anticipation. The interactive portals depict OpenBlue solutions in different environments., highlighting the many different lives impacted by Johnson Controls. Visitors can trigger audio for each environment. The edge of the portal illuminates, bringing the brand to life in an engaging and impactful way.
Welcome Wall and Interactive Globe
When visitors enter the main space, they encounter a large Nanolumens LED Welcoming Wall with personalized greetings.
In the Open Globe space are two curved Nanolumens LED video walls. The left screen showcases products and solutions in a dynamic, engaging ways and presents ‘sizzle reels’. An interactive touchscreen pedestal by the right screen guides visitors seamlessly through layers of content as they explore OpenBlue solutions.
A large-format, real-time Interactive Globe creates a platform for mapping Johnson Controls’ global footprint. This immersive, multi-touch interactive map shows the locations of innovation centers, customer stories, industry customers, partners and examples of net-zero smart buildings around the world. Visitors can interact with the globe to find out more about specific locations. The software, designed by Fivestone, supports easy updating and management to present the latest global information.
Projected Book
Also by the right screen is an interactive ‘Projected Book' that offers visitors an immersive hands-on product experience. As visitors scroll through the pages, they can explore individual solutions in a format that goes way beyond traditional touchscreens. Utilizing RFID technology embedded in the pages, the book interacts with animated projections, enhancing engagement and providing an immersive learning experience.
A custom RFID tagging system tracks readers’ progress. As they turn pages, animated images and text change dynamically. The Projected Book facilitates an interactive journey, seamlessly blending literature, company history and technology into a visual narrative while educating readers on the company’s commitments to innovation and sustainability.
Interactive Product Explorer
The Interactive Product Explorer makes it easy for visitors to explore Johnson Controls’ vast product, solution and service offering. The solutions are grouped around building types, then organized down to system and application levels. Customers can choose a building type and then drill down to detailed renderings of buildings to examine the solutions that are used within the building. This interactive installation incorporates a centralized Content Management System (CMS) that allows the Johnson Controls team to easily update product and service information.
Interactive touch table
Three modular Pods provide a unique canvas to showcase and demonstrate the company’s diverse range of solutions.
An interactive 40-point touch table in one of the modular pods offers visitors a hands-on journey into the world of Johnson Controls’ OpenBlue digital solutions and how these innovative solutions seamlessly collaborate with and extract valuable insights from the equipment and sensors within buildings. This immersive experience enables guests to explore each solution in-depth, examining the most intricate details and provides opportunities to seek further information on any item of interest
Virtual environments
In another one of the pods, virtual reality enables visitors to engage and interact with OpenBlue technology in a series of realistic environments. The Open Blue Virtual Reality experience gives visitors an engaging, life-like, hands-on experience of the technology in action. Other visitors can simultaneously watch the virtual interaction on a large screen or dive into interactive product support information and related case studies.
Virtual tours in the Theater
The company’s Glendale campus represents a live demonstration of how building technology and design can improve a building’s efficiency and reduce environmental impact. Virtual reality in the Theater takes visitors on an interactive virtual tour and presentation of the smart building facilities throughout the campus. Visitors can experience all of the Glendale campus' smart capabilities through an interactive ‘window’.
Driving positive outcomes
Johnson Controls now has a world-class Innovation Center that is delighting customers and attracting interest from new prospects. The solution helps to differentiate Johnson Controls as pioneers and innovators in the market.
Electrosonic’s experiential technology solution for the OpenBlue Innovation Center has created an engaging, immersive, experiential space that incorporates virtual reality, interactivity and other experiential technologies. The highly personalized experience enables Johnson Controls to relate content to customers’ needs and building environments while the use of virtual reality enables the company to demonstrate OpenBlue solutions in diverse real-world scenarios.
Electrosonic’s solution meets the client’s vision of positioning OpenBlue as the ‘future of smart buildings’ and helps to demonstrate OpenBlue’s ability to create safe, healthy, sustainable buildings in an interactive, immersive experience that engages, informs and inspires customers, partners and employees.
The interactive elements provide an effective solution to showcase OpenBlue solutions and educate customers and employees in the scope and benefits of OpenBlue solutions. Interactivity enables visitors to explore a very large range of solutions in depth through solutions like the Interactive Product Explorer or the 40-point interactive touch table.
Personalization relates content to customers’ needs and building environments while the use of virtual reality enables Johnson Controls to demonstrate OpenBlue solutions in real-world environments.
Experiential technology is an integral part of the customer experience throughout the Innovation Center, enabling the team to demonstrate its services and explain them from an end-user perspective. Virtual reality experiences enable visiting customers to better understand how OpenBlue solutions provide use cases that drive meaningful outcomes in their own environment and how they can solve important business and environmental challenges.
The immersive experience elevates the OpenBlue brand and creates a powerful experience that enables customers, prospects, partners and employees to interact with Johnson Controls and leave with an understanding of the value the company can deliver.
Collaboration was key to delivering the ambitious, wide-ranging contributions of the partners throughout the project. Electrosonic collaborated with the partners to develop, integrate and support an experiential technology solution that creates a dramatic, first-hand demonstration of OpenBlue.
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A collaborative design process
From the outset of the project, Electrosonic actively engaged in the collaborative design process with a large team of partners, including content producers Fivestone Studios, brand strategists and experience designers Hyperquake, exhibit designers Kubik Maltbie and technology partners Nanolumens and Pixera.
Electrosonic’s Technology Design Consultancy team distilled multiple ideas and inputs from the partners to develop a seamless technology design solution that delivered the creative design intent.
The goal was to create an interactive, immersive experience that engages, informs and inspires Johnson Controls’ customers, partners and employees. The solution had to incorporate high levels of interactivity to enable visitors to explore OpenBlue solutions in depth. It also had to be a personalized experience that would relate the content to customers’ specific needs and their diverse building environments.
There were also a number of practical and logistical goals:
- Technology systems had to be utterly reliable and sustainable to align with OpenBlue’s values.
- The vast amount of product-related content had to be easy to navigate and accessible to all visitors.
- The systems had to be easy to controls, update and manage.
Thanks to the close collaboration with the project team, Johnson Controls can now effectively convey their brand story supported by technology. Together, an immersive experience seamlessly integrates education, interaction, sustainability and smart solutions.
