Client
The Pokémon Company
Year of Completion
2020
Size of Project
43 meeting rooms
Location
Minato City, Tokyo, Japan
The Pokémon office’s conference room had three types of meeting solution platforms in use – Google Meet, Zoom Rooms and Poly Video Conferencing. Media Plus, the GPA team in Japan, was tasked with combining all three solutions into one for a total of 43 rooms with the goal to expand to the remaining meeting rooms.
There were two distinct challenges with the Pokémon office project with both challenges heavily impacting user experience.
Firstly, there were a total of three remote controls scattered across the conference table area due to the number of platforms in use. One for the monitor, one for Google Meet, one for the Poly Video Conferencing, and then the iPad control for Zoom. This made the work area look unprofessional, messy, and unorganized, not to mention overwhelming for the person setting up the meeting.
Secondly, there was no feedback from the monitor once it was turned on. Therefore users, unsure if the system was operational or not, would press the power button repeatedly and consequently compromise the function of the monitor.
Media Plus built a pilot room at the beginning of the project to gather feedback from employees and ultimately be in a position to design a standard Pokémon Conference Room. The focus was to create a user-friendly conference room with standardized equipment that would eliminate confusion when using the room.
For the three smaller rooms, a soundbar was added to improve audio performance, while a patented ceiling tile beamforming mic array was used for the larger rooms. A “button type switching box” was used throughout all conference rooms.
The remote-control challenge was also solved by the switching box system, while the ceiling tile beamforming mic array combined the functionality of all remote controls and monitors into one easy solution. In terms of the feedback light for the monitor, the light was programmed to be brighter for a better result overall.
The customer was pleased with the result and the seamless integration of the solution into the meeting rooms.
There were two key outcomes that came out of this project – one for users and one for system administrators.
For the users, the aim was to provide a system that was simple and easy to understand. Initially Media Plus considered an LCD touch panel as a master control but as most people prefer physical buttons, a button type switching box was introduced. Consequently users were immediately comfortable operating the system.
For the system administrators, the quality of video conferencing improved dramatically, the time spent on support was reduced, and efficiency streamlined.
Other G-Suite companies are interested in incorporating this Google Meet offering into their own conference room. In addition, Google Japan have used this case study to demonstrate GPA’s know-how in creating a modern and functional workspace.
