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Why these questions are different
Experience technology is unlike anything else in a building, for three reasons.
- It ages faster than the architecture around it. Hardware lasts five to seven years, software two to three, content a few months. One budget line hides three.
- It changes the owner’s org chart. Someone has to make content, load it, keep it current, and answer the alert at 2 a.m. If that person isn’t on the org chart, the system goes stale.
- It has behavior. A wall doesn’t have states. A screen can be off, idle, overwhelmed by a crowd, or broken, and each of those is a design outcome the room has to survive.
Almost every expensive surprise we have seen on a project traces back to one of those three being discovered late. The questions below surface them early. The test for whether a question belongs here: would you ask it about the lobby stair? If yes, it is an architecture question and already on your list. These are the ones that are not.
Define what we’re actually committing to · Concept
- What are we promising publicly?
- Are we buying a screen, a program, or a capability?
- Whose job is it to feed it?
- What happens when it’s off?
- How long does the hardware need to last?
- How long does the software need to last?
- How often do we need to update content?
- What’s the cost split between hardware, content, and operations?
Make sure the building supports the system · Schematic Design
- Where do people stand, and how far away?
- Does it make people stop? Where does a crowd form, and what does it block?
- Where is the compute, and how far is it from the screen?
- What compute and cooling implications exist?
- What does daylight do to it?
- How is service access preserved?
- Is the system centralized or distributed?
- Does the room still work with the screen dark?
Lock the system logic before procurement · Design Development
- What are its modes, and what switches between them?
- Who makes content, in what tools, how does it reach the screen, and how often?
- What does it do with one person? With thirty?
- What does the public see when it fails?
- Who finds out that it failed first?
- What monitoring is required?
- Who owns operational responsibility? IT, Facilities, Marketing?
Remove ambiguity before it goes out to bid · Construction Documents
- Are we specifying a product or a performance?
- What performance criteria matter? Brightness? Uptime? Latency?
- Where are the seams, and who owns them?
- What is required for commissioning?
- What’s the lead time for parts, and how volatile is pricing?
Make sure it works as intended · Construction Admin → Opening
- Was it tested with real content? A real crowd? And a real environment?
- Are vendors meeting performance criteria?
- Was the appropriate staff hired?
- Has it run for weeks straight?
- Who has the manual? The passwords?
- Have you tried pulling the plug and seeing what happens?
How to use this
Bring the page for the phase you are in to the next coordination meeting. Any question that gets a shrug is a question that will cost money later. The Concept-phase questions are the ones most often skipped and the most expensive to answer late.
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