As always, more and more companies are working on creating virtual assistants, apps, and solutions which help streamline meeting schedules, set-ups, and connectivity challenges.
Visionect is also entering this space; its 6-inch E ink tablets can be mounted on meeting room doors, displaying if there is a session going on – and then allowing users to mark-in/schedule a new meeting. The device also works in perfect sync with online calendars, over Wi-Fi. Joan’s extended device family covers a range of sizes, with the largest at 13-inch, meant for educational usage.
Interestingly, Joan was exclusively designed for room booking management, and works by connecting with Wi-Fi ecosystems, tracking online calendars currently in use, and offers easy installation, with zero need for any cables or wires, attaching itself easily to any surface.
Inside the Joan Meeting Assistant
Here are Joan’s primary features:
- Joan is pegged as an eco-friendly and environmentally-conscious digital door label; this means it works with optimized power consumption. as a result, the product uses almost 99% lesser power than its competitors, ensuring robust energy savings.
- Joan’s plug & play feature, means it is designed exactly for what it does – label meeting rooms, with support for standard calendars, such as Office 365, Google Apps, Microsoft Exchange, and iCal.
- Joan enables fool-proof signage with its state-of-the-art tech, with an E ink e-paper displaying mechanism, and is billed as the culmination of several years of R&D, delivering 180-degree viewing angles, superior visibility, and zero glare, working just as smoothly even in direct sunlight.
- Joan, as mentioned was engineered to making meetings seamless and well coordinated, and was the recipient of the Red Dot Award for its advanced product design in 2016.
While it may be true, that several such products occupy the market, Visionect suggests that Joan’s USP is its ability to be easily mounted across office locations, and its low-on-power functionality, allowing each such tablet to keep working for around three months with just a single charge. This makes the device hassle-free and geared to fit in perfectly with contemporary office settings.
The product line-up starts at €449 for the basic Joan Manager, which is a little steep for its segment. At this markup, one can easily purchase an old iPad mini, set it up, and simply download a meeting app.
UC Today Review – is Joan what you’re looking for?
Really, the only challenge for the product is the price-point, which could definitely be a deal-breaker. That said, the device does come with an impressive 12 weeks of battery life (minimum) on a single charge. Given Joan’s simple, user-focused, and sustainable approach, a later edition that’s billed more intelligently, could prove to be a genuine game-changer.
