How to stop architects ruining MTRs before you begin work
A scoring system for architects in the WELL building standard can be used by AV professionals to improve building design, says MTR consultant Greg Jeffreys.
The WELL building standard is “a fantastic tool that can be used to deal with the bigger structural issues that we face in Teams Rooms and hybrid workspaces”.
That’s the verdict of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) consultant Greg Jeffreys, speaking on AVTV at ISE 2023.
The WELL building standard has been put together by the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), which is committed to improving health and wellbeing.
It does so through a standard that has been adopted by more than 2,000 companies, including more than 100 of the Fortune 500 – the biggest companies in the US.
The second version of the standard deals with 10 concepts: air, water, nourishment, light, movement, thermal comfort, sound, materials, mind and community.
Jeffreys cautions that WELL “is not a magic wand”, but it is something he will be paying particular attention to in 2023, as the second version of the standard is even more applicable to the issues that can confound the effectiveness of hybrid spaces before AV professionals get to work.
“There are a lot of really nice things about WELL which point in the right direction,” he says. “First of all, what they’ve done, by and large, is to collate existing environmental, building and lighting standards and put them into one wrapper in a holistic way. Second, some of the standards they have overlap with AVIXA standards, so that gives you a bit of traction.”
Helpfully, there is a lot of interest from outside the AV community in looking after people’s health and wellbeing within the built environment.
“But the real thing is that there is a scoring system and architects can get additional brownie points from AV professionals. So instead of possibly being the enemy, as they have been regarded in the past, AV professionals can actually help architects get even higher room scores.”
Asked about the current state of MTR design and installation, Jeffreys says it has got better since the “car crash” days early in the pandemic.
His interaction with the AV User Group and its consultants group, with the LTSMG and SCHOMS, had shown there was much more awareness of the issues involved.
“And then the pre-sales teams at leading integrators have shown a lot of commitment to improving the way these spaces are executed,” he says.
But there are two main areas in which people can still go wrong, even though there are “manifold ways in which people can shoot themselves in the foot”. The two areas are room configuration and the remote viewer’s experience.
“You can’t sidestep having to have the room designed well and thought through,” says Jeffreys.
This could mean consideration of table layouts, for example. “People would like to use rectangular tables for historic reasons, but if you are going to face effectively outside the room, then you have to move to a tapered or semi-circular table.”
Room lighting is quite often “a massive fail”, he adds. And this is where the longstanding issues that impact spaces, involving architects and other building professions, rear their head.
“I’m not being critical of the industry because the problem with organisations is that they are so heavily siloed,” says Jeffreys. “And so it is facilities management or building management that will often control the lighting, which can destroy the user experience in all kinds of ways.”
Jeffreys says you have to accept the situation as it is and start from there. “One of my clients calls me his translator because I am able to communicate with architects, lighting designers and facilities management in a language they understand,” he says.
The answer to overcoming longstanding problems is complex but it is “as much about being a communicator and a politician as anything else”.
And this is where Jeffreys’ experience of working with disparate groups of people on the board of AVIXA is useful – he was on the board from 2008 to 2013 and was president in 2012 when the organisation was still known as InfoComm.
“I’ve done all sorts of things over my career but the thing that definitely gave me the most pleasure was when I was volunteering at a high level at InfoComm on the board. The thing that I loved about it was it gave me the ability to work with a bunch of smart, nice people from all sorts of backgrounds and cultures,” he says.
It is at this point that he goes on to say that at a practical level, the big thing that will make a difference to the structural issues in organisations is the WELL standard.
This is not before discussing the second big area where organisations can go wrong with MTRs – the remote viewer experience.
“There’s a natural focus on making the room that you are designing fantastic for the users in there, but so often people forget how important it is that the experience is good on the other side of the fourth wall,” says Jeffreys.
Developments in camera systems on show at ISE 2023 will help enormously with this task. Here we are talking about cameras that have the lenses and 6K sensors now available. We are also talking about the much-trumpeted AI functionality that will see AI acting as the film director in the room for the remote viewer.
“You will see developments, not just in the technology and all the brands that are launching products, but in the way they are used, and in the imagination and courage to use them in different ways.”
Jeffreys is at ISE 2023 to demonstrate a projection solution for MTRs on the Epson stand, consisting of a 10,000 lumens 4K projector and a DNP Supernova ambient light-rejecting screen.
And he tackles the subject not just of how projection can provide the bigger screen sizes needed for MTR Signature Rooms but of how to do projection well in meeting rooms – a subject that is not as well understood as perhaps it should be.
Projection has changed with the move to laser, phosphor technology and 20,000 hours of maintenance-free life. There is maintenance software, so that you can monitor a projector in the same way you would a panel. But there is still a need to think about projection differently.
“For projection to work well, the whole process has to be flipped around 180°,” says Jeffreys. Traditionally, AV professionals might look at a space and start by suggesting that it needs a 6,000 or 8,000 lumens projector.
“That’s the wrong way round and it misses the basic point,” he adds. “People don’t look at projectors – they look at screens.”
The right process is to start by describing what the user experience needs to be in hard metrics, including candelas per square metre and the contrast ratio, and then use AVIXA standards to work out what the screen size should be. Then, choose a screen material, depending on application. Finally, using stylus-based calculators, you can decide upon the projector specification needed.
For an MTR display of the type shown on the Epson stand at ISE, the screen material needs to be black until projected light hits it.
“That’s why what we’ve been showing on the Epson booth has been so transformative for people’s expectations about projection because we’ve done it that way round,” says Jeffreys.
He also makes an even bolder claim. “Had projection not existed, and it was being launched at this show as a new technology, people would be knocked out by it,” he asserts.
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Posted: 23rd March 2023