Hi Charlotte,

These days it should be as easy as buying any other piece of PC software. If you can use an off-the shelf package, as you do for almost everything else, it just does what it says on the tin with no risk or uncertainty, providing known functions at a known fixed cost. It should be simple enough for any normal PC user to set up professional displays using what they already know. Better still, packaged software is future-proofed because the software company is responsible for keeping it working and even upgrading it over time, instead of you bearing that cost, risk and responsibility.

We’ll be really happy to loan you a copy of InfoAktiv to try out with your content and audiences. You can see if it does what you need without making any commitment.

To answer your question about budgeting, I can only answer for InfoAktiv. There are various ways of buying it depending on the number of screens you want to support. If you already have the content you want to display and suitable hardware, the ‘worst case’ for a single stand-alone screen with a ‘One-Time-Charge’ software license, some time from us or one of our partners (we are very open and encourage working with other companies and designers) to build the system, create graphics, upload content, train your team and provide a year of ongoing support (including remote access if the systems can be networked) would be under £4k. You can do all of the set-up in house to save even more money. We have one museum whose volunteers are currently building a touch screen display with about 10,000 items on it for less than £3k. If you want to create new content, that is of course a major variable, but at least you are investing in what matters rather than paying smart, creative people to reinvent the wheels that display it.

Those costs can sound too good to be true to people who are used to doing things the traditional way, but times change. This standard package has evolved and been upgraded for over a decade now. People who bought a Windows XP version for their square touch screens ten years ago can still use the same content on the latest Windows 10 widescreen today and onwards into the future. The tried and tested software has clocked up well over a million hours of run-time at over 99.99% availability, running hundreds of different displays - and it has never exceeded the quoted price.

Sorry, I’m getting carried away now! – Basically we’d love to help.

To balance this, no piece of software will do everything and some things will still need a bespoke solution, but the majority of displays need a simple, dependable platform to present a similar range of types of information. That’s where the standard InfoAktiv program fits in. We like to let people try InfoAktiv before buying it to be confident that it will do everything they need.

I hope we can be of assistance.

Kind regards,

Dave.

Hi folks,

I’m writing a design brief for a redevelopment of our interactive touch screens in the Polar Museum. I’ll be looking for somebody to develop a user-friendly CMS that our team can use to update content as required (albeit on our currently non-networked machines) and for them to design an attractive user interface for our visitors to interact with.

I know I’m in ‘how long is a piece of string’ territory, but I don’t have a good sense of what type of budget to attach to the project. I wondered if anybody could share examples of similar projects and what the budgets were for them so that I can figure out a sensible figure to work to.

Thanks very much,

Charlotte

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