OTTAWA, Nov. 30, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ChargeItSpot has tapped Design 1st, one of the most prolific full-service product design-engineering firms across North America, to help design ARC, a mobile device management solution built to charge, secure, and manage enterprise devices.
ARC is a revolutionary workplace device management solution - an elegant and modular kiosk that focuses on devices, made by companies like Zebra and Honeywell, which retail and field workers use to complete core job functions. The ARC solution includes secure lockers for charging employee devices while providing intelligent connectivity to track, secure, and manage those devices.
The company recently won the esteemed A'Design Award 2022 in the Business Appliance Category for its unique, practical, and robust approach to device management. Its kiosks are now available to employees in major retail locations across North America such as Sam’s Club.
Sheri Tate, Senior Vice President of Product Strategy at ARC’s parent company ChargeItSpot, expressed the company's motivation to create a solution allowing seamless device management, charging, and security for employee devices. Tate said, “It became very clear to us how frustrating it can be for organizations to invest heavily in these employee devices only to have them lost, stolen, or destroyed within a year. Thus, we closely collaborated with our clients to understand their needs for this solution, aiming to create a mobile device management kiosk that would be immensely valuable to retailers and other industries.”
Tate continued, highlighting the design firm's commitment to making the ARC concept a reality: “Design 1st assisted us at every stage of the design process, from creating a conceptual design to a more detailed one. They also supported us with engineering changes, production, and procuring components for our prototype.”
Pre-Production in Five Months’ Time
ARC approached Design 1st with the concept of an enterprise mobile device management kiosk. This innovative kiosk was designed to contain a variety of never-before-seen features. These included a touch screen equipped with an intuitive user interface for both employees and managers, a backup battery to ensure operation during power outages, and a scanner allowing employees to scan their badges and devices, facilitating accountability through role-based access and enabling managers to track device usage.
The clincher, however, was that ARC required the pre-production prototype in five months. “We knew we only had a small amount of time to leverage both innovation and technical expertise that would ultimately guide ARC from initial design to prototype, testing, and mass production. We are so proud of our team as not only did we deliver on time, but in the past year,
ARC has also garnered several design accolades and secured nationwide contracts with major enterprise customers,” says Kevin Bailey, President and CEO at Design 1st.
During the development phase, the Design 1st team confronted a series of design hurdles as they navigated the complexities of the physical security of the kiosk, wireless connectivity, simultaneous device charging, and user compliance.
Additionally, they had to ensure the testing locker window size and materials would allow the Wi-Fi 2.4, 5.0 GHz signals to actually work inside metal lockers as well as analyze airflow dynamics using virtual thermal simulations, leading to an active heat dissipation design for concurrent device charging.
In just five months, Design 1st's innovative design and engineering expertise played a pivotal role in bringing ARC, a groundbreaking mobile device management solution, to life. This partnership between ChargeItSpot, Design 1st, and the success of ARC marks a significant milestone in the evolution of mobile device management for the retail industry, offering businesses an invaluable solution to seamlessly safeguard and empower their employee devices.
For more information, please visit ExperienceARC.com.
About Design 1st:
Design 1st is one of the most trusted full-service product design firms across North America, with over 25 years of expertise, 1,000 products developed, and 130 client patents assigned across a wide range of industries. As a design partner to innovative companies from Startups to Enterprises, the firm leverages core competencies in human behavior, industrial design, mechanical engineering, electronics engineering, embedded firmware, and manufacturing setup. Design 1st has helped clients transform their physical ideas into commercialized hard goods products across a variety of industries.
About ARC
ARC™ (Asset Recharge Center) is a smart-locker system that manages company-owned handheld devices that employees use to do their jobs. Handheld devices are a critical productivity driver for team members. However, they go missing at an alarming rate, frequently become non-functional and are encumbered by processes that consume time from team managers. ARC’s tech-enabled mobile device management solution is designed to minimize waste around this deceptively costly problem.
Headquartered in Philadelphia, ARC is a division of ChargeItSpot, which offers free and secure phone charging stations for some of the biggest brands in the world. Since its founding in 2011, ChargeItSpot stations have saved millions of consumers from dying phone batteries, while driving value for retailers through increased sales, enhanced marketing efforts, and an elevated in-store shopping experience.
Media Contact:
Kent Borden-Ha
Firecracker PR for Design 1st
(888) 317-4687 ext. 708
kent@firecrackerpr.com
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/bb26b27f-4d76-41c1-8650-aa74650f2485
