Ascender.

•

Ascender.

Ascender is a student project that explored the design of Self Service experience for hotels. The result is an elegant enclosure for a touch display interface that is coupled to a wall via an arm. A solution that is somehow familiar yet surprisingly unconventional.

The minimal yet highly functional form is a result of strict constraints.The entire enclosure can be quickly and efficiently milled in a three axis CNC mill with few tools. There was also an emphasis on arriving at a visually balanced and well proportioned design, the size of which can be responsively scaled to meet the demands of other product development disciplines like engineering, UI/UX etc.

The proposed touch interface has a 25 inch LCD or OLED screen with a square aspect ratio. This is attached to an arm link (of length 1.5x times the length of the display enclosure) which in turn attaches to a vertical wall approximately 1.3 meters above the floor. This configuration allows the display to be comfortably accessed by a broad range of users. The main enclosure features a credit card reader on the bottom, a camera on top, an NFC antenna centred underneath the screen and can house additional sensors if necessary depending on the what the service demands. The pin joints holding the mechanism are calibrated to have just enough friction to hold position. All essential cables are routed from the wall, through the arm into the enclosure.

The generously open and gusseted vent holes on the bottom and top allow air to convect through the internal electronics and hence remove heat passively. The array of slots on the bottom of the back also take in air while also housing speakers underneath. The back features a mounting plate that conforms to the VESA mounting standards, adding to the versatility of use cases.