This summer we took part in a project to carry out recreational activities with gift awards in the stands of Telefonica in the Feria Internacional de Muestras de Asturias (FIDMA, International Trade Exhibition of Asturias).

The action was intended to mount a series of stands where visitors to the exhibition could perform multiple game activities. For each activity, the participant got a score based on skills demonstrated during the activity.

After harvesting the total score of all activities, participants were able to pick up their gifts which changed depending on the number of points obtained in the different activities.

Conductiva has been responsible for developing the control software in the various activity stands and gift stands.

Here we present some of the technical challenges we faced and the solutions we applied in each case.

CHALLENGE 1: Provide software installation and software updates at multiple spots

The software should run on multiple computers (several computers were needed to record the points the participants were getting on each activity and two computers at the awards area where gifts had to be delivered). All had to be linked with a common database. Each computer also needed to have specific functionality depending on the activity it was assigned to.

Due to the short time we had for the development (2-3 weeks), we had to foresee that the software could even suffer changes once the system was already running. In that case, we had to find a way to speed up the software updates in the computers located in Asturias. And, taking into account that our development team was distributed between Vic and Madrid, the installation and configuration of software updates could grow into a major problem if they were not done automatically.

Solution

Assemble a management tool based entirely on web so that:

1. All computers (about 10 computers) located at different points of the exhibition only needed a web browser to run. The cost of installing the software was being reduced to 0.
2. The installation of the entire application was carried out remotely and without physical presence in the data center located in Madrid.
3. Software updates could be done without stopping the activity of the event which was frantically every day.

CHALLENGE 2: Speed up data entry and minimize the possibility of human error

In each of the stands a responsible person was required for entering the scores that participants succeeded in each of the activities.

At the gifts stand, another person had to take care of marking which gifts were delivered and updating the remaining stock.

Due to the high turnout expected, the software had to be quick handling and human error free.

Solution

A mechanism based on bar code identifiers was developed for which it was only necessary to have a bar code reader in each of the stands and there was no need to use the computer keyboard. This decision accelerated enormously the management of activities and significantly reduced the possibility of human error.

Thus:

1. Bar code IDs were created for each of the participants who wanted to take part in the game
2. each activity had a bar code associated with each of the scores to be assigned to the participant depending on his skills (5, 10, 15, 20 points, etc.) plus an additional cancellation code in case any registered score were incorrectly allocated.

At all times, the software was checking that the participants would only receive a single score for each activity.

The fact of having the software hosted on the Internet also provided an easy remote configuration for gifts and activities. From anywhere, the manager (duly authenticated, under a secure connection) could control the list of gifts, remaining stocking units and decide whether it was necessary to replace some gifts that were running low, and so on.

The software worked perfectly during all days and activities had a great success of participation.

All software development was carried out using our software package CIS Framework.