The Official Poken Blog

Online blogs and digital media benefit from easy feedback systems, such as “starring videos” on Vimeo and YouTube, and “liking” blog posts, pictures and other media with the simple click of a mouse. This feedback is invaluable to the content creator, and it plays an important role in the viral spread of information.

In the event world, traditional surveys are paper-based, which makes them inflexible and time-consuming to evaluate. They often result in inconsistent data, as participants are asked to provide feedback in bulk, rather than gradually, as they experience the event. Electronic based feedback systems have overcome some of these problems, but to be effective, they need to be simple, inviting, and user-friendly. For the organizer, deploying a feedback system needs to be uncomplicated, fast, flexible and reliable.

In November 2011, Swisscom – Switzerland’s leading telecommunications provider – was looking for a new way to get real-time feedback at its annual innovation fair (INOfair). The organizers wanted a feedback system that would provide effortless evaluation of the demos presented at 45 booths. In addition, they wanted to engage participants through an interactive game to increase participation in its visitor survey.

By using a series of “starred” pokenTAGs placed on each demo kiosk, Swisscom used Poken’s platform to obtain instant feedback from the 900+ visitors. Equipped with a Swisscom branded poken, participants could “like” or “star” the exhibits by simply touching the appropriate tag. Visitors could also use their poken to collect information about the innovations, and to exchange their contact details with each other.

The experience, for the participant, was much like browsing media on the Web. They walked around, looked at different exhibits, and “touched” here and there to vote on the ones they liked.

Each demo booth had 5 pokenTAGs: 4 for voting and 1 for “liking” the demo on Facebook. Using Poken’s Leaderboard Widget, a set of big-screen TVs displayed attractive infographics with the survey results, in near real-time, showing the ranking of the most popular demos and the most active participants, who were rewarded for their level of engagement.

The stats stored in the pokenTAGs were downloaded periodically by event staff by simply touching each tag with an Android phone equipped with Poken’s Mobile Admin App for event managers. Using Near Field Communication technology, the phone offloads the data, within seconds, when it touches a tag. The data is synced wirelessly and appears instantly on the dynamic graphics projected on the TV screens.

Since November, many other customers have used Poken’s platform as a voting and feedback system. During its Research Center Events (Helsinki, Beijing, San Francisco), Nokia used Poken’s Leaderboard Widget to enable visitors to rate their favorite speakers and demos, as well as to collect digital information. To further engage visitors, Nokia used game mechanics and rewarded the most active participants.

Check out the Poken experience at INOfair 2011 and at the Nokia Research Center Event by watching the video bellow.