British Council Kuala Lumpur

When we received a request from British Council Kuala Lumpur to supply them with a trolley that allowed them to transport their wireless laptops from class to class, store them securely and even recharge them in between use. We began by looking at the issues and complaints their end users, the teachers had. We found the following:

• Their current solution, a metal cabinet on small casters, with basic internal shelving to hold laptops and chargers was too heavy and did not have handles to help move it around.

• All the wheels on this unit could swivel around to enable maximum maneuverability but also produced a trolley with a mind of its own, making it very difficult to push in a straight line, especially when fully loaded.

• Each trolley required three keys to lock and unlock. One to access the laptops, one to access the peripherals and one to access the charger incase teachers wanted to take a laptop and charger set out. We calculated that given the number of trolleys in service and the number of teachers that used the trolleys, management would have to cut over 240 separate keys! Additionally, in order to maintain full security, a single teacher losing a key or faulty lock would require many keys to be re-cut too.

• The locks fitted to the original trolley was also not sturdy enough to deter theft.

• Teachers sometimes forget to plug the trolley into the mains to recharge laptops.

• Teachers could not be sure which trolley had equipment that was fully charged.

• Teachers sometimes forget to unplug to cable from the mains before pushing off, causing the plug to become damaged over time.

• Trolleys are difficult to identify and reference. Thus making booking and use management difficult.

Although none of these issues made it completely impossible to run a wireless mobile classroom system we realized that without well designed equipment suited for the actual needs of the end users, the teachers/end users would soon become dissatisfied with the whole concept and not benefit fully from this new teaching initiative.
ToWS Dynamics began to address as many of the end user issues as possible to come up with a full or partial solution, in the hopes that any improvement on this product would mean success both for our customers and us.

After a period of R&D and product development ToWS Dynamics managed to supply our customer with the i-Push™ Hummingbird, so named because it was small, lightweight and moved around from class to class with ease.
The i-Push™ Hummingbird’s list of features developed for actual end user needs:

• Lightweight – The current models are constructed with 6063 grade Aluminium and high impact polycarbonate to produce a strong and low dry weight combination. Approx 45kg dry weight.

• Available in 11 bright colours to facilitate a colour coding system for easy trolley booking and management.

• Keyless digital locking system secures all equipment in a secure housing, keyless locking provides a significant benefit to education users because they do not need to cut huge numbers of keys for each teacher and teachers don't have to carry bunches of keys to access equipment.

• Ergonomically designed handles make it easy for a wide range of user heights to push trolley.

• Significantly reduced ‘tractive/rolling resistance’ compared to other laptop trolleys, this means it is much easier to push from standstill and keep moving.

• Superb handling characteristics means no more uncontrollable 'supermarket trolley' effect, found with other trolleys.

• Our trolleys will conveniently channel mains power to, or recharge all equipment at the same time via its power distribution system inside.

• Easy to monitor charging status and count laptops.

• The i-Push™ Hummingbird model has space for up to 12 laptops and 24 full sized headphones or can even be configured to hold other peripherals like printers and projectors.

MacAsia

A reseller for Apple Computer Products, involved in supplying computer equipment to the education market in Asia requested for a trolley capable of holding double the number of laptops, a printer and scanner to be used in a typical primary and secondary school classroom.

We knew from experience that designing a trolley that could take a very large number of laptops and equipment would end up being too bulky and too stressful for the end user. 20 laptops alone or 16 laptops, if one medium sized printer and one standard sized scanner included would be the maximum payload. We also planned to develop another smaller trolley in parallel that only held 16 laptops. This would mean that both trolleys used together could serve 32 students and still give them access to printing and scanning instantly in any give classroom.

Furthermore, a keyless locking function would be essential as it would also be accessed by many different teachers. We also knew that the students themselves would be the ones unloading the laptops and then loading them back again after the lesson which is a time critical issue as this activity impacts on the remaining class time left. To address this issue we designed our trolley so it could be accessed by as many students as possible at the same time, not just one pair of hands. Thus greatly reducing the time it takes to deploy all laptops.

Customization Example:

Seen here is an example of a virtual mock-up we produced to propose new configurations to meet customer’s special requirements.