Last Tuesday I had the pleasure to visit our coworking space Creative Valley on Utrecht central station. Next to the fact that I was surrounded by many hipsters in a Nedap like office with an exquisite all you can eat lunch for just 4 euro’s, I was pleasantly surprised by the access control experience I got.

I was greeted by a kind receptionist, who showed me around and explained how things work at Creative Valley. Nedap hires 2 glass cubicles with each 4 desks, both accessible via wireless online locks.

“if you plan to visit us more often, I’ll provide you with an app so you can access the building and your workspace” the receptionist lady told me. YES PLEASE, was my immediate rection.

5 minutes later I received the following email with my keys:

CoffeeBreak—Utrecht-v2

The 2 cubicles S0.03-CRE and S0.04-CRE, main entrance and the entrance to the coworking space.

I used the sliders and voila, the cubical opened flawlessly. WOW was my reaction! My immediate second thought; I hope these locks are somehow connected to a blue controller. How cool would that be!

I enquired, and to my disappointment found out that these locks where not connected to a blue controller. Bummer, this would have made a great case study!

However from a user perspective I must admit that this was a very nice experience. A sneak preview of a world without the annoying RFID cards that you always forget and keep stuffing your wallet. For me it raised the questions; do we have similar solutions with our own AEOS system? Is this solution safe? How does it work exactly? Would it work for our clients?

Probably I can conclude that this solution is probably not the safest, cyber end2end secure or most scalable solution. But it did leave a smile on my face when I returned home and I guess that is what the user experience is about.

Do you have similar experiences? Please come forward and share them.