Key product learnings from the Barco control room report

Over the past few weeks, we have presented the Barco control room report to you. It's an extensive piece of work containing a wealth of data. But exactly what can it mean to your organization's future? In this article, we will highlight some of the key takeaways that help us define the future development of our portfolio, and might also give you insights into which direction the market is heading.

Planning is an essential part of product development. It takes years to develop a product (or new features), so you better make sure you understand the challenges of the users! Problem-based product development is key to make sure you trigger the interest and urgency to buy your product. Having real insights into the requirements of the market is essential for this.

This is the second time we have conducted such research, and in our 35 years of control room market experience, we have always listened to customer requirements from all over the world. Many of the insights that we acquired in this control room research are therefore not new to us. We have already taken significant steps in addressing the challenges that are arising in 2024 as well.

For example, if we look at the root causes of workflow complexity in the control room (graph above, p.19 of the report), we see many issues that Barco products effectively tackle:

• Equipment malfunctions are addressed by multiple redundancy options/measures (such as the 4-way cabling of TruePix LED panels and the server redundancy of Barco CTRL). Additionally, the Video wall manager software UI also gives clear root cause information and suggests how to solve issues.
• Working with multiple disparate systems is no problem with Barco CTRL, which offers one integrated canvas on which all these systems come together, controlled by a single keyboard and mouse.
• People mentioning "applications that are not easy to use/not user intuitive" have probably never tried Barco CTRL or the Infinipix user interface, which are both renowned for their user friendliness.
• Updating a complete Barco CTRL installation can be done automatically with the push of a button and only takes a coffee break to complete. 
• The issue of operator fatigue is addressed by our SteadyView™ system in LED video walls and the new LCD technology of Barco UniSee II.
• Barco CTRL is also designed to shield all security settings from the users, so operators spend very little time on security layers.

We could go on, but this demonstrates that customer pain points always form the basis of our product development. And this research also helps to focus our future roadmap.

There is a clear link between the use of technology and the perceived efficiency of the control room. That is evident throughout the report—and is something everyone expects. However, we found the link between cybersecurity and efficiency more striking.

Control rooms with low perceived efficiency struggle with the absolute basics of cybersecurity: getting updates in place and not letting security interfere with usability. This indicates that the staff struggles more with the technology than worrying about security itself. They need technology that is more easily updateable (using a company-wide roll-out of security updates rather than updating every device individually), and with integrated security that works in the background rather than interfering with operations. These are requirements that state-of-the-art control room software or video wall management solutions should easily address.

Moderately efficient control rooms, on the other hand, do have somewhat potent technology in place, but it is often outdated. This means they struggle with both keeping up with threats and complying with legislation.

Highly efficient rooms can focus on the essence: the actual cybersecurity threats. Although this is indeed a challenge, it suggests that all basics are in place. A concern here is that systems are more complex and less resilient, suggesting a configuration in which multiple systems work together. This can be much more challenging for security professionals.

The solution is to have a secure foundation for the control room: a software platform that effectively manages everything related to security. When a system is built on such a secure foundation, the software is intelligent enough to detect a threat without asking the user to constantly confirm or deny every time an agent requests access.

This confirms the design decisions we made when creating Barco CTRL. Our goal is to have a system that couples an extremely high level of security with usability. All security measures are shielded from the users and are only the concern of the IT staff. This allows operators to focus on their job—and become more efficient.

Additionally, because Barco offers both the control room platform and the visualization hardware (controllers and displays/video walls), we have a full end-to-end system. This means the entire chain is designed to work together, both in terms of functionality and security!

When asked if they would like to work from home or remotely, no less than 41% of control room professionals indicated that they want to do this, but their work can't be done remotely.

Questioning these obstacles, six answers were given, which can be divided into three categories:

1. On-site presence is needed
   • Physical on-site interventions
   • Loss of managerial oversight
2. Not the right tools
   • Security policy
   • Technical limitations
3. Collaboration challenges
   • Detached from collaboration with peers
   • Fear of potential delays or disruptions

Also note the differences between the situation in 2024 and in 2022 (directly post-pandemic). You can see that significantly fewer people now think their work can be done remotely. This clearly shows that necessity knows no law.

While the first category is difficult to solve with software (although 'Loss of managerial oversight' is debatable), the other two are linked to having the right tools. These tools must be:

• Fully secure, at any location
• Offer the same user experience and possibilities remotely as on-site
• Facilitate collaboration between peers, managers, and external specialists

These are important considerations for the future roadmap of Barco CTRL.

Artificial Intelligence is destined to change the way we work and do business. This is definitely the case in control rooms. Information overload is an issue in many markets, and this is something AI can (and will) help address in the very near future.

When asking our respondents what they see as the most important skills for control room professionals in the future, the most popular answers were "Critical thinking and problem solving" and "Technical proficiency in supervising advanced technology and software platforms." This indicates a shift in job functions: operators will no longer be monitoring data looking for inconsistencies but will instead focus on incident management, evaluating the inconsistencies presented to them by AI models and assess their relevance.

For control room software manufacturers, this also means a shift in focus. From creating a platform that enables easy monitoring and analysis, we need systems that facilitate decision-making and collaboration. This shift will not happen abruptly, so we will still need to cater to all use cases in the near future. This is something we definitely take into consideration for our roadmap.