Page 29 - RC19 EDGE Spring All - final-2 - hi res

What technology, automation or innovation trends do you
see having the most impact over the next three years?
The ongoing discussions regarding the balance between
privacy and convenience will drive us to seek new solu-
tions that address both. It’s imperative that we gain and
maintain trust with our customer communities, and we
are very mindful of our responsibilities in that context.

There is a trend away from dedicated mobile applications
and moving towards more highly responsive web assets.
People are getting weary of downloading apps on their
phones, unless they serve a very specific need for that
individual. The only specific app that we developed to
this point is for the residents of the buildings that live
there, which are for very specific home-use needs. We
very mindfully did not develop a generic app for visitors
to Hudson Yards. We have a very responsive and well
thought out website that people can use. We want to be
fully transparent about what we’re doing and why we’re
doing it. Once somebody puts an app on their phone, as
everyone knows, it could request access to your camera,
Hudson Yards - View from the High Line your contacts and so forth—it just raises the level of
discomfort regarding privacy. We’re removing that poten-
allow us to offer better services to customers. It should tial discomfort. So I think the trend is towards non-app
also free up square footage, which is gold to real estate based services from a mobility perspective.
developers and operators, because we can dedicate less
space to an actual network infrastructure.

The most important goal is the ongoing process of
ensuring that all of our digital assets are deployed and
operated in the most secure manner possible, because
systems today use a large number of IoT devices and
connected networks. It is important to us from a perfor-
mance perspective, and even more so from a physical
safety perspective. We don’t deploy and then go back
and make sure that everything is secure—we plan from a
security standpoint in the first place. I think it’s important
to mention because real estate development compa-
nies are always under a very tight deployment schedule.
It would be really easy to fall into planning to just get Hudson Yards - View south from #7 Subway Station
things up and operating, and then going back to secure
it later. As a technology deployment organization, we’re I’m not sure if this is an overall trend, but for us it’s
very mindful about making sure that everything is imple- supremely important: the analysis and visualization of data
mented in a very secure manner in the first place. that we collect for presentation to the operators. I don’t
think real estate operators are used to having the data at
Another major initiative is the continued improvement hand that we are able to now provide because of the infor-
of our digital signage and wayfinding network. We mation we’re collecting on the site in real time. We definitely
have installed signage inside of our retail facility as have a trend at our company to help site operators with
well as outdoors around the site that not only provides information that is very helpful to them from a holistic
advertising opportunities for retailers, but also offers perspective. Real time information can anticipate a weather
touchscreen search capabilities for our visitors. They event that needs an action, or look historically at data that
are able to look up retailer hours, make reservations determines the amount of people visiting on a given date,
for restaurants and our other site attractions, and even or even based on an average ambient temperature. Good
transfer wayfinding directions to their mobile phones. hard data that enables superior decision-making around
It’s an incredibly helpful feature for a site the scale of that data is hugely important to us so that we as real estate
Hudson Yards. operators can run the site more efficiently.

27

RC19 EDGE Spring All but Covers - final - 19APR.indd 27 4/19/19 3:17 PM