Hello again, Katie and I are embarking upon our fourth week with the Council and we’ve met some really inspiring people along the way. On Friday (1st July) we had the opportunity to meet Gavin and Sarah from Neatebox. The development of Neatebox is an interesting story and we’d like to share it with you.
In a previous job Gavin Neate, the CEO of Neatebox trained guide dogs. During this time he saw an opportunity to improve pedestrian crossings for visually impaired people. As part of a competition, ‘Edinburgh Apps’ hosted by The City of Edinburgh Council he proposed a solution to help with this problem. He had the idea for a device which activates pedestrian crossings by an approaching user. Gavin won an Edinburgh Apps competition with this idea and went on to collaborate with the Council to develop ‘Edinburgh Up Close’, an app designed to draw folk down the Royal Mile.
How it works: The ‘Edinburgh Up Close’ app can be downloaded for free. This allows bluetooth beacons in the street to trigger the app showing the user information and stories based on their location. It currently runs along the Royal Mile, so give it a go!
Gavin’s latest venture with this new technology, is to develop a customer service app that informs staff in shops (fitted with a beacon) that customers with a disability have entered the shop and staff can help them around. This improves the shopping experience for the customer.
We’re excited to share this technology, so as a taster Neatebox have fitted some beacons into the Edinburgh Pavilion at the Pop-up Cities Expo on The Mound. We’ve tried it out and would encourage you to give it a go! It’s exciting new technology and could have an innovative effect on the streets of Edinburgh.
We’ll be back soon, thanks for reading.
Katie and Luke.
Planning Edinburgh 
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