Artkim Expo

What it does

Artkim runs industrial fairs, and the app is the fair itself rather than a brochure about it. It opens on six tiles — the fairs, the congresses, your agenda, your entry cards, help, and the industry’s news portal — and each fair underneath has the same shape: the entry card, the exhibitors, the hall plan, the events, the sponsors, how to get there, and a survey at the end.

That sameness is the point. A new fair is a record rather than a release, which is what makes one app able to carry a whole season of them.

The part that is not a programme guide

Anybody can publish a floor plan. What this app does that a printed guide cannot is let a visitor ask for a meeting.

The exhibitor list is searchable and every row carries the hall and the stand number. Swipe a row and a button appears; behind it are the four days of the fair and the slots inside a day. Choose one and a request goes to the exhibitor.

The confirmation screen is careful about what just happened: the request has been sent, the other party still has to approve it, and you will be told when they do. That is the honest version, and it matters — a fair app that let somebody arrive believing they had an appointment nobody accepted would be worse than no app at all.

The badge is the phone

Each fair issues an entry card, which is a QR code under the fair’s name, held in the app alongside every other card the visitor holds. The queue at the registration desk becomes a scan.

Who the two sides are

A fair has exhibitors and it has visitors, and the app is built for the moment those two meet. Exhibitors are records with a sector, a stand and named people on them rather than a logo in a list; visitors carry their pass, their plan and their agenda. Everything else in the app exists to get one of them to the other.