By its very nature creating wayfinding signage is a relatively complex task—a task that becomes more complicated as the size of the facility increases. The designer, working in concert with the sign manufacturer, is required to put themselves in the shoes of a visitor and answer directional and informational questions that visitors will have when they arrive for the first time.

 

Developing and implementing a wayfinding program would be much easier if visitors to a given facility were typical, but that’s simply not reality. These days, designers have to account for multiple languages and a range of literacy abilities, particularly in settings like hospitals. That’s one of the reasons dynamic digital signage promises to fully bridge that potential gap.

 

TECHNOLOGY POTENTIAL

“Limited English Proficiency is a buzzword in the healthcare field, which not only addresses multi-lingual issues, but it also means reaching someone who’s not terribly literate. I have clients who need to put up seven different languages, and when you place that on static signage it begins to look like the Vietnam War Memorial. With an electronic display, however, it allows you to fade and dissolve new copy and incorporate pictograms and icons,” says Randy Cooper, president of Cooper Signage and Graphics in Loganville, Ga.

Digital displays can convey a vast array of information on the fly, from policies and procedures to special event schedules. Moreover, the technology is available to make displays interactive with touch-screen technology or keyed to hand-held devices to provide personalized and very specific information, often referred to as narrowcasting. But with this functionality comes a tendency to overuse or misuse the technology simply because it’s available.

 

“I have pictures of facilities where they printed something out on paper and taped it to the screen because no one knows how to update the signs,” says Cooper. “It’s similar to when people started doing their own newsletters. The first issue was great, but the second issue was three months overdue and the third and fourth issues never even happened. It’s the same thing—they get inundated with other issues and the content is never updated.”

 

Cooper adds that there’s great interest in the possibilities of tying in hand-held devices with digital sign networks. However, “The problem is that the technology is not universal, it’s very expensive and does not transcend the various brands of hand-held devices, but we’d love to see that start to work out.”

 

From a wayfinding standpoint it’s currently more feasible to use directional applications between digital signs and hand-held devices outdoors rather than inside a facility. College and corporate campuses that are laid out more like miniature cities are conducive to this type of interaction, says David Gibson, founding principal of Two Twelve in New York City.

 

“It would work as a kind of Google suite of maps and GPS tools. It hasn’t gelled yet, but we’re really close to having it work for a pure wayfinding experience. We’re beginning to talk about it more in outdoor applications than indoor, because indoor settings can be much more dense with complex networks of hallways, corridors, offices and staircases. Putting architectural floor plans on web-based applications raises some issues of privacy and security, and in places like hospitals, there can be conflicts with medical technologies,” says Gibson.

 

The ultimate goal, says Gibson, is to integrate the entire experience from the initial contact with a person or the organization’s Web site, traveling to the facility to arriving and using the facility. “We are increasingly talking to our clients about a model of integrating communications,” says Gibson. “There are a series of interactions in different media with different points along the way that have a unified body of information, and the most important point is in the consistency of the message and integration of the output tools, whether digital or static.”

 

THE REAL WORLD

Despite the current disconnect between the potential and the reality of dynamic digital signage, there are successful connections being made. The challenge in making that connection is in pinpointing the proper use of the technology, making sure dynamic content can and will be changed regularly, and bringing all of the disparate departments—marketing, management, facilities people and IT—together so they’re on the same screen, so to speak.

 

“From a directional standpoint, if you’re telling someone to go right to Emergency and left to Obstetrics, and that content won’t change, there’s no reason for an electronic, changeable message. Where it comes into play is if there’s a constant element of change, or there’s too much information to place on one static sign and they need the ability to rotate that information regularly,” explains Charlie Kelly, president of Clarke Systems.

 

The other factor, says Kelly, is based on how long the wait period is at a given location; the rotation of information will be relative to how long someone has to read it. In areas with longer waiting periods—such as welcoming lounges and lobbies, hospital waiting rooms and transportation facilities—the content can obviously be more dynamic and convey a lot more information than it would at the intersection of a hallway, for instance.

 

Ultimately, dynamic digital signage is an excellent solution for facility wayfinding and information; it just needs to be an appropriate solution that integrates with static signs for the best possible client and user experience.

 

“Some people regard digital signage as a panacea for their problems, but it’s much more complex than that. Wayfinding is a science, but there’s a bit of an art to it as well. You have to know how people traverse through a given building in order to thoroughly understand what the wayfinding solution ought to be,” says Michael Wriston, vice president of sales and marketing for ASI Midwest. “The best application I’ve seen is where the digital solution is used as an anchor point to walk visitors to the static solutions. It’s a natural moth-to-a-flame scenario, so you should use it at intersections as an anchor point to direct them to static directional signs.”

 

X Y AND Z

Dynamic digital signage is most valuable in a limited rather than ubiquitous use, based on the factors mentioned above, plus the content-management factor. As ASI’s Wriston puts it, “An end user can quickly become overwhelmed with dynamic content and programming issues and may have signed on for more than they bargained for. They can have buyer’s remorse because what they were looking for was X and they actually ended up with Y and Z.”

 

That’s why it’s so important for a sign company that sells a dynamic digital signage system to make sure the customer understands exactly what it takes for them to change the content, or how much it will cost for you to update it for them. Buyer’s remorse on one project means another project is less likely to happen.

 

“A client will walk in and want to go crazy with digital signs. But we try to slow them down and talk about what they’re really trying to accomplish, and in more than a couple of cases we’ve had to tell the client that DDS is not an appropriate solution,” says Matt Miles, director of special projects for Fastsigns International, Dallas. “Digital signage is not so much an ROI issue as it is an ROO [return on objective] issue. Understanding content management is very important. Already you see in the marketplace that digital signage has often become an endless loop of white noise. So, we work closely to find out which components of a program need to be dynamic.”

 

NO MAN IS AN IT-ISLAND

The other dynamic element is found in the number of players involved in implementing a digital signage system. Typically, a facility manager or a C-level executive will be the primary point of contact for a static sign project. But when digital is placed in the mix, several departments may have some claim on its ownership, including IT and marketing.

 

“What we’re seeing a lot of out there is that most of the electronics are brought in almost as a toy or whim by the IT department, and they’re somewhat isolated from the wayfinding problem. So the displays are being used as welcome screens and so forth, but they’re not integrated into a comprehensive wayfinding program; they’re mostly standalone,” says Randy Cooper. “We make sure to incorporate IT as part of the planning team and bring them into the process.”

 

The IT department is a crucial stakeholder, simply because you’re tapping into their network when you integrate digital signs into the sign program. Marketing has to be involved as well, since they’re in charge of messaging and making sure the message is consistent.