From restaurants to museums to theme parks, each business and venue planning to reopen will benefit from deploying solutions that assist in a smooth transition from traditional procedures to newly updated processes.
To ensure the health and safety of employees and customers, businesses and venues should look to incorporate new and existing solutions that help everyone clearly understand what safety procedures are in place – this is where digital signage technology is key.
Eye-Catching visuals to communicate new procedures
Adding a dynamic tool like digital signage into areas with high foot traffic can make messages more accessible. When these messages are coupled with visual elements rather than heavy text, the retention of this information improves greatly.
According to some estimates, 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual, showcasing the power of utilizing visual imagery to implement reminders, messages and cues. Additionally, a study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that our brains can identify images seen for as little as 13 milliseconds. This means that having your digital signage display images like a handwashing symbol or person wearing a mask will be more impactful than only displaying text that states “Wash your hands,” or “Masks are mandatory.” By communicating visually, businesses’ and venue messages will resonate with in-person visitors, helping them navigate new procedures effectively and safely.
Effective ways to incorporate digital signage solutions
Because the main goal of digital signage is information sharing, the technology can be implemented across a range of markets for different purposes. Given today’s social distancing guidelines and the move to limit person-to-person contact as much as possible, many businesses have developed new procedures for navigating through their spaces. Digital signage can help heighten awareness of these new routes by providing directional wayfinding. In a museum, theme park or sports arena, guests will be able to find the exhibit, attraction or their seat more easily, helping reduce the time they spend milling around. Additionally, if wayfinding is made easily accessible through digital signage, less people will need to ask an employee how to get around, helping employees maintain physical distance from guests. In these settings, it can also be used to bring awareness to the accessibility of certain vendors or venue areas such as food courts or restrooms.
In retail, already there is a trend to utilize digital signage to streamline queuing lines and alert shoppers of the next available register. These retailers – along with traditional corporate spaces and other businesses – can take digital signage a step further by integrating it with other technologies. For example, digital signage integrated with camera and facial recognition technology can detect if masks are being worn or analyze the headcount of a given space, monitoring and ensuring guidelines are being adhered to. Digital signage integrated with thermal scanning can also help determine whether someone entering a space has a temperature, which could prevent their entry.
However, in order for each of these solutions to be effective, choosing the right digital signage technology is key. In areas with ambient light like the entryway for a corporate building, choosing bright solutions without reflective surfaces is key to ensuring the visuals displayed are sharp, crisp and clear. Additionally, the ability to monitor different components within the displays is critical, so if the display(s) or other signage components fail, the user can be notified through remote monitoring systems and be able to resolve the issue quickly and correct it.
The sustained value of digital signage technology
In light of changing health and safety standards, digital signage solutions help businesses emphasize the safety protocols they put into place, encouraging employees and customers to follow them and ultimately, helping the businesses stay open. As the technology develops, we will see new use cases that help businesses not only connect and engage with customers, but also create technology-enhanced experiences. Integrating software like facial recognition may be particularly useful today when it comes to identifying whether a patron wears a face mask, but in the future, this technology could lead to other positive experiences like identifying a frequent shopper and helping her find her way to her favorite section of a store. Ultimately, digital signage technology can help keep both the end user and the business that deploys it more connected and informed.
Credit: Jason Shelton