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Digital signage flying right vs. digital signage hide-and-seek wrong

April 29, 2013 by Christopher Hall — w, t

On several recent business trips I've tried to get a good picture of a digital signage deployment done right that I've seen at several airports. Luckily for you, on my last trip I was successful at snapping a few pics of Southwest Airlines' swell signage solution. (Translation: I got to my gate early enough to take some pictures of the signs without a lot of people around, so that I didn't arouse any TSA suspicions or freak out my fellow flyers.)

Not only does the airline's signage do a great job of explaining Southwest's unusual boarding procedures, it also provides plentyof self advertising, promoting loyalty programs, et al. Now, while I have a few quibbles with the presentation (e.g., kinda sloppy cabling, guys), I'd have to say the overall presentation is very well-done, and the content itself is humorous/cute/cheeky enough to be engaging.

And it's hard, well nigh impossible, to miss. If you're getting on this plane, you are going to spend at least a little time looking at this sign.

That's not so much the case with our hide-and-seek partner down here.

On another recent trip I stayed in a hotel that had a fairly well-done virtual concierge digital signage application that actually provided some decent information in a useful and appealing format.

Of course, the hotel hid it behind a fern.

Okay, maybe it wasn't *literally* behind a fern, but it might as well have been. This was the example I used in a recent spate of interviews on how to do digital signage in hotels. You check in to the hotel and go to the elevator (hidden, on the left), and if you look over on your way to the elevator, you'll see the sign. Of course, if you don't happen to already know what digital signage wayfinding is, or if you happen to be looking the wrong way ... Well, better luck next time, tiger.

(And the slightly misleading photo catches the brightness of the sign a lot better than the brightness of the sign actually catches your eye as you walk by, believe me.)

I'm not saying it's completely useless here, but there were several better potential placements actually in the lobby/check-in area, where the hotel could have engaged its customers at the beginning of their visit as opposed to the next time they went to the ATM.

As one expert put it during those interviews, hotel digital signage is not yet quite so ubiquitous that hotel guests automatically look for it. You have to make it obvious to them and easy to find — or else they probably just won't.

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