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Just say no to dark screens, and yes to a digital signage friendly face

People are always watching, and almost all of them have cameras. Don't end up like these screens.

September 30, 2014 by Christopher Hall — w, t

I'm always on the lookout for digital signage that's particularly well done — and that's particularly poorly done.

And boy have I found some doozies.

As you can see in the image above, on a recent trip to a national quick-service restaurant chain the experience was less than spectacular. The poor woman behind the counter was scrambling to hand out printed to-go menus to everyone in line while also taking orders, because the digital menu boards had gone dark.

Whoops.

Now, I'm not the kind of guy to let that deter me from going to a fast food place (this place's prices took care of that part), but it certainly didn't enhance the chain's reputation in my eyes, or in the eyes of anyone who came in that morning, most likely. The saddest part about it, of course, is that there are some pretty simple fixes and precautions that should have been set up and taken beforehand to ensure that exact scenario *never happened.*

And then there was this gem on a recent trip to a place that's known for its digital signage:

Good thing that was the first thing i saw on entering that venue; now I really have an idea of what they have to offer and the level of skill and expertise that i can probably expect here, wouldn't you say? Of course that's a little harsh, but it's not the general public's job to be nice to deployers or to have generous souls as far as their perceptions of brands go, now is it? (And I didn't take the pic the first time i saw it, thinking "It'll probably be fixed straightaway," right?) And again, the sad part is, there are some pretty simple safeguards that can be taken to make this kind of thing a rarity if not downright a nonstarter in the first place.

That's two digital signage thumbs downs, but lest you think we just do doom and gloom here at Digital Signage Today, we do like to point out the successes too.

Now this guy caught my eye on a recent sprint through an airport, so I stopped and snapped a quick pic or two. The virtual greeter here was beckoning kids to come explore the kids' play area, and it looked like just the thing to either entrance and enhance, or scare the bejeezus out of, kids and their experience of the airport. The play zone was hidden behind an escalator, so the little guy was doing a good job of drawing attention to something that could just as easily have been overlooked — even if he did look a little shifty-eyed. Still, I'd say that one deserves a digital signage thumbs up.

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