From Physical to Virtual and Back: How can this be applied to self-service devices?

This recent CNET article profiles a new product being sold by Lego™, combining physical Lego™ creations with virtual tablet interactivity.  The new product, Lego Fusion, blends bricks with bytes and combines digital interaction with physical play.  

Much like engineers use Solidworks™ or ProE™ to design something, analyze it and make it interact with other parts, then go to a workshop and build it via 3D printing or their own hands, Lego Fusion will allow kids to combine these two mediums into “play”.  

How can brick and mortar retailers use this concept to increase sales?  Should Angry Birds™ toys be placed next to a tablet kiosk allowing for users to play the Angry Birds games?  Can those games be purchased at the same time, either online, or in the store?  Can the advent of 3D printing be a bridge that unites digital to physical?

Following Lego’s latest innovation for integrating offline with online, it seems evident that gaming systems, software programs, and websites can offer an opportunity to use this same strategy, fusing the physical and digital for both work and play.  

Shop.org, the online arm of the National Retail Federation, has shared recommendations with their audience in an "Open Letter to Retail CEOs." Their recommendations are on the subject of talent mix. Shop.org recommends that retailers hire/promote based on digital competencies and experience. With digital playing a large role in the future of retail, Shop.org recommends retailers give strong credence to digital talents and creating a digitally focused culture.

What does this have to do with the self service industry, digital signage, and kiosk technology? In-store opportunities to integrate digital technology, websites, and electronic advertisements abound when utilizing kiosks. If retailers hire the right "talent mix," retail marketers will find opportunities to leverage the work they are doing against both offline and online mediums. If retailers integrate, incorporate and leverage digital marketing team members by promoting and hiring for those competencies, digital signage, kiosks and self-service technologies will be a clear path to increase ROI and brand awareness by optimizing the value of a brick and mortar visit.

Here are some of the talent hiring tips outlined by Shop.org:

1. Promote from within, those with digital marketing talent and skills. Build Digital Marketing Advocates in each department.

2. Recruit digital talent from outside of the retail industry and teach them retail.

Self-service and digital signage in a digitally fluent organization

Additionally, Shop.org recommends that retailers create "a digitally fluent organization." Make this a priority. To that end, those of us who are "digitally fluent" and who know digital marketing should be offering training for the retail sector. While digital marketing is clearly not limited to digital signage, self-service technologies and kiosk deployments, it is integral to our industry.  We should provide retailers a clear map from brick and mortar to digital marketing applications by way of kiosks and digital signage.

What other industries could benefit from digital marketing training and education? Where can we best share our knowledge in a way that makes it clear that self-service technologies are the natural bridge between offline and online marketing efforts? We need to make sure that retailers are aware that the self-service industry is where website, social and mobile experiences meet print media and traditional brand messaging. Maximizing their ROI and their digital marketing efforts via kiosks and digital signage will be an obvious extension of marketing efforts, particularly to those that are investing in a culture and hiring practice that focuses on "digital."

Do website usability rules translate to digital signage?

As hardware providers, software providers, and application developers for digital signage, we sometimes leave the “content” portion of digital signage to our clients.  We assume that advertising agencies and in house marketers have the content piece of their message under well in hand.  While that is often the case, it is particularly important to make sure that the digital signage applications and content are both developed with the end user and usability in mind.  

Digital signage user interface testing and standards seem to be less well researched and defined than those in the website usability/UI/UX industry.  Utilizing some of the learnings from web design, we can extrapolate some digital signage best practices.  Specifically what differences should be considered when designing digital signage for a teenage audience?

According to a study by the Nielsen Norman Group, there are many incorrect stereotypes about teenagers.  Unlike the stereotypes, teens are not “supremely tech savvy”, they don’t “use smartphones for everything” and they don’t “want everything to be social.”  They also don’t “just want to be entertained online with graphics and multimedia.”

Some website usability findings to consider when creating digital signage:

•          Teens perform worse than adults because of insufficient reading skills.
•          Teens have dramatically lower levels of patience.
•          Teens do not like small typeface.

A few web usability tips that translate well to digital signage or are already a part of the digital signage lexicon:

•          Don’t talk down to teens.
•          Teens don’t like the heavy, glitzy, blinking graphics that designers think they like. They prefer clean, modest, but still cool designs.
•          Minimize the amount of text.
•          Interactivity is appealing, where possible.

For more on website usability for teens, and to see if additional findings also translate for digital signage, visit NN/g at http://www.nngroup.com/reports/teenagers-on-the-web/