As a professional in the digital signage business, I've developed a habit of checking out digital signage deployment wherever I go. Airports, QSRs, retail stores, malls and electronics shops have more digital signage displays than ever before. Besides giving an appearance of a growing business, the presentation digital signage makes is always the key I pay attention to. The unified color characteristics across multiple displays, display-array or video wall always represent the major issue I am concerned about.

Average consumers might not be overly worried when color is off a bit on their consumer TV. However, that same consumer might get upset in front of a display-array or video wall with the same hodgepodge of colors. The adverse performance effects of poor colors on a digital signage display-array are worse than not having the display at all.

The point being that the viewer needs information right then and there, and those off colors aren't helping, but are greatly affecting buying decisions. Those bad colors are only aggravating his or her intent to capture the information they need.

The bottom line is that commercial video walls or digital signage must have the right colors all the time.

Therefore, color calibration is key when selecting LCD displays for display-array and video wall applications. Therefore, a handy tool to easily calibrate color is of utmost importance. Business owners can use the tool to help correct and maintain the right colors and color uniformity across all displays.

It's not only got to be the right tool, but an easy one to use without the bits and bytes associated with a technical gizmo. Something that only takes one click of the mouse, and all the displays in a video wall are automatically color calibrated is the ideal one for ordinary business owners.

The ideal calibration tool should be easy to operate and simple to process. For instance, during this process, all parameters of each display are saved for future reference as part of the calibration process.

The owner selects a single display to act as a central point.  Remaining displays in that video wall are then matched up with the central point display.  Once the mouse is clicked, color calibration is performed for the complete video array or video wall.

In addition to pricing, quality, reliability, and post-sale service, selecting the right display that comes with the ideal color calibration tool is a key part of doing one's major pre-purchasing homework.

The DSA Crown Awards, in its fourth year, recognizes excellent digital out-of-home content through the use of digital signage, interactive, kiosks and mobile.

The Digital Screenmedia Association (DSA) has announced the winners for the fourth annual DSA Crown Awards, which recognizes excellence in digital out-of-home content.

The DSA Crown Awards ceremony was held in New York City at the Paramount Theater at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square on November 5, following the first day of Customer Engagement World. The DSA Party at the Hard Rock was hosted by Artisan Mobile and presented by Scanalytics and Synnex.

The categories for the content awards were Point of Sale, (content on screens in store catering to the shopper); Point of Transit, (reaching people are on the go, such as at airports and with digital billboards); and Point of Wait, (places where people have dwell time such as banks, elevators and doctor’s offices).

The awards ceremony was co-hosted by Keith Kelsen, CVO of 5th Screen Digital, and author of Unleashing the Power of Digital Signage, and Bob Moul from Artisan Mobile, the host of the party and awards ceremony.

The winners are:
Category – Point of Sale (content budget of $10,000 or more)

Gold: Bank of Ireland, submitted by RMG Networks
Silver: Titanfall Video Wall Experience at the Microsoft Stores, submitted by Synect Media
Bronze: AT&T Flagship Store, Beats Music Promotion, submitted by MaxMedia

Category – Point of Sale (content budget less than $10,000)

Gold: LG UHD Wall, submitted by Two West
Silver: Digitizing Argos, submitted by Scala
Bronze: WAND, submitted by WAND Corporation

Category – Point of Wait ($10,000 or more)

Gold: Aria Resort & Casino, submitted by Verifone
Silver: Sprint Live Pro, submitted by Two West
Bronze: Sprint WeGo - Product Video, submitted by Two West

Category – Point of Wait (less than $10,000)

Gold: Sprint Store Virtual Queue, submitted by Two West
Silver: Quaker Steak and Lube, submitted by Insteo

Category – Point of Transit ($10,000 or more)

Gold: San Francisco International Airport, submitted by Omnivex
Silver: SIEMENS SU2C The Baton Pass in Times Square, submitted by ABC Creative Services

Judges for the DSA Crown Awards included Michael Chase of St. Joseph Content, Anne White of hybris, Manolo Almagro of TPN Retail, Noah Sarff of The Basement, and Keith Kelsen of 5th Screen.

Each of the entries were scored independently by the judges, who took the following into consideration:

•     Did the content meet the objectives?
•     Was the content engaging?
•     Did the content fit the environment?
•     Did the content fit the audience?

The scores were ranked in each category to reveal the winners.

“The content continues to improve at both budget levels, and we are seeing outstanding content on so many cross platform channels,” said Keith Kelsen, judge and co-host. “It’s clear that content continues to truly be the most important part of execution. The high standards of quality of the content speaks volumes about the care producers put into these deployments and the care they take in making the brands look great.”

“The content is amazing and the engagement proves it,” said Paul Flanigan, Executive Director of the DSA. “We’re thrilled to be able to recognize outstanding content. The quality can make or break an experience and we’re seeing some outstanding companies embrace and present the wow factor.”

About the Digital Screenmedia Association

The DSA is an independent, non-profit association, whose mission is to advance the growth and excellence of the global digital signage, interactive kiosk and mobile community through advocacy, education and networking. Members include users of digital screenmedia in all vertical markets including retail, hospitality, food service and healthcare, as well as manufacturers, resellers and distributors of hardware and software, network operators, integrators, advertising agencies, consultants, analysts, publishers, trade show organizers and service companies. http://www.digitalscreenmedia.org

Ben Johnston
Director of Product Marketing
RMG Networks

I've been reading a bit lately about gamification and thinking about its implications for our Supply Chain, Contact Center and Digital Signage customers. For anyone not familiar with the term, a definition is useful. Gamification guru Yu-kai Chou provides an elegant, no “bs” definition of gamification on his blog:

Gamification is the craft of deriving all the fun and addicting elements found in games and applying them to real-world or productive activities. This is what I call “Human- Focused Design” as opposed to the “Function-Focused Design.” It’s a design process that optimizes for the human in the system, as opposed to pure efficiency of the system.

Gartner predicts that by 2014, more than 70% of Global 2000 organizations would be using gamification in their businesses. “The potential is enormous… [and] gamification could become as important as Facebook, eBay or Amazon,” one Gartner research VP was quoted as saying.

Experts agree, the benefits of gamification in the workplace include increased employee motivation as a result of intrinsic (makes me feel good) or extrinsic (recognition) rewards for changes in behavior and thus increased engagement with work.

While maybe not every business has deployed gamification in their daily operations, look around closely and you will find many examples of gamification in the workplace and in B2C applications. In fact, entire companies (like Badgeville) exist just to help businesses implement game mechanics into their operations.

It's natural to think of digital signage as one medium for communicating and displaying elements of gamification to a workforce. But if the digital signage display is the end node, what's the starting point?

Yu-kai Chou advises that successful gamification design starts with asking the question, "how do I want my employees/players/users to feel?" instead of jumping straight into the game elements.

For supply chain businesses (or any business with internal audiences), managers and leaders should ask themselves the same question; how do I want my workers to feel in order to be most productive and what can I do to influence that?

Internal communications pros tell us that companies with higher employee engagement scores often outperform their competitors and that employees are more positively engaged. It seems obvious, right? Treat your employees right, give them a mission and vision they believe in and support, and they'll be more productive, happier and help the company succeed.  

Certainly a number of techniques exist for improving employee engagement from incentive-based pay to benefits and programs that support a healthy work/life balance. From installing internal social networks like Chatter and Yammer to the gamification of HR initiatives (e.g., handing out pedometers and posting a digital leaderboard to encourage exercise), business leaders are making use of technology to help them implement these techniques.

Digital signage systems will play a key role by publicly displaying the results – the scoreboards.  Digital signage content designers and solution architects who take into account their audience's motivations and goals (and feelings) when implementing game designs will succeed in helping realize the benefits of workplace gamification. And that’s a game we all want to win.

• Point of Wait (dwell time - such waiting for a table, waiting in line, waiting room, etc.)
• Point of Sale (shoppers - such as retail, restaurant menu boards, etc.)
• Point of Transit (people on the go - such as airports, digital billboards, etc.)

• Content run on a digital signage / kiosk network (one-way or interactive)
• Content campaign run across multiple screens (digital signage/kiosk plus mobile, online and/or TV)