It has been proven that your brain remembers better when it is processing one thing at a time. While that is paramount to remember when designing content for digital signage, there are always exceptions. A menu board with multiple selections to choose from perhaps or an information display that communicates status and advertising for commuters or shoppers in a public space. If taking into account your clients objectives and the dwell time of your audience requires and or allows you to present more information on a screen at a time, then do so with caution and be sure to do so with a well executed design plan. And dont forget, digital signage software providers love tickers. Most all have some way of providing either RSS feeds or text crawls to your digital sign, but what is the most effective way in which to provide these little snippets of information? If they truly are snippets then forget it. Do away with the clutter a text crawl introduces and what's left on screen will communicate much better. But if you must, consider the flipper instead of the ticker or crawl. CNN has, and for what its worth, if you want to communicate a complete thought quick and efficiently, the flipper does a good job. Instead of display multiple scrolling stories or information, one story or piece of information is presented at a time with an animated transition between each one.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
To Ticker, Flipper, Scroll or Crawl...Or Not At All
It has been proven that your brain remembers better when it is processing one thing at a time. While that is paramount to remember when designing content for digital signage, there are always exceptions. A menu board with multiple selections to choose from perhaps or an information display that communicates status and advertising for commuters or shoppers in a public space. If taking into account your clients objectives and the dwell time of your audience requires and or allows you to present more information on a screen at a time, then do so with caution and be sure to do so with a well executed design plan. And dont forget, digital signage software providers love tickers. Most all have some way of providing either RSS feeds or text crawls to your digital sign, but what is the most effective way in which to provide these little snippets of information? If they truly are snippets then forget it. Do away with the clutter a text crawl introduces and what's left on screen will communicate much better. But if you must, consider the flipper instead of the ticker or crawl. CNN has, and for what its worth, if you want to communicate a complete thought quick and efficiently, the flipper does a good job. Instead of display multiple scrolling stories or information, one story or piece of information is presented at a time with an animated transition between each one.
