Today’s trends are often tomorrow’s every-day reality. There was a time when colour TV was only for rich families. Then every house-hold had a ‘colour set’, now it’s so ubiquitous that it’s unthinkable that your mobile device wouldn’t be in colour. That said, there was a time not so long ago when 3D was so on-trend it would take over cinema, television and mobile. Today, not so much.
Digital signage has had its own share of trends, some that changed the industry, others that hit the deck almost as soon as they had become a trend. Here are our thoughts on a couple that could become the next big thing. They may not affect you today, but they have the capacity to change the way you do business tomorrow.
Big Is Beautiful
For most businesses, bigger is definitely better. As new technology and soaring demand have allowed screen sizes to grow in size but shrink in price, more and more companies are installing digital displays for all sorts of reasons: promotional activity, training, corporate communications, wayfinding and so forth. It was only a couple of years ago that a 55” LCD screen was a big deal. Today they are commonplace, if not a tad on the small size. Expect to see 80” become standard with ever brighter nit ratings (brightness). 2500 to 5000nit displays enable your message to be seen in the highly sun affected conditions at a price much cheaper than you’d think. And these displays will only get bigger and brighter.
3D Wayfinding
This doesn’t mean you’ll need to dig in the cupboard looking for your red-and-green cardboard specs next time you go to the supermarket. However it could change the way you interact with a way finder device next time you’re at a shopping centre, museum, hospital or any multi-level facility where navigation is important. 3D Wayfinding helps a user find their way with interactive, first-person mapping on a touch-screen or kiosk.
Mobile
Events of 2020 certainly changed the way we view healthcare, and the way it operates. It has propelled a quiet revolution that was taking place with professionals having greater access to data on the move. At the forefront of that is a need for better software working with secure, robust devices on equally secure, robust platforms (a Chrometab running Google Chrome for instance). As Google itself says, the combination offers “A better, faster way to work. Fast boots, background updates, and a familiar interface give precious time back to patients.” Which sounds pretty good to us, especially if you’re waiting in a hospital queue.
As with changes in mobile and screen technology, it’s another example of how incremental advances in both software and hardware suddenly combine to make a substantial improvement in the way we live our lives.
