Key Takeaways

• Full-screen is best for crucial single messages
• Zoned layouts work well for ambient peripheral information
• Peripheral zones can show weather, time, or safety notices
• ScreenCloud supports both with dynamic switching
• Priority content can pop to full-screen then revert to zones

Topics

• Content Strategy
• User Experience
• Product Design
• Digital Signage

Transcript

So there's a big debate amongst digital science experts about whether you should zone up a screen or just use a full screen. So for zones, just think of kind of like a 24-hour news or sports news where you have ticker tapes and information down the side, and then you've got the main panel would be the presenters and things like that. And obviously, full screen is full screen. Now, the argument is that if you really want to get a message across, you should just have one message at one time up on that screen. And I would broadly agree with that. And I think, generally speaking, because digital signage is running so often, actually having one message and then moving on to something else is fine. However, I do quite like zoned content for attracting attention to the main zone with the content that you would normally want to attract, but then having peripheral information to the side, which could be something as basic as weather or a clock as well, or just something useful that maybe wouldn't have necessarily attracted attention in the first place. It could be something to do with health and safety, for example, which people tend to start to block out over time. So I think done well, zones can be really powerful. But when there is a crucial message, it's better to move full screen. And the way we designed ScreenCloud was actually to allow for both. So you can have a zoned layout. And then if you have priority content that can pop up full screen, and then when that's done, go back down again. And that seems to work really well for customers. It also adds a bit of variety into the layout of the screen as well.