THE FUTURE GENERATIONS USE OF DIGITAL SIGNAGE IN PERTH

04 Apr THE FUTURE GENERATIONS USE OF DIGITAL SIGNAGE IN PERTH

I was out at my local Shopping Centre with my son last weekend standing in the coffee shop line, and he pipes up, “Mum, I’m just going to find out where EB Games has moved to!”

Off he trots to the digital touchscreen kiosk by the escalator, searches up the store directory, accesses the map, and comes back with a big grin on his face. Mission complete! Games store found! And sure enough, with our hot chocolates in hand we march off to the land where 13 year old boys fantasies are made…

This has got me thinking about how kids, our children’s generation, will think about digital signage. Without doubt, their acceptance of the technology as just ‘business as usual’ is somewhat dumbfounding to some of us older generations stuck in the pre-mobile world.

I then considered the norm of having digital technology at their fingertips – my son completes the majority of his school work on a tablet device and other than a lot of sport (thankfully), his downtime is spent on a console. Headphones on, chatting to mates, playing combat sports via the Xbox.

Looking at the data from around the world, clearly children are very comfortable interacting with screens and digital hardware. This got me thinking, where does this go from here?

What sort of world will the kids of today live in 20-30 years down the track?

That’s pretty hard to predict given that the pace of change is so fast. In the space of the last 5 years we are seeing greater range and cheaper price points at technology moves apace.

Sci-fi films since the 1980s show us visions of digital signage – both inspiring and horrifying. Blade Runner’s dystopian visions of ad-covered zeppelins with blaring loudspeakers and omnipresent neon make for great neo-noir and pretty awful real life imagery.  Similarly, Steven Spielberg’s A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) pours on the eye-searing lighting in a futuristic Vegas-like strip of robot debauchery. Surely it wont come to this?

New Digital Products

Some pundits are saying that OLEDs are very exciting and could revolutionise digital signs down the track. Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) will make it easy to turn glass walls and windows into advertising space without sacrificing visibility. Prototype products are already available and as the pricing reduces we anticipate widespread adoption. As OLEDs are very flexible we envisage being able to mount paper-thin interactive screens on walls instead of heavy LCD sets.

Risks in the Future

One of the downsides of digital signage becoming more widespread is control over content. As with internet advertising currently, and lack of controls with social media (just look at Facebook’s issues with Cambridge Analytics), there are risks of viral content, data and videos. What controls will be in place to ensure that our children’s children will be protected from inappropriate content – too much content – or business advertising overload?

These are very real dangers and the prospect of over-stimulation and technology take-over is one that poses risks for the next generation of users.

There is no doubt that people love character, intrigue, and humour in business advertising, and LED signage has the potential to tap into that appeal with our children both now and in the future.

For more information on digital signs and our end to end service that incorporates design, software, hardware, manufacture, housings, content creation, content management and aftersales, please contact the Yap!digital team on +8 9274 5151 or email tim@yapdigital.com.au.