Interactive Experiences for Business
You’re a savvy operator! You recognise that people’s behaviour has shifted to engaging with touchscreens and you’re looking for a way to create an immersive and engaging experience. But Is a touchscreen right for your business?
Perhaps you’re presenting to a client, communicating with staff or you have a story to tell to your customers. You’re a restaurant, a hotel, a museum or a brand wanting to connect with your customer in new and exciting ways. You have an idea but you don’t know how to bring it to life. There are many choices to make but making the right choice can deliver stunning results.
There are multiple ways that you can connect with your customer and (if you’re an existing business) probably already are. Before considering touchscreens, it pays to understand your environment and how customers currently connect with your business and its products/services/exhibits, etc. Who is your customer? Why have they come to your business and what are the existing touch points; staff, signage, audio and physical? What are your objectives; is it to educate, inform or simply transact?
That’s a lot of questions that need answering. There’s a link in the description for a briefing template so you can get your interactive project off to the right start. And this video is an introduction. We’ll dive in deeper in later videos.
The core elements of your interactive experience are software, design and content and hardware. Your agency should assist you making the right decision. There are many options
for hardware and software and they are relative to your business objectives, the environment where the touchscreen is to be deployed and resource that your business has to design the experience, create content for it and support and maintain the hardware.
Software
There are multiple options to pursue which include; build from scratch, use a website or software platform. Websites aren’t typically designed to be a touchscreen experience and build from scratch can be suitable in certain applications, though it is typically costly and requires specialists to develop. Some agencies may have their own experience creation software platform and apps available to the public such as Intuiface are also possible. The briefing process will help you talk with companies and lead to a quote or you may do it internally if you have the resource or the capacity to learn.
Design and Content
Initially the UX and UI will need to be designed. It requires experienced touchscreen experience developers to get it right. There is also the content that populates the experience and the frequency that this will be updated may change the experience design. The content itself is a vastly different spec to the typical online and print specifications so ensure your agency understands what is required. A touchscreen is ostensibly a computer with a touchscreen attached. This can be a tablet or a computer with screen. Peripherals may also be necessary such as a webcam, display screens, kiosk or mounting brackets/stands. Tablets are cost effective, however, limited in their use and can be difficult to monitor remotely. A computer with a touchscreen is reliable; it can reboot automatically and be easily controlled remotely. When choosing a touchscreen, the environment and use needs to be considered. For example, is the screen indoors/outdoors, will it be used by people in wheelchairs, does it need to be vandal proof, will it be used through glass or gesture controlled, etc? And of course the size and resolution needs to be determined.
Touchscreen Pros and cons
Pros
- Allows businesses and brands to tell a story using multimedia in an engaging and interactive experience
- Bright screens and motion attract the eye
- Puts the user in control of an intuitive, self-guided experience
- Gives the user immediate access to a lot of information
- Easy and short lead times to update content
Cons
Specialist agencies are general required to produce the experience
Hardware and software can be expensive and complex
Getting Started
If you’re certain that a touchscreen is right for you then you’ll undoubtedly want a quote. To get a quote from your agency a brief will be required. Feel free to use our briefing form. Check the description for a link. In later videos we’ll be exploring some of the key topics touched on in this video.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out or add questions in the comments section. We’ll do our best to answer them.
have you seen the Sennheiser kiosk?
Here are the headphones
