New Types Of Digital Directory Displays

Directory displays are a huge, if vague, component of the larger digital signage industry. They apply to building directories, information directories, and certain wayfinding displays. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, not to mention locations, design, and applications. Like any other signage installation, directory displays are increasingly going digital, but that's not the only recent change directories have seen over the last few months, years, and decades. Here are four new types of digital directory displays and how they're changing signage resources for various businesses and industries:

Building-Plus Directories
The building directory is the quintessential directory display and has been around for generations. Along with name and room number, digital directories can add new information resources to directory displays. Community and vendor information for building tenants, campus information for university directories, event information for commercial venue directories. In fact, in an increasingly high-information marketplace, very few buildings need only basic building directories, any more.

Parking Directories
Directory displays are now being used in select parking garages. The displays show how many parking spaces are occupied and how many are still available. Some systems use more advanced directory displays to show which areas open parking spaces are most concentrated in and where the most desirable spots lie. Other digital signage parking systems use ceiling light displays and smart phone communication links to show motorists information as they navigate the parking areas, as well as help locate elevators, stairs, payment options, service help, and their vehicles upon their return.

Advertising Directories
Advertising directories are a new form of narrowcasting. As part of a webcast, there are often mandatory advertisements that must be viewed first. Either through preset personal profiles or with embedded prompts, users can choose the advertisement that most closely relates to their interest. And by requiring an audience to use the prompt, there is already an awareness of what the advertisement and potential products are. This system provides the advertisers with much a higher value audience and, as such, creates greater revenues per user.

Data Directories
With superior digital signage software, the need for data entry is severely curtailed. With live and sophisticated data integration, digital directories are much more efficient and efficiently managed, whether the data is intended for displays or not. Of course, this same superior software actually makes it a cinch to take data directories and triage the information to digital displays in visually dynamic and easily readable, user-friendly ways.