We’ve been very vocal about digital screens not being  utilized to full effect right now. Digital signage is completely siloed  and that’s why we’re working on a new computing platform for screens, one that will bring digital screens into the fore and allow anyone to use them to better effect.

This has got us thinking, what else might be about to change in  digital signage? For a long time digital signage has been defined as TV  screens or monitors used to showcase advertising content - images,  videos, adverts and so on. But we (amongst others) believe that the  future of digital signage is so much more than that.

It’s something wider that we probably don’t even have a name for yet,  that’s driven by all of the trends we’re seeing right now - consumer  purchasing behaviour, multi-screen marketing, user generated content,  voice-recognition and so on. 

In this article, we’re going to explore four predictions for how we  see digital signage panning out and what we’re excited for in the coming  years. 

We’re online all day long and we’re bombarded by news. We’re reading  articles and blogposts, we’ve got Twitter and Facebook and it all gets  in the way of work and what we’re meant to be doing - coming at us from  every angle. 

Then we get home, we switch on the TV and it’s the opposite  experience. We have loads of channels, but they all have ads in and we  have to flick through them to find something we want to watch. The other  option is of course, Netflix - but what it doesn’t have going is the  same sit back, let the TV show stuff to me mentality. You have to think  about it.

There’s nothing where you can just sit there and be shown interesting stuff.

Here, in our homes, there’s a giant screen that’s being totally  underutilized for giving me entertainment, or informing me or just  providing me a different experience. It’s effectively the same  experience we’ve had since we got cable TV in the 1990s. 

It feels to us like there should be a web medium for screens, to  bring us useful, relevant, lean-back information. There’s no platform  for that right now. Something where the content is ambient - where you  can see the news, your appointments, a family photo feed, your business  metrics and Twitter updates. 

All of this information is already on the web and it’s being used  every day to create the experience on our personal devices. Now it needs  to extend to the big screen - presented and accessible in the right  way. 

This is something that the right digital signage platform could well cater for in the future. 

When you’re using your laptop or phone, interaction is easy. But when  you’re using a TV screen, the interaction is where you get stuck. 

Remote controls works fine when you have four channels. With hundreds, it’s difficult to flick through. 

Something we’re building into ScreenCloud is a way to flick between  playlists and items, on screen. So that you can pass through the ambient  information coming at you with the press of a button - next tweet, go  back one, show me that photo again and so on. 

Take this out of the home and it becomes even more interesting.

Voice recognition will be a big part of the future of our interaction with computers and phones. 

Start talking to your laptop or phone in a coffee shop or on a park  bench and it feels uncomfortable. But start talking to your screen in  the office, or in a meeting and suddenly it’s not weird but seriously  impressive.

Using Alexa or Echo, you can tell your screen to show last month’s  sales reports. By talking to the screen, you can navigate your way  through a presentation.

The founding technology isn’t quite there yet. But as we build onto  the ScreenCloud platform to master simple interactions and others begin  rolling out awesome technologies like voice control, we can match the  two in progress.

That goes beyond digital signage - becoming a shared computing vision  that crosses into the IoT soon to be running our homes and offices. 

There are times in every office where a cool video gets put into the  water cooler room in Skype, or gets emailed round, and everyone watches  it individually, or someone opens it with sound and everyone crowds  round to watch it. But for the people on the other side of the room it  doesn’t work.

These offices likely have a screen sitting on the wall. But no one  thinks to send the video there for anyone who wants to turn their head  and watch it, because the screen’s off, or it’s too difficult to get it  up or you need to connect a laptop to show it and by the time you’ve  done that, what’s the point?

As interesting stuff is coming into Slack, or by email, it could (and should) be up on the screen. 

This is just one use case - but that’s our future vision.  To wire up screens in offices and build up apps so that things will  eventually evolve where large screens become more and more useful to us  within a shared environment. 

We’re being stopped from the web breaking out of browsers and mobile  phones to these big screens because there’s been no easy way to connect  them up and for the content to flow to all screens. 

But here’s the catch - all of the screens in your office or shared  space are already connected to your network. They have the capability in  the device - whether LG, Samsung or Chrome, to be picked up through the  LAN or Wi-Fi connection.

TVs have this visibility built in but no one ever uses it, because  it’s not advertised. Instead, we usually employ a Chromecast (or  similar) which advertises the presence of each screen on the network.

What none of the individual manufacturers have done yet, is to create  a network-driven computing system that can pick them all up, and direct  content to them.

This is what we’re trying to do with ScreenCloud. 

Let’s face it, screens are minority report-esque and we’re naturally  drawn to them. Just like the police and news control rooms, where there  are entire walls filled with screens -  people gravitate towards that  vision. 

Recently there have been some cool developments in beacon  Bluetooth-led technology. This is the type of stuff you keep hearing  about that’s going to let shop owners send coupon codes to passer-bys. 

The trouble right now, is that it’s all still reliant on QR codes and  other technology which is tied to the user having specific apps  installed on their phone. 

This is fine if you’re demoing what might be possible in the future  but until these acts are truly seamless, they won’t become a way of  everyday life. 

In the future, the technology will be built into TVs and phones as  something that just happens. So you’ll take the phone near a screen in a  store window and it will say ‘would you like to connect’ and you can  say yes to go to a unique URL with an offer code. Go up to bus stop,  take your phone to the timetable and you’ll see a notification which  says ‘bus timetable’ with a URL that opens the timetable up on your  phone.

In the case of signage, the phone is the ideal device to be the  remote or the interaction point - solving the problem of how do we know  what screen that is, which is still to be solved. Much nicer to take the  phone in the range of the screen, click the url and start interacting  with it than having to go through the arduous task of downloading an app  or even opening one. 

Like any startup, we see a bigger picture for the software we’re  building. One where we aren’t just helping more and more customers send  their content to screens. This is the beginning sure, we want to make it  simple for marketers, IT managers and company owners to pull digital  signage into their business stack. But we also want to do more than  that.

We want to integrate the latest technology and make the screens on  our walls become as relevant and useful as our smartphones and our  laptops.

We may not get there overnight but it’s certainly something to work towards.

To find out more about what we’re up to at ScreenCloud follow the journey. You can also setup a 14-day free trial of our awesome software here. 

A look inside trends and future predictions of the digital signage industry, including voice recognition, mobile-led OOH advertising and digital networks.

We look into our crystal ball at what’s ahead for this transforming industry.

Four Predictions for the Future of Digital Signage