Methodology

My proposed project aims to improve the quality of digital displays on Gonzaga’s campus through visual comparison and demonstration of best practices.

Ethical Considerations

This project takes into account three specific needs: 1) Emphasizing messages that are in the audience’s best interest, 2) Recognizing diversity while valuing and respecting the individuality of students, 3) Ensuring that these visual messages will be compatible with ADA guidelines for graphical information.

Audience’s Best Interests

Messages on billboards/digital signage are intended to be absorbed at a glance, and this makes them more pervasive than other forms of promotional media (such as posters or newspapers). If our audience – campus students – have little choice but to see these messages, then those messages should be in their best interest. I discuss this further in the Ethics section of this site.

Diversity

While seeing images of people who ‘look like me’ helps recruit a diverse student population, no student should feel that they have to ‘represent’ any particular demographic. I discuss this further in the DEI section of this site.

ADA Accessibility

Visual impairment and color blindness have inspired a set of guidelines around web design. Those same guidelines should be applied to the designs for digital signage. I discuss this further in the DEI section of this site.

Objectives

Campus departments will produce digital screens which will follow best practices of billboard communication. Students will be able to absorb these communications at a glance.

Assessment

As slide/signage quality improves, 50% more slides from student groups and university departments will be accepted by the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Project Outline

My existing portfolio website includes a handful of slides created for public radio audiences. This site will be expanded with an explanation of best practices (as described earlier in this paper), and posts showing case studies which dive deeper into individual concepts.

Landing Page will include images of existing screens in use on the Gonzaga campus, a short introduction to digital signage as billboards, and a visual summary of the most important advice: use one image, tell one message, use one font family, don’t use white, and fit the screen. Each piece of advice will link to supporting evidence in a post.

Secondary page 1, “Do you make these common mistakes?”: This page will visually point out elements common to fliers or slide presentations that make a billboard-style digital sign unreadable. Each “mistake” will link to a blog page going deeper into that topic. Examples include:

• Multiple messages – One Message
• Too small – Size Matters
• Too much picture – Overstuffed
• Too much text – Short & Sweet
• Multiple fonts – One Font to Rule them All
• Multiple pics – A Picture’s Worth
• Multiple QR codes – Code Overload
• Vertical on a horizontal screen – Fit the Screen (Black Bands Mean Death)

Secondary page 2, “Think Billboards, not Presentations” will summarize the context of digital signage use, describing why the designs for flyers or presentation slides don’t have the same impact on a billboard audience.

Blog/Vlog posts, approximately a dozen, will demonstrate and describe a particular design element or best practice/poor practice through a case study or demonstration.  In addition to titles listed above, a demonstration would show techniques to turn a vertical flyer into one or more digital signs.

Process

• Confirm site design. Since I am utilizing a site already in existence, important decisions such as style and site theme are already chosen. The site will only need to be reviewed to ensure that the existing theme can handle the additional pages and separate blog (likely collected by tags).
• List and Collect Images
• Review latest SEO standards
• Write page/blog content, incorporating SEO standards
• Record and edit video for publishing
• Discuss content with Integrated Marketing Team leadership in the Marketing and Communications office. Their endorsement of the content will be crucial in peer support of the concepts, and promoting the site itself.