According to Gartner, 70% of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application by 2014. Organizations are using gamification content not only as part of their marketing strategies and promotions, they are using it internally to keep workers engaged. With Generation X and Y growing up in a gaming culture, gamification is a vital tool to drive engagement and motivate people to spend more time with your brand.

Popular Gamification Content Tactics

Brianne Walter in 3 Gamification Tactics for Content Publishers outlines three very important gamification tactics that can be used to enhance levels of engagement with your company’s content. They are:

1. Points: Points are one of the most traditional and most effective gamification tactics that can be used for engagement. There is no shortage of ways that companies can assign points when users engage with content such as assigning points for things like page views, comments, and progression.
2. Leaderboards: People love competition, and they love to compare themselves to others. Including a leaderboard on your website allows people to see where they stand compared to other users. It also motivates them to further engage with your brand so they can move their way up the leaderboard.
3. Badges: Similar to leaderboards, badges allow users to gain notoriety or status when they engage with your brand. It also allows for comparison with other users and gives them reason to engage at a deeper level with your brand.

Benefits of Gamification Content

Gamification content marketing is becoming a more widely used strategy. Effective content marketing plans are used to educate, inform and entertain. Gamification can help to enhance these tactics.

“Smart marketers are using the same mechanics that have hooked gamers to generate more business and, with advancements in technology, are doing so with greater creativity and complexity,” says Nicolette Beard in Gamification as a Content Marketing Tactic – How Brands Are Engaging Consumers.

Companies are using gamification content and gaming mechanics because they provide these potential benefits:

• It encourages users to spend more time with your brand
• It allows for deeper levels of engagement
• It is something that is different from traditional marketing and advertising tactics that people have grown weary of
• Gamification creates fun experiences with your brand
• Gamification speaks your users’ language and engages them on a familiar “playing field”

Gamification content creates reasons for your users to keep coming back. Points, badges and leaderboards reward users for engaging with your content, and this is the key to turn these users into customers who will choose to purchase your brand’s products and services.

“One thing that many businesses forget to budget for or do well — digital content. Content is the most important element, as this is what the customer sees and what gets their attention to start with,” says Tanya Williams in Creating Theatre in Your Business.

She goes on to discuss the importance of working with experts in digital signage content service:

“Creating content that is fit for purpose and suits the environment and screen configuration is key to a successful content integration. Simply taking static content or video from your website and stretching it across the screen is not acceptable if you want to be taken seriously as an innovator. Partner with digital content experts who understand how the technology works, as most advertising agencies can do great content but have no understanding of the technology, how it works or its capabilities.”

If you are going to invest in digital signage, you need to get your content right to maximize its effectiveness. Having a state of the art digital sign or display and subpar content that is not ideal for the medium will not create the results or the ROI you expect.

Digital Signage Content Service Options

Handing over the management of your digital signage is becoming more common as it allows you to utilize the expert advice and services from digital signage content service providers. Some of the most commonly offered digital signage content services include:

• Digital signage needs analysis
• Content plan development
• Template design
• Digital signage software
• Digital signage management and content campaign management

Other Considerations for Digital Signage Content Service

Similar to any other strategic marketing objective, you need to have an effective plan in place. A strategic content plan will set the tone for how you will use digital signage and what it will display to your customers.

It is also important to make sure that your brand is properly represented and aligned with all content that is displayed using digital signage. Ideally, your digital signage strategy and content should be an extension of your brand and strategically fit in with your other marketing and advertising campaigns.

“Including other digital platforms like social media allows you to create more diversity, user generated content and more engagement with your customers,” says Williams.

Digital signage content services help companies maximize the effectiveness of their digital signage strategies. Without high quality content, and content that is optimized for digital signage, your campaign risks falling flat, leading to lower levels of engagement and interaction from your customers.
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As outlined by Josh Bycers in Motivating Mechanics in Game Design,

“Progression is an important part of a game’s design and its purpose is to keep people motivated to continue playing. Each genre handles progression differently, for example beating a map in a strategy game or achieving positive growth in a city builder. There are two categories of progression: player based and game based. Player based is the player improving at the title, while game based is the designer providing hooks to keep the player invested.”

Without elements such as progression and challenges along the way, people will lose interest. One of the most popular video games of all time, Mario Brothers, is the perfect example of progression and challenges in gaming. The presence of levels gives people the chance to progress through the game; and the need to beat a new “boss” at the end of each level provides new and more difficult challenges as users get more immersed in the game.

The key is to create motivators and engaging elements across multiple time frames. Bycers outlines three main categories – Short Term Mechanics, Mid-Term Mechanics, and Long Term Mechanics. He states,

“Short term mechanics are events designed to occur constantly… Mid-term mechanics are those that the player expects to happen over the course of one session…. long term mechanics are mechanics or goals that will happen over the course of several play sessions.”

From a gamification perspective, companies use these mechanics to keep people engaged. In the short term they use instant prizes; over the mid-term they can use points systems and leaderboards; and over the long term they can use point milestone and levels that people can strive for over time.

Maintaining User Motivation

Maintaining motivation is the key when it comes to video games. This is also directly applicable to gamification. As discussed in A Taxonomy of Motivation and Game Design, there are two sources of motivation that game designers and companies can use to gamify marketing elements: individual intrinsic motivation and interpersonal motivators.

Individual motivational factors that need to be present to maintain the proper level of engagement include challenges, creating curiosity, giving control to the user, and including elements of fantasy. Interpersonal motivators that need to be present are cooperation, competition, and recognition.

How Does This Apply to Gamification?

The same elements of motivation are at play when companies use gamification to engage users and encourage them to interact with their brand.

Naturally, motivators have the most impact on your users when they engage with your company or brand at various touch points and will depend on the end user. This is why it is very important to have a detailed user profile and understand what your customers and users want at a deeper level. The more you understand about who your customers, users, and gamers are, the better you will be able to motivate them and create an experience that engages them.
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The main reason why more and more companies are using digital signage is to connect with their customers in more engaging way. The technology is creating more innovative and creative ways to interact and gain the attention of customers.

As outlined in Top 4 Digital Signage Trends in 2014, by CAYIN Technology, there are two main questions that companies need to ask when considering the merit of integrating digital signage into their market and adverting plans:

“How can people get more involved through digital signage? How can we take advantage of digital signage to enhance our daily communications?”

Based on these questions, CAYIN Technology has outlined 4 key trends they believe will be front and center at the ISE 2014 Conference.

• Trend 1: User friendly content development is essential
• Trend 2: Interactive digital signage is catching on
• Trend 3: Data and live information leverages communications
• Trend 4: Analytics become more and more important

There is no doubt that interactive signs are catching on. They are popping up everywhere. One of the main reasons they are growing in popularity is that companies are better understanding how to create more intuitive user interfaces and content that people want to engage with. The integration of mobile devices and digital signs also gives people an additional way to interact and engage in real time.

Of course, tying it all together is analytics. The more information that companies can collect about how people interact with digital signage, the better they will be able to utilize these signs to engage customers.

Alan C. Brawn has also explored what we can expect from Canadian digital signage in 2014 in this post entitled Digital Signage Trends in “The 7 Key Elements” for 2014. Looking at each one of the 7 key elements—Business, Content, Design, Software, Hardware, Connectivity, Operations—he also has similar predictions for what to expect from digital signage this year.

From a business perspective, there will be considerable focus on ROI and defining the key objective of using digital signage technology. “While analytics became a hot topic in 2013, it will become even hotter in 2014—with new directions in the evaluation of who the viewer is, how long they look at a screen in terms of dwell time, and what impact the content has on them,” says Brawn.

Another key area of focus will be on the integration of social media and effectively using a “call to action.” Integrating social media is a natural fit for digital signage, considering how widely adopted it has become by everyone. Finding the most effective way to integrate a “call to action” into digital signage content could be the key to increasing levels of engagement.

Expect a lot from the Canadian digital signage industry in 2014 as more business adopt the technology, and headway is made in further developing its interactive capabilities.
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But the concept endures, and has found new traction among the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies who are using it as a tool to keep employees more engaged, according to a Canadian expert.

Mitchell Osak,
Quanta Consulting

“If you want employees to be more productive and show up to work more, you have to change their behavior and their mindset,” said Mitchell Osak, the founder of Toronto-based business strategy firm Quanta Consulting Inc., in a recent web-chat with the Conference Board of Canada.

And adding a simple leaderboard can have a major transformation on work culture. That’s what Osak said he implemented at a major software developer to help offset the boredom and dissatisfaction experienced by workers responsible for bug testing, a task Osak described as the “bottom of the IT barrel.”

Turning the chore into a game created an “esprit de corps,” said Osak, that resulted in employees finding 300 percent more bugs in a third of the time as before.

Osak said gamification taps into “fundamental human psychological drivers” such as the need to relate to our peers and the desire for mastery and status. All of these elements exist in the simplest video games, which are played by about half of all adults, according to Osak.

“People have been playing games for more than 10,000 years, so we’re really not doing anything different,” he added. “We’re just leveraging anthropology and new technology and the proven precepts from the video game industry.”

So far these tools have been used mostly in the public realm: to drive consumers to brands, with the notion that they will be more likely to come back if the initial experience is pleasurable. Osak said the same techniques that have been applied to consumers are now being turned on employees to make work more fun. Even job evaluations have been gamified to make the process less painful. Employers benefit from having less sick days and a more engaged and productive staff, he said.

Over the last four years, more than 350 companies in the United states have launched gamification projects and annual revenues are expected to top $2 billion by 2015, according to a study by Santa Fe, California-based M2 Research.

“The terrific thing about gamification is that it allows us to have a new conversation with business leaders,” said Osak, who also said he anticipates its adoption growing considerably in 2014. “It’s not something I would consider faddish, as it’s generated some real compelling value for a lot of organizations.”

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The research opportunity: This presentation from GDC Europe offers more insight into the gamification of software bug testing and QA.

The commercialization potential: Check out Mitchell’s columns on the Financial Post which offer insights into the way businesses are using gamification.

The next thing you should read on CommerceLab: What the Wall Street Journal gets wrong about gamification

One of the main focal points and an emerging trend for user experience design is to focus on the ever important millennial generation. They are the largest generation since the baby boomers and have a major impact on the economy today and into the future. One key area that is an increasingly important user experience trend with millennials is the use of mobile technology.

Millennials’ Habits – Mobile Media is the Key

Mobile media is an important factor for creating user experience. With smartphones and tablets becoming a more integrated part of our lives, using these devices to enhance user experiences can be a key factor for engagement.

According to a survey conducted earlier this year by Immobi,

“Millennials spend an average of 7.2 hours per day consuming media content, with more of that time spent on mobile devices than any other platform. This generation now devotes an average of almost 2.0 hours per day to mobile media, ahead of television (1.5 hours) and the desktop (1.6 hours).”

As outlined in an the article, Consumption Habits of Millennials in the US, by Jenny Mudarri:

“According to a study conducted by Pew Research Center, almost half of adults ages 35-44 own a tablet computer as of 2013, which is significantly more than any other age group, while smartphones are most popular with younger adults.”

It’s clear that mobile devices are the future, especially when it comes to user engagement. If companies want to reach their customer, mobile is a must; and it could also lead to multi-screen experiences. However, if you are attempting to engage users using mobile, your technology needs to work seamlessly or your millennials will disengage.

A recent study on consumer behavior and preference states, “Users will not tolerate a problematic mobile app, and will abandon it after only one or two failed attempts…79 percent would retry a mobile app only once or twice if it failed to work the first time.”

User Experience Trends in the Workplace

Mobile technology is also becoming important in the workplace. Millennials prefer to use their own personal mobile devices over technology that is provided in their office, making BYOD (bring your own device) an opportunity for companies to improve user experience and engagement in the workplace. 

As outlined on eWeek.com, “Forrester says the best way to prepare for growth and changes in BYOD is to meaningfully understand your workers’ needs and how and where they work.”

The report goes on to state that,

“…the BYOD trend as only just begun. It also found that 64 percent of the 10,000 information workers it surveyed said they use their smartphones at their work desks…Having apps on tablets and smartphones means that employees can carry their work in their pockets…and work from any location: Meeting rooms, coffee shops and homes are just the most obvious new offices.”

Millennials’ user experience trends are clear—Mobile is widely adopted and will play a large role in creating unique and effective user experiences.

Digital signage is a consumer engagement technology, and it will make significant strides in 2014 in terms of what displays look like and how they will be used.

“While 2013 was about compatibility and interactivity, 2014 will be more of a focus on visual and aesthetic changes as display manufacturers and marketers explore more creative shapes and configurations for displays. Instead of one large, rectangular installation, we’ll see more multi-display installations and sizes to vary the message and enhance engagement with multiple audiences at one time,” says Nathan Remmes, Director of Business Development, NanoLumens

What Small Businesses Need to Know About the Digital Signage Industry

A study released by ABI Research in 2011 suggested that the global market for digital signage would grow from nearly $1.3 billion in 2010 to almost $4.5 billion in 2016. This is a significant increase in only a short period of time, and so far their prediction is holding true. This should give small business owners confidence in the digital signage industry and prove to them that it is a worthwhile marketing investment.

Digital signage is now more affordable and widely used than ever. However, even more important is the fact that users are coming to expect it. As Generation Y becomes a more influential player in the economy, their influence is having more of an impact on marketing. Since this generation is growing up with digital and interactive technology, they are coming to expect it as the norm—something that all businesses cannot overlook if they want to engage these customers.

Benefits for Small Businesses

Obviously, small business owners need to understand the benefits of getting involved in the digital signage industry before investing in the technology.

As stated by Todd Hemme, a Director at Rise Vision, in an article entitled How Small Business Owners Can Benefit from Digital Signage:

“Digital signage is relatively easy to set up in your business. Installation can be provided by the company selling the monitor, and with digital signage software you will have complete control over the content that displays. You can customize the display to serve your business purposes. That’s the great thing about using digital displays. Every business is unique, and you can make your display unique to sell your services and make your business even more appealing to your visitors.”

The benefits of using digital signage are clear. With easy set up and customization, not to mention the many options you have for implementation, a small business can use the signs to build trust, provide information, sell, highlight featured products and services, and engage customers in fun and entertaining ways.

With its ability to reach large volumes of people, the digital signage industry is a good investment for small businesses as a means to reach and engage their customers in increasingly new ways.

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Generation Y UX trends have become an important part of how companies develop their marketing plans and determine which technology to use as part of their marketing and advertising campaigns. Before you can create a successful users experience for Generation Y, you need to understand what they are all about, what makes them tick, and the type of interactions that will cause them to engage with your company.

What Do We Know About Generation Y?

Even though they are closely associated with one another, Generation Y and Generation X have a number of differences when it comes to how companies market to them. Understanding the differences between the two groups enables companies to better understand how to create a user experience that will be well received.

So, what do we know about Generation Y?

Gemma Maidment of Webcredible outlines some of the important characteristics of this generation:

• Generation Y is anyone who was born after 1980
• They are conformists and their goal is to fit in
• They make collaborative purchase decisions
• What other people have to say matters
• They expect instant gratification

The Key to Generation Y UX Trends – Instant Gratification

Perhaps the most important takeaway about what we know about this generation, and one of the most important factors for generation Y UX trends, is that instant gratification is an essential component for marketing to Gen Y.

“Mobile has introduced a platform for instant gratification and truly multichannel retail, which generation Y strives for, and the retailer that gets this right will gain a huge advantage over its competitors,” says Maidment.

Engaging Generation Y

As outlined in 5 Things That You Need to Know About Marketing to Gen Y by Nathalie Nahai, Generation Y individuals are a little more tricky to market to because they are more skeptical of traditional marketing and advertising tactics, which has an influence on how companies can create an engaging user experience.

“If you’re serious about engaging Gen Y consumers, you have to give them an experience they’ll want to share. By focusing your efforts on experiential marketing, and incorporating a sense of social responsibility and an incentive to share your content with their peers, you’ll be able to connect with these consumers more deeply and help win their trust,” says Nahai.

When it comes to Generation Y UX trends, the steps companies must take to effectively engage with this generation are becoming clearer. Companies need to further examine who Generation Y is and what they want, and focus on instant gratification using mobile and interactive technology to engage this increasingly powerful generation of consumers.

There is no doubt that interactive digital signage and displays are here to stay. More and more businesses are investing in digital signage technology, not only in a traditional sense to advertise products and services, but also to use them as interactive touch points to engage customers.

So, how big is the future for interactive digital signage? While there is no guarantee when it comes to predicting future trends, especially when it comes to technology (remember how many people thought social media was going to be a fad?), one thing is for sure—the future lies with the new generation of technology users who are growing up with touch screens and interactive displays.

As argued by James Velco in his article entitled Interactivity, Data Mining, and the Future of Digital Signage:

“Thanks to the iPad, iPhone, and Android devices, an increasingly younger population has the expectation of interacting with displays to obtain specific, personally relevant information. For my two sons, personally relevant information is finding specific videos they want to watch. So how do two little boys have any bearing on the direction of digital signage? When they grow up, they’ll expect to interact with every display they see. They will have grown up thinking interactive monitors are part of everyday life.”

Velco’s point accurately encapsulates exactly where the future for interactive digital signage is headed. Since Generation Y is going to come to expect it as part of everyday life, it is likely that it will be part of everyday life.

Traditional signs will become digital, and digital signs will become interactive. For example, things like restaurant menus, digital signing in stores, and advertising on the subway will take the next step and become more interactive and engaging.

Factors Impacting the Adoption of Interactive Digital Signage

Digital signage technology has a lot going for it, and these digital forms of advertising are appearing in all different types of marketing and advertising campaigns. But the success of interactive digital signage really comes down to an effective deployment strategy as outlined by Gene Ornstead in How to Increase Engagement with Digital Signage.

Ornstead argues that for successful adoption, and for future success, companies need to be mindful of the four pillars of digital signage. The signs need to be used as a communications tool not only to advertise, but also to educate, inform and entertain. Therefore, to meet these communications objectives, high quality content that customer’s value needs to be present. As argued by Velco, “Making content valuable is the primary challenge. Once the content can be considered valuable to the viewer, it becomes engaging and effective.”

The benefits of the technology are there. As Ornstead correctly outlines, interactive digital signage is cost effective, there is flexibility in how the signage can be used, it has the ability to engage customers, and of course, it has the wow factor to grab people’s attention and get them the interact with the signage.

This generation of technology users who are growing up with interactive digital signage technology will be the driving force in the future. They will be the key determining factor that will dictate how big the future for interactive digital signage will be going forward.

User experience, which is also commonly referred to as UX, is one of the most important considerations when developing anything. From products and services, to websites and even mobile device apps, the goal should be to create an experience that is intuitive for your target user group.

How to interact and what the user is supposed to do should be obvious. The most successful user experiences are often the ones that are simple and make use of universal signs and symbols that are commonly used in society.

Understanding UX for Millennials

When developing new technologies, it is important that you speak your user’s language. This is why it is so important to perform customer research and understand user behaviors and tendencies before developing a product. It is much easier to create an engaging user experience when you know user preferences and how they like to interact with various forms of technology.

When it comes to understanding UX for millennials, the rules for developing an engaging user experience are no different. The important factors are context and understanding. Context drives the user’s experience. The more relatable the experience is to the user, the more likely they will be to engage and complete the desired actions you want them to complete.

Millennials as Consumers

It is also important to understand the buying habits of this generation. After all, attempting to engage users is usually the first step to getting them in the sales cycle. If you don’t get it right and fail to engage millennials, they will move on to the competition.

Millennials are undoubtedly more connected digitally and are more open to complete transactions online while using a variety of devices, but they are also more likely to read reviews and hear what others have to say before clicking the “buy” button.

Millennials are unique in the sense that they trust and care about what other consumers have to say. They care about others’ opinions over the marketing messages of brands. Therefore, when considering UX for millennials, it is important that user-generated content is included in your product development decision. Millennials value testimonials, product reviews and the opinions of other consumers.

Millennials have different buying habits than baby boomers and other generations. This needs to be accounted for when developing a user experience. In only a few short years, this generation will have more spending power than any other group. For this reason alone, it’s time to understand how to maximize UX for millennials.

Bottom Line

Listen to what millennials are saying and take action. Read their comments on your website and through social media. They want to engage with brands, and it is up to these brands to remove engagement obstacles and minimize the learning curve to create an ideal UX for millennials.