Living Through Interesting Times 

“May you live in interesting times” is an often cited tongue-in-cheek proverb wishing that recipients encounter challenges.

It sure looks like we’re living in those interesting times. Economic and tech market news dominate headlines. People are returning to work, school and daily life but differently from before the pandemic.   

At a series of recent talks on the state of housing, commercial real estate and retail storefronts hosted by Colorado Real Estate Journal, most experts were cautiously optimistic.

They noted that economies, businesses and people bounce back faster than ever before. And, that smart organizations thrive in good and uncertain times by staying focused on providing good solutions at great value.  

We agree. More importantly, we’re seeing that trend now. Visionary clients continue to invest in intelligent digital signage—everything from video walls and messages boards to digital directories, conference room signage and information kiosks.

Why? Because it upgrades the experience for everyone in their buildings. It’s an amenity that people of all ages expect in our digital age. And it saves precious time, avoids hassle of old school posters and slat directories, and helps commercial buildings win over choosy tenants.  

Back to the Future 

Smart digital content solutions are mood-shaping, community-creating and information-delivering tools. They have become a must-have for savvy employers, companies and designers. Across offices, schools, city halls, retirement community centers, hotels and more, the need to reach people with a steady stream of information in an engaging and fun way is driving massive investment in “placemaking” technologies.

Quite simply, we all want the spaces that we inhabit—personal, public and professional—to be compelling. And we want that now. 

Pressure on property owners and managers to be a partner in delivering this experience have risen. There’s a flight to quality when it comes to buildings that people want to work in. This is driving decisions by employees across all sectors in a tight labor market.

That’s true despite persistent inflation and economic pressures. So, what’s a property manager to do? 

Rise of “Placemaking”: TouchSource Innovations for 2023 

Our CEO Ajay Kapoor calls the way we intentionally shape “places” into compelling experiences “Placemaking” in his ground-breaking blog from 2022. To create a sense of community and to shape spaces to the needs of their users, property managers need modern digital signage networks and simply easy, yet powerful software to deliver the right placemaking experience.

Ajay’s vision is carried forward with every R&D decision we make. That’s what you’ll see on showcase in our Spring 2023 Product Catalog. 

With every release of our product catalog, Team TouchSource works to: 

• Pack more value to the features and flexibility of our digital display software 
• Expand the ease and upkeep of our turnkey solutions 
• Offer exciting new signage options 

• Take some hard items off the mountain of work borne by property teams 

Download Now: The 2023 Product Catalog

Lobby by Day, Reception Space by Night 

Experience Flipping: As buildings reinvent how they use lobbies and communal areas, more are hosting happy hours, community events and social gatherings—before, during, and after traditional work hours.

With the TouchSource Inspire software package option, clients on the TouchSource Spark PX™ platform can now easily create a secondary or alternative “design” and “flip” it to active with the click of a button. 

Some examples of how this works: 

• Newark Liberty International Airport is using this to flip different transportation options, times and availability maps for passengers. They flip the experience across multiple digital kiosks at peak times when, for example, ride share availability is limited but shuttle buses are available.
• A commercial real estate building is hosting a charity drive at 5pm, and want to spotlight the charity’s donation drive, sponsors and event details for their guests. 
• A hospital normally shows provider listings and wayfinding maps on its directory during the day. At night, it wants to help stressed and anxious visitors quickly find the after-hours Emergency Room. So, they flip the experience to a single, large visual map of the Emergency Room and a QR-code with instructions on how to walk there.
• A college showcases a campus map and special event information on its outdoor digital kiosks during daytime hours. At night, it wants to promote its Campus Safety number and a scan-to-call QR code for emergency assistance.

There are many other examples. If you ever use your space or digital displays for “dual purposes” and want an easy way to switch to different content on your digital directory, you’ll want this exciting new feature. 

Passive Interactivity – Is that an Oxymoron? 

What is Passive Interactivity? It’s a term that our ever-innovative CEO uses to describe how to grab the attention of a casual viewer and turn it into active engagement with your on-screen content.  

But wait — Isn’t that just advertising?

No. Advertising delivers impressions. People see your content but it takes a lot of impressions to generate an action. And, it’s tricky to measure how impressions turn into interactions.  

With our new feature, Sensor-Triggered Content, you tap into people’s natural tendency to look at bright digital displays to draw their curiosity (passive viewing). As the visitor nears the screen, the content changes.

This further triggers that natural curiosity drawing them to the display for an interaction (interactivity). It’s a new modern digital engagement feature coming out with TouchSource Inspire for people on our Spark PX platform. 

It starts with a visually compelling design that’s optimized for indoor or outdoor usage, and the brightness and size of your display. We help you grab the attention of people passing by.

Using an Internet of Things (IoT) sensor in your display, we can sense when those viewers are in close proximity and trigger a change from the message you were displaying to other content, e.g. your retail center directory, campus map, or building listings. That content can include a message with an offer or QR code that pairs with what you were just showing to woo your viewer closer. 

For example, you show a visual promotion for onsite restaurants. When a person walks near the display, it changes from a full-screen restaurant ad to your directory and a QR code coupon for the restaurant.  

It’s a subtle yet powerful advancement that combines natural human behavior with subtle digital queues to draw engagement.

Flex Listings, Multi-Display Management & Other Time-Saving Innovations  

We’re always adding more features and value to our Software Options to save clients time, money and hassle. Among the list of other innovations for clients on our latest TouchSource Spark PX platform, you’ll see these advancements: 

• Flex Listing Management – Schedule listings of people, companies, or resources with intermittent or flex schedules so that they automatically appear when they’re on site or available.
• Listing Import from a CSV Format – Upload listing updates from a common spreadsheet format for times when you have broad changes to listings.
• Multi-Display Management – Manage, schedule, and view content across groups, buildings or an entire network of displays. Perfect for companies with many properties, buildings with many displays, and corporate marketers who use their display networks as channels for centrally created content and messaging.
• Multi-Factor Authentication – Ensure that only current employees and authorized users can access your digital building directories.
• Royalty-Free Art Backgrounds – Background designs for your display that use royalty-free art images as part of select software packages. Leave the worry about Digital Rights Management to us. We’ll help you select still or motion videos that fit the size, resolution and style that you’re looking for.
• Subsidized Software Package with Proactive Uptime Management – Get Premium software and skip the worry about whether your display is operating as expected, at an advertiser-subsidized rate. Our Directory Media Network bundle is available at this price because you agree to mix sponsored ads within the content mix of your display’s slideshow viewer area. No long-term contracts required. Very high quality ads from who’s-who of global brands.

Moveable Poster Stands 

People who watched our webinar with Granite Properties were so impressed with these moveable poster stands that we received a flood of interest. These can be used as digital directories, postings, or messaging board content. So, they can be used for more than “poster” style content, but we like the name. Create and easily update your own mix of messaging, notices, tenant listings, news and event information. Pick the software package that fits your use case. 

What’s nice about this proprietary hardware design of these digital poster stands is that they’re: 

• Lightweight and easy to move to different locations in your building. 
• Sleek profile and slim stand design easily fit the aesthetic style of your lobby and building spaces. 
• Hide messy power cords from the display within the stand.  
• Take it with you if you sell the building. Check in with us if you do, so that we can help you in refreshing building details in your design.

Check out the Granite Properties Case Study to see how they’re using these. Better yet, get our latest catalog to see more details.