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Interactive Content Overview
Ian Maison avatar
Written by Ian Maison
Updated over 3 months ago

What does Interactive Content look like in digital signage?

Interactive content’ is a term that can encompass everything from touch screens and lift + learn applications, to motion sensors and beyond. However, this section will focus exclusively on touchscreen applications (whatever they may be), and regardless of the application, things boil down to 3 key elements;

Requirements to make your signage interactive:

  • Hardware that supports touch interactivity

  • Interactivity enabled content

  • A CMS to manage and distribute your content

1. Hardware that supports touch interactivity

This might be a touch-enabled screen with an external media player, or a small tablet-style device with a built in media player. The option we’d recommend would typically depend on the application and the content you wish to show. External players might offer greater processing power to help with fast moving visuals and greater fluidity when navigating menus, whereas the tablet-style devices offer easier installation and a more refined finish.

Supported External Media Players

Supported Tablet-Style Devices

2. Types of Interactive Content

Although you can’t create interactive content within Signagelive, you can use Signagelive to manage and deploy your interactive content. There are 3 main options for interactive content and these are outlined and discussed below:

Web Pages

Web Pages represent the most ‘Out of the box’ interactive option. Signagelive will support the URLs that you add to your library and publish to your players. If there is interactivity on your webpage (scrolling, buttons, links or menus) then that will be supported.

While publishing a web page might be the simplest option, there are some limitations. The player will need a stable internet connection in order to display the page, it will also need a web browser powerful enough to smoothly display your content - As well intentioned as your flashy graphics and links might be, you don’t want to be greeting your users with a loading page. For this reason, anything you intend to publish as an interactive web page is best off optimised for signage displays.

Apps

Apps, or Widgets, are the more stable, ‘packaged HTML’ option. They can be created/configured to run offline which makes them less demanding on bandwidth, and can also provide a smoother experience for the user.

An example of a touch interactive app is the Room Booking App available in our Marketplace.

Signagelive have documented a Widget Development Framework to assist you with developing interactive Apps. You can find this here. If you have an idea about something you’d like to achieve then we’d love to talk! Reach out here.

.Exe files

.Exe is the file extension for an executable file format. These files can be used to run a program on supported PC Appliances. What this program does is completely up to you! You can see this type of content in action here.

3. A CMS to manage and distribute your content.

That’s where Signagelive comes in. Upload your interactive Web Pages, Apps and .Exe files to your Signagelive library and use our Publish section to distribute the content across your network.

Whether you want the content to show as a default playlist, scheduled playlist/layout, or as the result of a trigger, you can find the relevant guides in our Help Centre here.

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