Digital signage for offices, lobbies and meeting rooms.

Where the screens go

An office has four places where a screen gets read, and people give each one a different amount of time.

The lobby and reception is where visitors wait and staff walk through twice a day. Visitors read it while they wait; staff glance at it on the way past. This is the screen for today's schedule, a welcome for the people you are expecting, the weather, and the guest Wi-Fi as a QR code. It is also the one screen in the building that strangers read, and that decides what may go on it — more on that below.

The corridor to the kitchen and the break room is where people stop for a few minutes with a coffee and actually read, which makes it the place for a digital bulletin board: the notice of the week, the HR deck about the new leave policy, the next public holiday, the headlines.

The team area is where a screen with the team's own figures works — sales this week, open tickets, orders shipped — read many times a day by the people who move those numbers.

Beside a meeting-room door, a small screen shows that room's bookings for the day. People read it from a step away, in a second, and move on.

How big, and which way up

Measure from where people stand when they read, not from the middle of the room. For large text, such as a headline or a clock, the furthest reader can be about six screen heights away; for a table read line by line, about four. A reception area read from three or four metres wants a 43" to 55" screen; a lobby or corridor read from four or five metres, 55" to 65". Beside a meeting-room door, a tablet or a small Android display is enough. The hardware guide has the full table.

Orientation follows the content. A table of figures with several columns wants landscape. A list of the day's meetings reads better in portrait, where more of the day fits without scrolling. Decide on the day you mount the screen — the mount and the cable run follow from it. In SignageStack the orientation is a setting on each screen in the dashboard.

What goes on each screen

One playlist per place keeps each screen doing one job well.

• Lobby: the Google Calendar app in schedule view, with “Only show upcoming events” switched on so finished meetings drop off. Zones can put it beside the weather and a clock — one clock: the Clock app shows the local time, not the time in your other offices. A Text slide welcomes the visitors you expect that day, and a QR code joins the guest Wi-Fi.
• Break room: a Google Slides deck that HR or comms already keeps, a Text slide or two, the Public holidays app and a news app such as BBC News, The Guardian or DW.
• Team area: the Google Sheets app, showing a spreadsheet made for the screen. A Countdown to the end of the quarter or to the office move sits well beside it.
• Meeting-room door: the Google Calendar app in day view, showing that room's calendar and nothing else.

The Ticker runs over all of them when you need it: one line along the bottom of every screen you choose, for the day the lift is out of order.

Writing for people walking past

Most people give an office screen a few seconds. Write for that.

• One message per slide. “Kitchen closed Thursday for cleaning” works. A paragraph about why does not.
• A small spreadsheet for the screen. A sheet with forty columns is unreadable on a wall. Make a separate spreadsheet with only what the screen should show — a handful of rows and columns, totals rather than detail — and leave the full one where it is.
• Meeting titles that make sense on a wall. The calendar shows events as they are titled. “Quarterly review — Sales” is useful in the lobby; “Catch-up” is not.
• Enough time per item. A notice someone reads to the end needs longer than a photo. Each item in a playlist has its own duration.
• Dates, not “next week”. A notice that stays up longer than planned should still be right.

Keep private things off public screens

The lobby screen is read by everyone who walks in: visitors, couriers, candidates for interview. Before anything goes on it, ask whether you would hand it to a stranger at the door.

• Calendars show event titles as they are. A meeting called “Restructuring — Finance” is on the wall for every visitor. Use a calendar kept for the lobby, or keep sensitive meetings out of the one on screen.
• Spreadsheets show what is in them. Revenue by client belongs on the screen in the team area, not in reception.
• Dashboards from other tools show through the Web page app only if they have a public link that can be embedded — and a public link is public. Many internal tools need a login or refuse to be embedded; try the link before you plan around it.

Keeping it right

Give each screen an owner: facilities for the lobby, HR or comms for the break room, the team lead for the team area. Everyone gets a login of their own. A Member can change content and a Viewer can look without touching anything; roles apply to the whole account, not to single screens, so agree who looks after which playlist.

Prepare the Emergency Alert before you need it. Write the headline — “Evacuate the building” — the details and the severity, choose the screens and leave it switched off. In an incident, switching it on is one switch in the dashboard, and within a second it covers those screens, including the ones that are dark outside working hours. It is not wired to your fire alarm: a person switches it on, so make sure more than one person knows how, and try it at the next fire drill.

Look at the screens list in the dashboard now and then. Every player reports when it was last seen and what it is playing, so a screen that went dark shows up there before anyone complains. And when a notice has to be on screen for a set period — a safety notice, a policy change — the playback report shows which screens played it and when.