Jordan Plowman
Lantern Staff
An IT employee approached me between classes and stopped me without telling me who or what he was doing. He asked me these questions: Do you know that there are digital signs (TVs) put up around campus? How many digital signs do you see a day? Can you tell me what plays on those signs? Do they tell you time sensitive information? Are they helpful to your daily routine?
Digital signs are around every corner I walk. There is no way for me to miss them unless I glue my eyes to the ground. I see at least seven in my daily route and nine if I decide to go to the cafeteria for breakfast. I often have time to kill between classes, and I look at those signs to see if there is anything new and nine times out of 10, there is not. Sport schedules and admission memos generally dominate the never ending rotation. At times, passersby see a major Butler event appear or the library’s new drink special, but nothing they have not already seen or heard before.
After talking with different students and trying to attend a club that was promised to be a real thing, which turned out to be an old flyer, I have noticed flyers were not eliminated like the envisioned idea of the digital signs were made to be. Clubs, Residence Life and smaller events still have to put up flyers to get their word out. While going on a story hunt for the newspaper, I found at least four flyers on the same billboard that had an event or information for the public that was outdated. Flyers are a helpful tool to send out information, but flyers should be left to things that are not time sensitive.
Digital signs are meant to get the word out as fast as possible. An advantage to digital signage too is that it can be taken down once the information is not useful anymore.
Say, hypothetically, Residence Life wants to host an all inclusive middle of the semester slump in the cafeteria, but it is already Thursday when they get the visual done. Now Residence Life is either going to have to plaster flyers all over campus to try and get the best turn out possible, or they could submit their design to IT and they could put it up on the digital signs. After the event on Tuesday, the office assistant does not have to go around taking down flyers. This can save time, paper and ink, which are expensive nowadays.