Scorecard

Over the past year, I’ve paid special attention to interactive experiences that I’ve come across in my regular everyday travels. In order to bring a level of consistency to how I view and experience them, as well as write about them, I created the official 11th Screen Scorecard. I hope it helps you, too, as you come across these types of experiences.

Purpose – What is the purpose of the solution?  Is it to drive awareness?  Acquisition?  Loyalty?  What is the brand trying to accomplish in this medium?

In my mind, this is the most important question to ask.  It should define the exact solution.  Brands can do one thing through a billboard and something entirely different through a kiosk.  More often than not, I believe that brands utilize the OOH medium as an awareness-only medium.  I think there is always an opportunity to drive consumers deeper into the brand, even from the biggest “awareness-driven” installation – a standard billboard.

Drama – Does the solution make a big impact on the user?  Does it make them stop and interact?

Since everything we’re talking about is interacted with in the physical spaces around us, it must have some drama to it to entice people to interact.  This can be accomplished a number of ways – the physical installation, its movement, its content and its call-to-action.

Usability – Can the user navigate through the experience with ease?  Are the paths to information intuitive?  There’s also an element of functions, too, but I think that is much more subjective.  Do the functions enhance the user experience?

The biggest killer to any touch screen installation, once the user starts interacting with it, is not knowing what to do and/or how to get to the desired information.  It’s critically important that foundational elements like content grouping(s) and navigation hierarchy are intuitive.  Herein lies the challenge though.  Old website standards are most often not applicable because interaction in this medium is so open, non-linear, and tactile.  Navigating a website with a mouse on a computer is different from navigating a website with your finger on a touch screen.

Interactivity – How does the user interact with it?  Is it gesture-based?  Is it touch-based?  Can the user interact with it through any other enabling technology?

This consideration is really an extension of Usability.  But whereas the Usability consideration focuses more on how the content experience is laid out, the Interactivity consideration focuses on how much effort is required to interact with the physical experience.  If it’s gesture-based, how responsive is it based on the user’s interaction?  If it’s touch-based, how responsive is it based on the user’s touch?  If it requires an enabling technology, how easy, instant and accurate is it based on the user’s actions?  This is the second biggest killer to any touch screen installation.  If it doesn’t respond to the user’s touch, the user will either give up or get upset.  Either way, they’re not going to interact with it anymore.

Information – How much and what kind of content is available for the user to interact with?  Generally speaking, the more information and the different formats of information, the better.

Personalization – What level of personalization does the experience provide?

Perhaps another way to look at this is ‘does it account for various stages in the relationship process?’  Does it accommodate someone that is interacting with the brand for the 1st time?  Or the 3rd time?  Or the 30th time?

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