In response to a growing student population, thousands of visitors consistently coming to campus, and logistics challenges, Davidson-Davie Community College’s directors were looking for ways to reduce the time it took for students and visitors to navigate around the growing campus. The IT team at Davidson began the process of researching, then ultimately implemented digital signage enhanced with wayfinding for colleges by 22Miles.

Digital Signage for College Campuses

22Miles’s intuitive central interface enabled Davidson’s IT and multi-media content strategy directors to efficiently utilize the 19 digital screens and kiosks to implement wayfinding for colleges, which breeds connectivity and efficiency. As the campus’ technology needs expand, incorporating digital room and menu boards, mobile app capabilities, donor boards, and even video walls are well within the capabilities of their system. All these components are easily customizable through the easy-to-use 22Miles content management system.

Davidson-Davie currently has 18 touch screens across two primary campuses. They are in the process of implementing an 19^th screen, and the displays are located in different buildings, high traffic areas, and busy spots on campus.

“Updating the directories and individual signs are things that we can easily do through the web interface. The ease of using the system, we can kind of share that responsibility with other areas of campus, so marketing can handle adding advertisements, and other departments can handle other campus related content and directories”

-Donald Beck – Director of IT Services – Davidson-Davie Community College

The positive feedback from students and visitors on the technology was a welcome sign that the enhancements were meeting the needs of the growing campus,  aligning well with the college’s digital accessibility mission statement. While the digital signage allows the college to easily provide information on events, emergency alerts, and advertisements, the ADA compliant 3D interactive wayfinding for colleges keeps visitors and students quickly getting where they need to go.

Wayfinding for Univerisites

While digital signage in the form of video walls, kiosks, and mobile apps offer real-time notifications with both manual control and integrations with leading emergency alert software, interactive wayfinding both in kiosk screens and with mobile capability, drastically reduces the amount of time it takes for students and visitors to find classrooms and other campus destinations. The system also features popular software integrations capability including RAVE, Everbridge, and Alertus.

“We wanted the screens to be not only functional, but also visually appealing. We set the first screen that shows to be advertisements, events, and a news ticker, and because they are touch screens, once a user touches them that opens up the wayfinding. Updating content is so simple, I can usually show someone within 5-10 minutes how to use the system.”

Jared Bowman – Director of Multimedia Strategies – Davidson-Davie Community College

With 3D wayfinding technology the campus kiosks can guide students, faculty, and visitors with arrow directions and location-based information pop-ups. This capability also allows for the prioritization of wheelchair accessibility and ADA compliance, so that all can feel welcomed and safe on campus.

Easy administration

Using the easy administrative power of 22Miles Publisher Pro CMS for content management, Davidson’s IT team can quickly train others to be able to make real-time updates across departments.

The system’s intuitive central interface empowers content strategy directors to efficiently utilize the digital screens and kiosks to generate wayfinding for colleges, which boost connectivity and efficiency.

Davidson’s main campus currently has:

• Nineteen touchscreens across two primary campuses
• Publisher Pro CMS for easy content management & data analytics
• Carry2Mobile capability for wayfinding access on mobile devices

Digital Signage Strategy

The 19 digital displays are strategically located in different buildings, high traffic areas, and busy spots on campus. Students have reported surprise at how easy the wayfinding is to use to find professors, buildings, and classes as they navigate the growing campus. The college’s multimedia and marketing director can easily update information, events, alerts, and advertisements across the various screens as needed, with the average time for users to train on updating the system reported as less than 15 minutes.

The combination of an interactive and appealing user experience for students and visitors, paired with the easy administration across departments for managing the campus content, allows Davidson-Davie officials to continue to grow the solution in a way that is branded within the school’s guidelines. With plans to possibly incorporate digital room boards, and options for video walls and mobile integrations, Davidson-Davie officials identified and implemented a solution that can grow and evolve with the college’s needs.