We recently sat down with Todd Alan Green, global manager of airports and transportation at Nanolumens, to discuss digital signage in transportation applications.

LAVNCH [CODE]: Tell us a little bit about your role at Nanolumens.

TODD ALAN GREEN: My role at Nanolumens is to be the vertical market manager and subject matter expert for our many wonderful airport and transit customers. Basically, I help our company understand the unique application needs of the customer and help navigate the complexities airport projects to exceed the customers goals.

LAVNCH [CODE]: What’s the number one thing tech professionals should know about installing dvLED into transportation applications?

TAG: By far the number one thing you should know about installing dvLED into transportation projects is that you will be required to be flexible with your staffing schedules, and you must be ready to deal with very compressed installation timelines. Our systems are just a small—but very important—part of very large construction projects.

There any many teams working hard towards completion and things happen that result in timelines ahead of your schedule being missed and delayed, but the hard opening date is set in stone and there’s not an option to miss that date. Many billions of dollars are involved in these projects, and delays have major consequences.

LAVNCH [CODE]: Transportation applications can be tricky—you can have some viewing the video wall up close and some from across the airport or train station. What’s the optimal viewing distance for these sorts of applications and why?

TAG: Like the applications, this question is also tricky. At Nanolumens, we do work hard to make sure we are understanding the application and purpose of our displays in these facilities so we can best advise the customer to help with their passenger experience. Nanolumens has been fortunate that we have had a lot of experience in these spaces so we are able to help our customers understand what has become industry standard in each application.

The easier answer to this is that we work to advise on the optimal pixel pitch for the average viewer. There’s no point in spending more money on a tighter pitch that is of no real benefit, but we do want to make sure that customers have the best experience when looking at our displays. There can be a bit of art to defining this.

LAVNCH [CODE]: Serviceability is huge when it comes to any digital signage application. But in the 24/7 world of transportation, there’s not exactly downtime to accomplish this. How does Nanolumens help create efficiency in terms of serviceability?

TAG: Just like the question on installing of these applications, the servicing is also of major importance. Digital signage in airports and transit is now a must-have and no longer a nice-to-have. These are considered mission-critical assets, and the speed of dealing with any issues is reflected on the brand of the airport and/or airline.

In addition, not dealing with these things quickly provides a poor user experience to the passenger. Advertising displays that go down cost losses in revenue, a broken wayfinding display can cause disruptions in the customer journey—neither of these scenarios are good. We work with our customers to discover what their priorities are so the proper service level agreements (SLAs) can be put in place to help with these unexpected situations.

Other issues people do not think about are having employees that are security-badged to even be given access to these spaces or access to lifts and ladders as necessary—there are a lot of moving parts that have to be considered in secure spaces. Nanolumens has a lot of experience here, and our team is prepared to help.

LAVNCH [CODE]: Can you share a little bit about a recent Nanolumens installation in the transportation sector?

TAG: Great question! In the last 60 days alone, we have seen the official openings of four airports—BNA (Nashville), KCI (Kansas City), JFK (New York) Terminal 4, and EWR (Newark) Terminal A. It has been very busy around here to say the least! Click here to learn more about some of our transportation installations.

LAVNCH [CODE]: Anything else you’d like to add?

TAG: I always love letting people know—especially architects, designers, and consultants—that Nanolumens really does not sell LED displays, we sell completely bespoke systems that help advance a customers facility.

I like to say that we sell “digital drywall”. Nanolumens can provide a custom-built, dynamic building material that can be incorporated directly into the architecture of a facility. From airports, to casinos, theme parks, retail centers, museums and much more, we provide a building material that can be changed to reflect the need of the environment and needs of the customer at the push of a button. As we say at the company, “We Are LED!”

Want to hear more from Nanolumens’ Todd Alan Green? 

Click here to watch the on-demand version of his LAVNCH WEEK 7 panel, “Planes, Trains and Digital Signage?

This sponsored content was created as part of a paid partnership with Nanolumens. The contents of this article are entirely independent and solely reflect the opinion of Nanolumens.