The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brought unimaginable changes to our lives. Stay-at-home orders, restrictions on shopping and dining, and other public health measures had a profound impact on how people carried out their daily lives. Organizations large and small had to adapt quickly to a new reality. Videoconferencing helped office workers stay connected to keep business moving forward.

A wide range of technologies helped retail and other essential businesses keep their employees and in-person customers and visitors safe and informed about ever-changing health-related protocols, new operating hours, and other vital details.

For many businesses, display technologies became integral to overcoming their communication challenges, helping them develop plans that included visual and digital solutions to encourage social distancing rules, mask mandates, and other guidelines. The critical need to find innovative ways to convey essential information focused attention on an underutilized surface for displaying images — floors.

An Overlooked Surface

Floors are not a new surface for displaying projected images. Museums, malls, sports and amusement venues, and trade shows are among the organizations that have already adopted floor projection, primarily to display artistic images, provide entertainment content, or add excitement to an event.

When the pandemic struck, however, many businesses soon began looking for better solutions than traditional signs, physical barriers, and floor stickers to more effectively promote social distancing, hand sanitizing and touchless practices in their facilities. Their goal was to conduct business as normally as possible without placing employees and customers at risk.

Some organizations deployed digital displays, which offer the benefits of grabbing the attention of visitors and making it simple to change the content provided. Installed on carts, these displays could be moved to where they were most needed. Others realized that, in appropriate settings, using a projector to display navigation instructions, distancing cues, and other information onto the floor would be an ideal solution.

The directions and information that floor projection provides are particularly effective because they’re hard to miss. Messages and visual cues are literally at viewers’ feet, making them unambiguous and easy to follow. Floor projection is essentially the same as the familiar process of using a projector to display a large image on a vertical surface. It presents several unique technical issues that need to be addressed, but like standard projection, it enables you to display engaging content on a blank surface.