Bringing a New Dimension To The Visual Web

ThingLink and Tablet Academy announce Professional Development Partnership

ThingLink and Tablet Academy are delighted to announce their partnership which will be officially launched at the forthcoming Tablet Academy's Transform, Innovate and Inspire Convention on the 5th March at RAF Cosford, Telford, UK. 

Stewart’s Melville College is part of ESMS, a unique family of Independent Schools in Edinburgh, Scotland and has been providing education to boys for over 150 years. Stewart's Melville College has a large school community stemming back many generations. Head of eLearning, Mr Luxford-Moore and the pupils wanted to be able to develop the ways they connect with the ESMS families, enabling all to experience the school whether they are young, old, near or far away, or physically unable to tour the school.

ThingLink user:  JLL California (click to explore live page) - Making maps and aerial views actionable with interactive hotspots is one of the top use cases amongst all ThingLink user segments.  Maps are especially conducive to interactive elements because they require you to label or explain specific geographical locations with information that would be challenging to implement into the map design. Using icons and ThingLink hotspots, JLL California elegantly provides an interactive tour of their office campus and surrounding area without disrupting the visual nature of the map.   Using interactive content provides a more visual and engaging experience on landing pages that will keep your viewers spending time on the page longer. 

ThingLink user:  Arsenal Soccer (click to explore live page) - Arsenal uses cleverly designed interactive illustrations to create an immersive experience for their fans to meet each player. While navigating from the team news section of Arsenal's website, unique landing pages include an image for fans to learn more about important career dates, goal video clips, birthday, height/weight and a link to Twitter profiles. Using interactive images is an engaging way to educate your audience on any person or place.  Project idea: simplify your team introduction landing page with an interactive image or 360° image featuring your staff.

ThingLink user:  Schneider Electric - Blog posts can quickly become very text-heavy, which causes readers to engage less with your content.  As the web shifts to more visual media like images and videos, we recommend incorporating as many as possible into your blog posts to capture the attention of today's readers.  Using interactive hotspots within visual media allows authors to continue telling their story without having to increase article length with many lines of text.  The examples below show how Schneider Electric has continuously leveraged interactive infographics within blog posts to generate stunning communication experiences.  

Photo credit: State of Maine

Kristen Muszynski is the director of communications at the Department of the Secretary of State in Maine. Some time ago her colleague Tammy Marks, director of the Maine State Archives, started advocating for investing time and money in new technologies to showcase the archives’ holdings.

This example shows how interactive infographics on large touch screens can be used to create engaging exhibitions in a physical space.

The Anglo-American School of Moscow (AASM) is an independent, international school catering for students between the ages of 4 and 18, chartered by the American, British and Canadian embassies. As their communication and development department started preparing for the school’s 70 year anniversary,   graphic designer and public relations coordinator Anastasia Osminina started looking for interactive touch screen solutions for their exhibition.

ThingLink user: WaterAid - is a remarkable organization who focuses on making clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene normal for everyone, everywhere.  Read more about their amazing work and make a contribution, here!  Each year the WaterAid digital team puts together a landing page that reviews their various initiatives in the form of a Global Annual Report.  In order to increase engagement and improve the experience of readers, WaterAid uses two interactive images on their landing page, one map and one infographic.  Continue reading to explore these examples and learn pro tips if you want to create similar content! 

ThingLink user: DERTOUR - BOO! It is Halloween and at the Europa-Park theme park and resort!  Seeking to create a stunning, visual experience to bring their website content to life, DERTOUR creates an interactive map featuring many great attractions in the theme park that guests can experience.  Interactive content is the ideal solution for communicating, educating, and reeling in your audience within landing pages as we see in this example.  Behind every pumpkin hides one of the fantastic Halloween highlights awaiting guests at Europa-Park. Just click through, be amazed - and with a little luck even win free tickets. Our tip: turn on the sound!

ThingLink user: VRM Arena Tour - VRM is a regional media company that uses ThingLink in this article to give readers the experience of touring the Opel Arena in Germany.  The tour begins with an aerial view outside of the stadium and readers can click on the various illustrations to explore points of interest.  For example, clicking the field will take you to a 360° view from on the field, and clicking the shopping bag will take you to explore the stadium store.  This use case highlights the ability to include regular flat images into your 360° tour.  Including a regular image as your starting point gives the reader an easy to navigate table of contents that they can revisit at any point within the tour.