Effi Sparks allow you to listen to your audience to gather their group sentiment and then react to how they are feeling in a variety of fun expressions. The simplest way to describe how Sparks work is in the form of an equation. If X, then Y. The X is an expression of what the audience is thinking and Y is an action like displaying a GIF, image, video, audio file, a poll, or any URL. For example, if the audience is angry, we’ll show them a devil face emoji 👿.
While thinking about how to use Sparks in your live event might take some creative thinking, once you are ready, actually adding them to your Effi event is easy. Just follow the steps below.
Adding Sparks
Choose the scene you would like to add Sparks to and open the Elements panel from the right-hand side.
From the list of elements, choose "Sparks" and click to add.
You will notice that when you add Sparks all that appears in your scene preview window is a transparent box. This is because Sparks is always a transparent layer that won't be viewable to you or your audience until it is triggered by the audience— if it is triggered by the audience. Taking the example from above, if you add a Sparks option for when the audience is angry, but the audience is not angry, then it will never be triggered and the devil emoji will never be seen.
Once you've decided what you want to know about how the audience is feeling and how you want to respond to it, it's time to add your options. Click "Add Option" to add your first option.
Then it's time to fill out the details. Name your option, add a URL or some media , and list everything that will count towards the option. For example, if the option is angry, you will want to list things like #anger, bored, pass , ❌, 😡.
Settings
Once you've added your options, it's time to choose the right settings for your Spark. This will depend a lot on what kind of broadcast you are hosting and how many chatters you expect to have.
Settings can be found at the bottom of your "Spark Options" menu.
Let's take a look at the available settings:
Sparks Count: This is the amount of times any combination of the listed words, phrases, emojis, has to be said in order for the Spark to be triggered.
📌 The Sparks Count will depend on the number of viewers you have. For example, if you expect to have over 1,000 viewers, you might have a lot of chatters, so you will want to set that number higher so it takes longer to trigger. On the other hand, if you have a smaller audience with only a few chatters, you might want to keep that number low to ensure it triggers during the broadcast. Again, this all depends on what you aim to achieve with your Spark.
Sparks Timeout: This setting determines how long you want the Spark to be displayed. For example, if you choose to display a devil emoji GIF and set the timeout to 5 seconds, the emoji will disappear after 5 seconds.
Allow only one result to be displayed toggle: Once again, this depends on how you plan to use Sparks. If you want to give your audience the option of triggering the Spark throughout the broadcast, leave this untoggled. If, however, you are treating it more like a game and want to see which Spark is triggered first and have it be the only one displayed, toggle this on.