During his visit to last month’s Display Week exhibition Rob Anders, the CEO of andersDX was a little disappointed by how little innovation he found in terms of user experience.
The annual Society for Information Displays (SID) Display Week International Symposium and Exhibition is the premier annual showcase for an industry that, according to SID, is valued at just over $100 billion annually. This year’s event, which took place at the start of June, had over 250 exhibitors and saw more than 6500 attendees flock to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in Massachusetts. I was one of those visitors and this year, for the first time I left with less of a sense of awe and more of a sense of disappointment.
We would imagine that for everyone reading this Blog touch screen user interfaces are a given. Indeed, we’ve got so used to them that there can be few of us who haven’t tried to pinch or swipe a display only to be surprised that it isn’t a touchscreen. However, while touch is here to stay, it will increasingly be augmented by other input techniques, not least gesture and voice control.
While it’s not due for release until October anticipation for tablet-friendly Windows 8 is building, not least when it comes to its swipe, slide and zoom five-finger multi touch interface capabilities. Though it seems not everybody is rolling out the red carpet for this latest enhancement (Windows 7 already offers two-fingered touch, for which Windows 8 will offer backwards compatibility). In particular, there is a fear that Microsoft could end up under-delivering experience-wise for traditional mouse-and-keyboard systems.
The recent announcement of Apple’s new iPad is a reminder that we haven’t just got used to using multi touch displays on our consumer tech, we have come to expect it. And this expectation is driving demand beyond the consumer market – designers of everything from industrial control equipment to next-generation medical devices are under pressure to enhance user experience by integrating multi touch input technology into their products.
Another day made of glass...
As we said in our recent blog post we - and apparently 17 million others - loved Corning's original 'A Day Made of Glass' online video for the insight that it gave into what could be possible with touch screens of the future. Now the company is hoping to emulate this success with 'A Day Made of Glass 2: Unpacked'.
Consumer-Style Interfaces for Commerce and Industry - Thanks, at least in part, to Steve Jobs and Apple (see Blog post dated 26/01/12) OEMs and system integrators are under pressure to create industrial and commercial systems that offer enhanced user experience through intuitive touch interfaces. And, for a generation of users for whom iPad-style interaction is the baseline for a successful product experience multitouch is becoming a mandatory rather than a desirable requirement.
Touch dX Monitors is our new family range of medium-sized, low cost, open frame monitors which deliver robust, accurate and highly responsive multi-touch interfaces with up to five simultaneous touch points. Touch dX monitors not only act as a drop-in replacement for Elo monitors and other existing market offerings but make 'consumer-style' multi-touch a reality for industrial and commercial interfaces.