From train stations to hotels, cinemas to supermarkets and museums to a variety of outdoor public spaces, digital signage systems are moving past the point where they simply provide us with information.
Now, thanks in part to the deployment of embedded systems and touch screen technologies – and more recently, multi touch capabilities – public information displays are increasingly supporting interaction with the user and, thus, improving the overall user experience.
A couple of years ago Intel put together a short video (albeit with below par presenters!) about their Intelligent Digital Signage Concept, which illustrated how these systems might be deployed in a retail outlet or other high traffic environments. Now these concepts are becoming a reality – but it doesn’t have to cost the earth to develop a multi touch signage application.
The good news for manufacturers and integrators specialising in digital signage is that multi touch technology is evolving rapidly, and the latest innovative multi touch screen technologies are delivering improved performance, accuracy and reliability while reducing costs and design overheads. At the same time ‘off-the-shelf’ embedded display modules are helping to simplify and speed development while support for multi touch is becoming a standard element of many operating systems.
The result? The proliferation of ‘intelligent signage’ is set to continue – you could call it a signage of the times!