HORIZON DISPLAY Texto

MULTITOUCH INTEGRATION
TRANSFORMS THE
DIGITAL WORLD
HORIZON DISPLAY
MULTITOUCH INTEGRATION
TRANSFORMS THE
DIGITAL WORLD

Written by Richard Slawsky,

DigitalSignageToday.com

Sponsored by Horizon Display

Horizon Display, based in Lake Forest, Calif.,

specializes in large format touchscreen displays
and interactive signage solutions. Horizon
Display is committed to championing the
impact of display technology as a means of
communication by educating our audience,
consulting our customers and becoming
intimately familiar with their business FOLLOW US ON TWITTER!
objectives. Their motto is “first to respond, first @HORIZONDISPLAY
to resolve.”

Horizon Display translates your vision into

tangibles and provides the solutions to do it all.
what we will cover:

1. intro to multitouch.
2. glimpsing the future.
3. engaging consumers.
4. incorporating mobile.
5. analyzing data.
1 intro to
multitouch.
Visit anyplace where large groups gather and you’re bound to see it:
people with smartphones in hand; sliding, pinching and otherwise
interacting with the content on their phone screens via a variety of
finger motions. Although at first glance there is little precedent for the
concept of changing images by pinching fingers together or spreading
them apart, the idea of doing so has become such a part of our lives it’s
hard to remember a time when we didn’t do so.

“Multitouch assimilation into our daily

lives has revolutionized the way we interpret
the digital world,” said Stephen Gladden,
Marketing Manager for Lake Forest,
Calif.-based Horizon Display. “Man and
machine truly have a human interface.”
It’s also set the stage for the direction digital
signage is likely to take in the next few years.

“All this talk has mitigated the power of

true multitouch because in the commercial
market,” Gladden said. “Multi doesn’t
mean more than one, it means more than
two. So those awesome two-finger gestures
we’ve all become accustomed to have
become old and boring to us technologists.
I’m not sure when the last time was I used
two fingers to move anything.”

Today, multitouch means getting rid of those gestures that don’t apply to any object
in the natural world and replacing them with natural gestures. “Using your whole hand
and all fingers to interact with an object shortens the learning curve and broadens
the audience,” Gladden said. “True multitouch also lends itself well to collaborative
environments where two or more users are expected to use the screen for presenting
or sharing.”
 2
glimpsing
the future.
Although idea of a screen that would react to touch has
been around since the 1960s, and working touchscreens
have been around since the 1970s, it was the 2007 release
of Apple’s iPhone that brought touchscreens into the
mainstream. Prior to that, most touchscreens mainly
mimicked the actions of pushing a button.

And the recent release of the Windows 8 operating system, with

its support for multitouch screens, likely means that while mice
and keyboards will still have a role in content manipulation, that
role will be greatly diminished. “In five or 10 years, every screen
we interact with is likely to be a touchscreen,” said Geoff Bessin,
chief marketing officer with Cambridge, Mass.-based IntuiLab.

The company specializes in multitouch software and the creation of interactive applications.
The technology of the past, and even a good deal of what’s in use today, has tended to constrain
people’s thinking by its limitations, Bessin said. Consider, for example, the hierarchical menu
structure of many of the screen-based interactions that take place today. Although such
technology has simplified many of the transactions people engage in, it also channels our
thinking into an up-and-down flow that limits our engagement. True multitouch is likely to
knock down those barriers.

“And true multitouch is going to be more than just two fingers,” Bessin said. “It could be more
than just one person. The potential for interacting is very broad and probably includes ways we
haven’t even thought of yet.”
3 engaging
consumers.
For true multitouch to gain a foothold in the marketplace, it needs
to offer a competitive advantage to the business operators who
might make use of such technology. One of the primary benefits
of such technology is that it engages the consumer, drawing them
into extended interactions.

“When you are looking at business from a marketing perspective, a key point is getting
participation from your customers,” said Charles Becker, sales manager with San Francisco-
based PQ Labs, a provider of multitouch hardware and software solutions. The company’s
products can detect 32 touchpoints simultaneously with pinpoint accuracy in any type of
indoor environment.

“Any market sector that uses a point-of sale system or digital signage, or even museums
or educational institutions, is going to benefit from multitouch,” Becker said. “They can
all benefit from increased engagements and participation.” Multitouch technology can
be used as an interesting and entertaining way to provide information ranging from a
retailer’s online catalogue to in-depth information on an art or historical exhibit.

And although many businesses face the challenge of trying to make a profit while serving
consumers who can often order the same product online at a cheaper price, they do have
an advantage: they can offer instant gratification. Why not, then, keep an inventory of a
retailer’s key products, while using a multitouch display to sell the add-on purchases to
go with that product? A women’s apparel shop, for example, might offer an assortment of
coats, then use multitouch to flip through the offerings of handbags and shoes to match.
4 incorporating
mobile.
The next stage, Becker said, is for retailers to develop ways
to communicate with a consumer’s mobile device, sharing
information and further cementing the relationship between
business and customer. Those consumers could then share that
information with friends.

“For many consumers, their mobile phone is their identity,” Becker said. “People are

developing the expectation of being able to touch any screen they see, and they want

those screens to be integrated together.” The key application, however, might be the

one that’s not so obvious. Multitouch not only offers consumers access to a variety of

information in ways not previously imagined, it also offers the business operator the

ability to track what information those consumers access.

4
analyzing
data.
Retailers, of course, could monitor what items about which consumers seek
information and use that data to make sure they have an adequate supply of those
items on hand. The applications extend far beyond retail, however.

A multitouch screen in a government building could give agencies real-time

insight into the services they desire, allowing those agencies to allocated staff and
resources where needed. In a medical facility, doctors could be prepared to answer
the questions at the of patients’ minds by tracking the information they access via a
health-related touchscreen.

According to the Babson Park, Mass.- based Babson Survey Research Group, the
number of college students enrolled in an online course has increased every year
for the past nine years. Obviously, colleges and universities are migrating to a digital
environment. Still, institutions are at odds as to the best way to deliver education
electronically.

The use of multitouch in an educational environment, and its inherent trackability,

would offer a wealth of insight into ways to make online education more effective.

“If students had a multitouch app in their library or student union and they
designed a unique experience and shared it between students in their study
group, class or with the campus at large, those interactions could be tracked by
the institution,” Gladden said. “The student behavioral study implications would be
endless.”
.

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About the sponsor: Horizon Display, based in Lake Forest, Calif., specializes in large
format touchscreen displays and interactive digital signage solutions. Horizon
Display is committed to championing the impact of display technology as a
means of communication by educating our audience, consulting our customers
and becoming intimately familiar with their business objectives. Their motto
is “first to respond, first to resolve.” Horizon Display translates your vision into
tangibles and provides the solutions to do it all. www.horizondisplay.com

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