Enabling Experiential Technologies - Touch enabled video walls
Touch screens have always fascinated technology companies, business and consumers alike. Single touch, multi touch, flexible, and now even foldable screens are available. Starting out on kiosks for transactions, touch screens have come a long way to be just in everyones hands as cell phones! So, If multi touch is the new normal , in what way can experience center designers leverage this technology?
Matrix: For starters, lets look at larger screens. Screens that are combined together to make a larger video wall...Screens that are placed vertically This creates a differentiating experience of interacting with a larger canvas. This overlay technology allows us to create larger screen areas than the traditional MS surface.
Access: Considering the average human height, usually, 2 rows of horizonal screens or 1 row of vertical screens limits the screen area in accessible limits.
Video Processor: Video processor right sized for the requirement with proper capture ports, support for different orientation of panels and in built graphic acceleration engine, enhance the user experience.
Overlay: IR based overlays are most common and available upto 300" (diagonal size). Single screen overlays could be in built within the display on capactive touch technology. Both technologies have their own applications.
Interactive software: This engine provides the foundation to manage the content centrally and deliver the content on the video wall. Switching template layouts seamlessly, the user experiences relevant content on key actions. responsive HTML 5 pages and flash content are two popular platforms to package this content.
Content: Designing appropriate content is the most important part of the interactive video wall. Images, video, menus, icons are all seamlessly integrated in the content.
Object sensing: Sensing objects placed on the screen are a desired feature in attended experience zones. Multiple technologies now allow detection of objects from the touch screen.
Integration: Video wall panels matrix, along with a powerful video processor and overlay are the components to deliver a rich multi touch experience.
The future: Future trends like foldable screens, led panels. larger format displays, newer object detection technologies all promise to make this bigger, better and faster!
The multi touch screens are not just things to show, but have stories to tell...A lot of stories.