Robert here. Today I’m thinking about technology. Right – ok – everyday I am thinking about technology. For one client of ours we’re leveraging projected capacitive touchscreen technology to provide an interactive element to a physical portal. Touchscreens honestly aren’t anything new, although the recent HP marketing geniuses have made the public think they are—and more importantly, that they absolutely need them in their day to day life. There’s the ad I’m sure you’ve all seen on broadcast TV: Unfortunately while it looks cool, I can’t help but think the entire time: “Fingerprints. Fingerprints everywhere”. The solution I’ve come up with for our client is made by a company called ProDisplay out of the UK. Their “Interactive Foils” as they’ve dubbed them are very cool for two crucial reasons:
· They allow for the film to be placed on the inside of the surface. That is for a window display that faces the outside world, the membrane is placed on the inside, within the store. The interaction happens through the glass or acrylic and the user never physically touches the membrane.
· It can be combined with a Rear-Projection film to make a combination projectionable surface as well as an interactive display. Luckily, ProDisplay also makes a variety of projection films as well.
Our client is interested in using this as a stage property so it was very important that the final design look clean and simple. Our final solution involved the use of an incredibly bright short-throw projector manufactured by 3M. Most importantly I believe our solution is effective and to the point: it doesn’t utilize any technology that wasn’t needed no matter how shiny or glamorous it is. I like to think that of the many tools in our arsenal , we pick the one most suited to the job as well as the most cost-effective.
I think that core truth is what makes my job so much fun. We have an internal mantra here that we follow:
“User experience drives everything.”
I like to think that we’re driving the next generation of user experiences forward.
Robert Entenman