Original Thesis Idea

Last year I had thought about how design would help assist users in using new technology. The technology in question dealt with robotics and how robotic devices would soon be helping mankind. I decided to refocus on more current technologies, such as multi-touch screens. However, it seems that my ideas for multi-screen interaction is not such a new idea. However, I will share what I have researched and discovered...

First off, Multi-touch is a method of interacting with a computer screen or like many of today's smartphone. Multi-touch technology allows the user to interact with the device by placing their fingers directly onto the screen's surface. The movement of the fingers across the screen send commands to the device. The term multi-touch is a trademark of Apple Inc.

My original idea was to see how Multi-Touch screens could be used to assist in all forms of public service. From replacing public pay phones to city maps to information. In a multi-cultural city such as Toronto, the Multi-Touch screen could have a series of graphics to guide users through the interface and even allow them to change the language of the interface to something they understand. Such as how some phone service will ask a user to chose what language they would like to have spoken to them. This would make for fast and easy interaction by users who are not familiar with the city they are in. These Multi-Touch screens would appear on the corner streets such as public pay phones, or in bus shelters, providing information such as city maps or other useful information.

My other idea for Multi-Touch screens would be using for Interactive Posters and Ad spaces. The idea was that instead of the poster box that holds a poster for an Ad or a Poster, such as the ones we see in bus shelters and in subway stations, it would hold an interactive screen. The screen would display an ad for what ever product it was advertising, along with several small images along it's side. For a time the screen one ad after another. The new ads would come from the smaller images, constantly changing after a few minutes of being displayed in it's large format.

However, users can select which ads they wish to look at for a longer period of time. They simply touch the smaller image of the ad they wish to preview. The image grows to full size of the poster holder, allowing the user to look at and get more information on the advertised product.

I had a couple of thoughts of benefits that could come with this technology. One was advertisers could track what users are taking an extra interest in. Each time a ad is selected, the poster holder would record the action. It could as well video record the user, making record of the demographic of users who use this technology. The second was that if these poster holders could hold several ads, it could possibly cut down on the amount of ads that litter city walls and the skyline, instead of having walls just full of ads. It could help to make a city look better rather then a metropolis of ads. It could also help cut down on the amount of materials used to construct posters, from metal and paper. If a city changed it's laws on how ads are displayed, it could reduce the visual pollution and material waste public ads produce.

It was just recently that I discovered AD Pod. A advertising booth much like my Multi-Screen poster idea. See Link.

http://www.smart6six.com/AdPod.html
http://torontoadscapes.com/2010/01/05/sherlock-holmes-in-toronto/sherlock-holmes-ad-pod-in-the-eaton-centre/
http://www.wonderworks-media.com/adpod.html


History of Multi-Touch Technology

The use of touch technology to control electronic devices predates the personal computer. Early synthesizer and electronic instrument builders like Hugh Le Caine and Bob Moog experimented with using touch-sensitive capacitance sensors to control the sounds made by their instruments.

IBM began building the first touch screens in the late ‘60’s, and, in 1972, released the PLATO IV computer, a terminal used for educational purposes that employed single-touch points in a 16x16 array as its user interface.

Multi-touch technology dates back to 1982, when Nimish Mehta, an Apple employee at the University of Toronto, developed the first finger-pressure multi-touch system. The system used a frosted-glass panel with a camera placed behind the glass. When a finger or finger pressed on the glass, the camera would detect it as a black spot on an otherwise white background, allowing it to be registered as an input. Since the size of the dot was dependent on pressure (how hard the person was pressing on the glass), the system was somewhat pressure-sensitive as well.

In 1983, Bell Labs at Murray Hill published a comprehensive discussion of touch-screen based interfaces. In 1984, Bell Labs engineered a touch screen that could change images with more than one hand. The group at the University of Toronto stopped working on hardware and moved on to software and interfaces, expecting that they would have access to the Bell Labs work.
A breakthrough occurred in 1991, when Pierre Wellner published a paper on his multi-touch “Digital Desk”, which supported multi-finger and pinching motions.

Various companies expanded upon these inventions in the beginning of the twenty-first century. Mainstream exposure to multi-touch technology occurred in the year 2007, when Apple unveiled the iPhone and Microsoft released its Microsoft Surface. The iPhone in particular has spawned a wave of interest in multi-touch computing, since it permits greatly increased user interaction on a small scale. Small-scale touch devices are rapidly becoming commonplace, with the amount of touch screen telephones expected to increase from 200,000 shipped in 2006 to 21 million in 2012.

More robust and customizable multi-touch and gesture-based solutions are beginning to become available, with interfaces that register multiple touchpoints and gestures.