Multi-touch Table to simplify user interactions
An earlier interesting blog post here mentioned about Texture Rendering Algorithm for touch screens. I take the discussion further and delve deeper into the business applications of multi-touch interactive tables. There are several companies such as E-table Interactive (http://www.e-table-interactive.com/), Ideum (http://ideum.com/products/multitouch/) and 3M touch systems which are building systems that allow multiple users to operate on a single large touch screen. The technology employed behind this product is multi-touch interface where multiple users can simultaneously execute touch actions and perform basic independent information retrieval functions on the same screen. These tables offer a combination of traditional work table, touch technology and simultaneous input collaboration. A video would explain the technology better:
What could be the possible business applications of this product? Which specific businesses/companies could employ this technology and connect with customers in a differentiating manner? A few examples have been outlined below:
- Restaurants/Bars: E-table Interactive has installed touch tables at a restaurant Izkaya (http://www.izkaya.nl/en/de-touch-tafels) in Rotterdam which allow customers to order through table, change the table ambience, book a taxi, plan a route and also have a view of the kitchen. They have other restaurant clients such as Inamo (http://www.inamo-restaurant.com/) in UK and TOT in Turkey. In the highly competitive restaurant business, this could be the next way to differentiate with a unique customer experience in the restaurant. The Pizza chain “Pizza Hut” recently collaborated with Chaotic moon studios to create a concept video about interactive table (http://goo.gl/kQfCX4)
- Education: Another application of touch tables has been in teaching pre-school students through interactive learning systems designed by Promethean (http://goo.gl/EfwQb2). Using inbuilt educational software, these touch tables allow students to learn to collaborate, cover school curriculum, are fun interactive activity and promote self-learning among students. The market size is quite large worldwide and these interactive tables can change the learning methodology.
- Museums/Exhibitions: In these businesses, the need is to communicate a wide range of information to visitors and guide them to appropriate sections of the place. Multiple visitors can simultaneously easily retrieve and share information (by gliding their screen window on the touch table to the other visitor) on the same screen. These touch tables can actually lead to active interaction with the visitors and replace the passive displays. Visitors can also post comments, their opinions, and share on social media etc.
- Apartments/Hotels: Consider the case of a real estate company or a luxury Hotel wishing to display interactive information about their new apartments or various categories of hotel rooms respectively to customers. This is intended to give opportunity to customers to get more information about the products available for sale and also to get recommendations from their social media friends since they can login from Facebook and see if their friends have recommended the hotel or the real estate company.
There can be many other business applications of this multi-touch table which can change the way the customers interact with the system to simplify as well as promote the business activities. As a technology product still in its initial stages, there are a lot of opportunities one can brainstorm on.
Sources:
3 responses to “Multi-touch Table to simplify user interactions”
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Information Strategy 
While most users find multitouch tables highly interesting, the least of them worry about the related privacy security – which basically becomes non-existent through it. The RFID Journal published an article on the RFID security now integrated into multitouch screens, but it seems as if they only considered different access levels for different consumers (Lipton, n.d.). In the recent years privacy issues have become an increasing concern to most consumers. Still users keep increasing their exposure level with every new technology they adapt, and every application they download. Using such a multitouch screen in a commercial environment can be again a major step towards exposure. Not only does the technological gadget not belong to the user himself, but also is he not the only one using it. Who will control what the owners of such multitouch table do with all the information gathered each day? Especially when in use in combination with other technological gadgets, such as cameras and mobile phones, the system could hypothetically retrieve any user information available. So where does that leave the user in the end?
Lipton, A., n.d. RFID Adds Security, Sophistication to Multitouch Exhibit Tables. [Online] Available at: http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?9709/2
[Accessed 1 10 2014].
Hey Julia,
Thanks for your insightful comment. You have raised a very good point here about maintaining privacy for user information. I would say that you should be more specific for which kind of information is the user sharing and what is the threat to privacy.
On a multitouch table, the only user interaction are context specific or informative where the user is a passive actor. For ex. Ordering in a restaurant will not require user to share any level of information. Similarly, Looking for apartments/hotel rooms is again a passive activity. The system here can not retrieve any user information unless the user specifically wishes to be an active participant for which you have tools available (The “incognito window” concept in Chrome is on similar lines. Press Ctrl+Shift+n and browse without storing any information such as username and passwords).
Hope that clarifies the user data privacy aspect here.
Ritesh
Thanks for your interesting blog post! These multitouch tables seem to be a revolutionary thing right? As I watch the youtube movie about the technology it looks to me as something from a science-fiction movie or so. I think it’s a very interesting technology from which i am very curious about how the future of this technology will look like. I know the touch tables from several restaurant as well, but the tables I used where on a one-touch basis and were quiet basic. The were like an ipad but than bigger. Are the restaurants you talk about using this multi-touch based technology? Because these tables seem pretty expensive to me and I think that most restaurants and bars don’t have the money to buy one, not mentioning to buy multi-touch tables for the entire restaurant. The same counts for the education industry, great idea but probably to expensive at this moment in time. The real future for these multi-touch tables is probably in casinos and museums, where multiple visitors get different sources of information at the same time. Also it is usable at big companies at the conference tables or something. So as I said, the technolgy is very interesting and has lots of potential, but it is difficult to say in which sector this technology will be a big hit.