Using Touch Screen Enabled Digital Signage to Connect With Consumers

The real potential of touch-based technologies is that they offer a more immersive, collaborative, and natural user experience. For marketers, touch-based systems offer a completely new toolset for reaching consumers by providing a platform that places the consumer in control of the experience.

“We think about touch systems at Intel in the context of interactivity,” said Jose Avalos, Director of Digital Signage, Intel at the recently held US Flat Panel Display Conference held in San Diego. “There has been a lot of discussion about ease-of-use, but I think that train has left the station. The discussion today should be about ease of joy. When you look at the younger generation, they take ease of use for granted, that’s just a requirement for them. Now, they want their devices to be fun. Where interactivity comes into play in digital signage is that it makes for a more engaging experience. Digital signage is a one-to-many experience, but it can also be one-to-one and provide a rich experience for the end user that’s not only easy to use, but also fun.”

When digital signage includes interactivity such as touch screens, QR codes, RFID, augmented reality, or gesture-based interaction it can greatly increase engagement with an ad campaign. “I think the fundamental issue when you look at advertising, especially out-of-home advertising is that we measure eyeballs. We are a volume business, no different than other businesses that measure the number of people that either watch or walk by,” said Alan High, President, Clear Channel Malls. “Take an example of a mall where you have a sign that 10,000 people a day walk by. When you make that sign interactive, you change the dynamics of our business completely. You change it from 10,000 people daily to maybe 150,000 per day.”

Market Forecast

The number of companies entering into the touch screen marketplace is rapidly expanding. There are more than 170 companies currently offering some form of touch screen solution. More than 60 companies are producing resistive touch screen systems, and many companies are also pursuing multi-touch solutions.

Despite the growth in the touch screen market, there is no single dominant player. “When you talk about the general display industry, the top ten display manufacturers account for over 90% of market share. However, when we look at touch screen manufacturers, the top 50 companies only account for about 50% of market share.” said Dr. Jennifer Colegrove, Director, Display Technologies, DisplaySearch. There are more than a dozen different types of touch screen technologies on the market that include resistive, projected capacitive, surface capacitive, infrared, optical touch, acoustic wave, surface acoustic wave, in-cell, and on-cell, and even more are under development. The application of each solution is highly dependent on the size and type of deployment. “There’s no perfect touch technology,” said Dr. Colegrove. “Each technology has advantages and disadvantages depending on the size range.”

According to DisplaySearch’s market research, touch screen module revenues will increase from $3.7 billion in 2009 to more than $9 billion by 2015. That equals a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.9%. That makes the growth rate for touch screen technologies more than 10 times faster than that of the general display industry.

Resistive-based touch screen systems are among the most common and cost-effective systems to manufacture. Resistive touch accounts for more than 70% of shipments and more than 40% of revenue, primarily because of lower costs for related components and materials. Resistive displays are composed of multiple layers that are separated by thin spaces. Pressure applied to the surface of the display by a finger or stylus causes the layers to touch, which completes electrical circuits and tells the device where the user is touching. As such, resistive-type touch screens require much more pressure to activate than capacitive touch screens.

Projected capacitive-based touch systems accounted for more than 17% of shipments with more than 24% of revenue. Projected capacitive uses a grid of capacitors that is etched onto either one or two separate layers creating an XY array. When a finger or stylus comes in contact with this surface it changes the capacitance and registers the touch location. Projected capacitive-based touch systems are generally more accurate than resistive touch systems.

Multi-touch Interfaces

The recent release of Window 7 includes multi-touch capabilities built in to the platform and could be a big catalyst for growth of multi-touch applications. Multi-touch modules currently represent about 20% of industry revenue and are projected to grow to more than $4.2 billion by 2015, representing almost 47% of the total touch module revenue. Multi-touch modules demand higher prices than single-touch, but with increasing competition prices are expected to decline.

Because of the advent of Windows 7 and the iPhone, multi-touch is often at the top of people’s got-to-have features lists. But users are not always sure how to use the technology. “The problem is, no one can tell you exactly why they want it,” said Scott Hagermoser, Business Innovation Manager at 3M Touch Systems. “I might need it in the future, my customers are asking for it, so I’ve got to have it. But there isn’t that underlying reason as to why people think they have to have it.” According to Mr. Hagermoser, the technology will eventually lead to many new consumer applications, however, given the current environment, we’re just not there yet.

Within the professional space there is a lot of use for multi-touch. “As soon as people within the professional space see it, they get it, and they know exactly what they want to do with it.” said Mr. Hagermoser.

Multi-mode applications make sense for digital signage deployment. “If you can envision a landscape-mode digital sign with full multi-touch capability, multiple users can stand in front of the sign and interact with it,” said Mr. Hagermoser. “Their information will be displayed in front of where they have touched. They can dive down as deep as they like without interrupting other peoples experiences with that sign. True multi-touch interaction will allow these signs to work much more effectively and people will get used to working with them. It will require some significant software development, but I think the market is up to that task.”

Multi-mode Gesture Vocabulary

“If you brought home a piano and then found out that you could only play that piano with two fingers at one time, you would be very disappointed,” said Rick Seger, President, N-Trig. “The richness of having ten fingers on a piano can create an infinite number of sounds and beautiful music. A computer is much more complex, and the things that you can do with a computer are much more useful. The ability to have ten fingers on the screen is going to be very important.”

“True multi-touch is not just using a two-finger gesture,” said Mr. Seger. “Multi-touch is using three and four fingers, and what we call two-plus one input. There are a variety of gestures, and a rich gesture vocabulary that can come with using up to four fingers.”

Multi-touch offers more than just game interfaces. “The ability to learn how to draw and write. Multi-touch will have a significant impact for languages beyond English where they have more than 26 characters and don’t use a standard QWERTY keyboard. Chinese and Arabic languages will be easier to use on a multi-touch system. “Windows 7 character recognition plug-ins for Chinese are really phenomenal,” said Mr. Seger.

For the education market, using multi-touch along with the ability to use a pen on a slate-based computer will be the ultimate killer app for education. “The ability to write notes directly on a textbook, highlight, and label a diagram the way a teacher has labeled it on a blackboard. The ability to have eBooks and textbooks all one device that does all of these things is a device that will deliver a lot of value,” said Mr. Seger.

“We need to be sure that the applications we’re delivering to users are friendly and are not introducing new problems that users haven’t seen before and don’t know how to deal with. Ultimately, there needs to be seamless switching between pen input and touch. I ought to be able to lay my palm on the screen and switch to a pen. I need to be able to adjust and change tools, and that is where N-Trig is delivering.”

New Technologies

In-Cell touch is an emerging technology that is beginning to gain momentum. In-Cell touch is built directly inside the display as opposed to using a resistive-based or projected capacitive–based overlay. The In-Cell touch layer is sandwiched between the TFT substrate and the color filter layers. One of the advantages of In-Cell touch is that it enables LCD manufacturers to build touch screen capabilities directly into their products and eliminate the need to purchase touch screen overlays from third- party vendors. Toshiba, Sharp, AUO, Samsung, LG Display, and Sony have been working on In-Cell-based touch screens for several years. LG Display recently announced that they will be shipping a 13.3” by the second half of 2010.

Another emerging technology uses force sensors to measure touch position. F-Origin has announced a product called the zTouch system that uses 4 force sensors placed at the back corners of the display to record the applied force. The system then interpolates the data to calculate the touch location. The system does not require overlay films, so force sensing can be robust, highly transmissive, and manufactured at a lower cost.