Touchscreens form a significant aspect of the way we view and interact with the world. Most of us interact with digital displays and touchscreens multiple times daily.
Banks, fast-food outlets, public transport, shops and many more such services rely on touchscreens for efficient operation, providing us with an easy-to-use and adaptable interface. Similarly, our home appliances and wearables commonly feature touchscreens through which we make health, work and lifestyle choices.
Predictive and Non-Predictive Possibilities
The key word is choice. Digital technology heavily relies on automation, and that is due to predictive nature of most digital function. Predictive functions are best achieved through automation. For example, a sensor in a room can automatically send a signal to the lighting system to “wake up” and light up the room as soon as it detects a human entering the room if the room is dark. That is predictive.
What if, however, the person wants the light to be romantically dimmer? This is a choice that a person can make and is non-predictive. It therefore requires a human input for such a choice. There are many ways humans can interact and input their choices into the digital ecosystem. Touch and voice are the most common methods to input non-predictive human choices.
The most discrete methods still is touch: touchscreens that display an array of choices that one can quietly make without announcing one’s choice to the rest of the people in the room: privacy and choice are still amongst the most important personal liberties we are not easily going to give up any time soon! And this is mainly why OEMs of smart lifestyle products are increasingly purposing their products with smart display solutions utilising sensors, IOT, and of course touch that enhance lifestyle choices.
Human Centred Design by 4D Systems
4D SYSTEMS is committed to enhance lifestyle choices through its smart display solutions. 4D display solutions provide touch responsive options right at your fingertips that places the ability to make non-predictive choices at the centre, in addition to any type of predictive automations that digitally driven products need. From water dispensers and toasters, to smart wearables and smart home solutions, our Gen4 series of smart display modules are amongst one of the many array of display modules, just as our pixxiLCD series where size maters.
We do automations via our display modules extremely well and at the highest standards; but we incorporate Human Centred Design (HCD) with artful creativity that enhances lifestyle choices, helping make human intelligence smarter through our display solutions.
Safety, Health and Maintenance Advantages
Display screens, particularly touchscreens, are a better solution than knobs and buttons in the new normal due to a stark increase in infectious diseases such as COVID-19. Although the risks of infection from surfaces is low, display screens offer clear advantages that promote better health and safety standards.
Here are five key advantages of incorporating display screens into OEM products, e.g., home appliances like water dispensers and toasters and home, and wearables for healthy living and for monitoring purposes:
- Display screens are easy to clean and disinfect, as opposed to knobs and buttons. All 4D SYSTEMS’ screens are disinfectant-safe and accept wipeable films to be installed if needed. Early types of machines and appliances with buttons are difficult to clean or disinfect because they provide an uneven surface with small gaps which are not easy to reach, and possibly avoided, during cleaning. Touchscreens, on the other hand, provide a flat and even surface which allows for easy and thorough cleaning in both commercial as well as home settings. Click here for a good resource from Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Public touchscreens help reduce close contact in times where physical distancing in public spaces is necessary. Touchscreens can greatly reduce , or even eliminate, the need for face-to-face interaction with customers and help everybody maintain reasonable physical distancing recommended by the government. When used in conjunction with effective hygiene control, this can prove a much safer alternative to normal customer interaction for many commercial sectors. Check with our support staff for more information on our screens and safety recommendations.
- Display screens reduce repair and maintenance costs, because knobs and buttons either break or malfunction more frequently. Associated with cleaning, common problems that contribute to malfunction of buttons and knobs are dirt and grime as well as regular use. Display screens overcome such problems and offer a better value that allows equipment and appliances to also last longer. Reduced maintenance – both cost and time – as well as longer functional life directly and positively impact ecological sustainability. 4D SYSTEMS is committed to high standards for its products, especially connected to environmentally responsible solutions, and that is why it is an ISO-9001 certified company and undergoing current attainment of both ISO-14001 and ISO-26000 certifications.
- Display screens reduce the overall cost of equipment and appliances by allowing human interaction through touch and thereby resolving the problem of having an overwhelming number of mechanical knobs and controls. This is one of the reasons that the car industry is fast adopting touchscreen solutions over mechanical controls. According to the market research firm, IHS Markit for example, approximately 98% of all cars to be sold in USA already had touchscreens as of last year. And that is just the car industry, in USA alone! Similar trends are seen in home appliances and other lifestyle products.
- Display screens combine all of the above in stylishly aesthetic manner, and 4D display solutions help engineers of equipment and appliances turn technology into art. Human Centred Design is a cornerstone of 4D SYSTEMS’ philosophy for Excellence, and design aesthetics is something we place a strong emphasis on alongside our commitment to high quality display solutions that can help make human intelligence smarter.
4D SYSTEMS is a crucial bridge between digital automation and choices that humans make and enjoy through tis smart display solutions that is incorporated into smart lifestyle products within commercial applications and as easily in home appliances and personal wearable applications.
Contact 4D SYSTEMS enterprise solutions team who will help you turn your technology into art that enhances lifestyle choices, health and safety.
