What They Say
‘Man about the industry’ Sri Peruvemba has written an article on the StrategyDriven blog that highlights developments in ‘disappearing displays’. As well as covering ‘disappearing displays’, ‘shrinking displays’ , ‘quiet displays’ and ‘metaphoric displays’ that have been seen in recent years, he looks ahead at new concepts that are still to be fully developed.
What We Think
Plenty of these examples reflect Peruvemba’s long term interest in E Ink as well as current interests such as Noctiluca, Kuori and Smartkem, but he raises some good ideas. I have often written about the challenge of ‘the black hole on the wall’ when big, flat TVs are powered off. (The Black Hole on the Wall).
I’m reminded of a visit I made to MIT’s Media Lab a couple of decades ago, during an SID Display Week in Boston. The relative of a friend was working there and took us round for a private visit. There was a lot of work going on in developing ‘ambient computing’.
The idea was that the arrival of an email or an alarm might be signalled by a natural sound, such as some actual water starting to flow in a small fountain, or by a fan causing some leaves to rustle, or some bird song (at least, that’s how I remember it!). Peruvemba highlights a number of applications that exploit the reflective properties of E Ink. In some ways, display lovers tend to be unexcited by this kind of display which struggles to produce great colour, has relatively low contrast, is too slow for video or much animation, but it is largely those features that help them to blend into our environments without distracting.
By chance, last week, a parcel of goodies arrived, unsolicited, from a PR company, promoting a press release. There was no need as I had already spotted the release and intended to publish it. In the pack was, among other things, an Amazon Echo Dot. The dot has inside it a quite dim, fuzzy, white segment display covered by cloth to show the time and the LEDs to signal that it is responding to something or alerting are almost hidden at the bottom of the device rather than the top, by my older Echo device. Peruvemba quotes Jeff Bezos as saying that the aim of the Kindle was to ‘disappear in your hands’. In the same way, the Echo Dot just merges into the background. I think it’s going to be a fixture. So, yes Disappearing Displays! (BR)
