What They Say
Sixteen-Nine.net reported that a QSR in Montreal, Canada has developed with Samsung and the Luxembourg tech firm iNUI Studio some touchless kiosks that use infrared touch sensors that can detect gestures around 5cm from the display. The blog’s Dave Haynes pointed out that anything that slows down interactions is difficult in this kind of environment. He also raises the issue of usability.
“I think if a self-service unit asks people to do gestures like swipes and pinches, there will be problems as people struggle to do the gestures properly, and worry about looking silly.”
There is a video below on the technology.
What We Think
Over the Covid period, I have had lots of releases and news stories highlighting the increased emphasis on ‘touchless touch’ from Ultraleap, Intel’s ReaSense, Toppan and others. (Guidance on Touch Screens From US CDC for touch itself)
As I’ve said before, (Touch or Touchless Touch?) my view is that for touchless to be accepted, there needs to be a widely understood ‘grammar’ for interactions. Even systems with touch need very careful system design to ensure that users remain engaged and find them useful. Taking away the touch itself makes things much more difficult, although, of course, the kind of projected ultrasound-based haptics might be able to help with this.
I realised that we haven’t had a ‘touchless touch’ tag up to now and I have dug down a bit into the database to add it to older stories, but I know I have missed plenty. I’ll try to find some more, but you can check articles that I found here.(BR)
