The Secret to Selling Surface

Need drives adoption of B2B products. Not want.

While the first chapter of Designing Gesural Interfaces implicitly asks,

"Where might multitouch be wanted?"

As a product strategist, I think a more important question that has to be answered first:

Whose big hairy problem does multitouch solve?

The first step in answering this question for a new product category, like multitouch vision systems is identifying:
1. Features - What unique things the product does
2. Benefits - What these features might be good for.

Here are the F+B's I've seen touted
for multitouch vision systems.

Features

Let’s lay out the unique features that can be designed into a vision-based system, then figure out what sort of benefits they can create.

Multitouch vision systems, like Surface, have four distinct features. They may be more useful in some environments than others:

Blob Orientation
Optical Tagging/Object Outline
Bitmap Analysis
Ease of Cleaning the Tabletop
Intuitive (I don't completely buy this one)

What benefits would you add?

Benefits

To date, the pitches for Surface that we have heard fit into 3 big buckets:

Maintenance
Order Accuracy
Group Decision Making

Maintenance

Cheap, Readily Available Dumb Objects

One of the core problems with physical computing is that it is so easy for the artifacts that control it to walk off.

Domino tags make vision-based multitouch systems compelling. You can always print more (if you think that big black blobs are ugly, it’s easy enough to print the with an IR absorbent or reflective ink. Ask your printer about varnishes).

Here’s an interesting example from Infostrat:

Durable & Easy to Clean

Independent of what any manufacturer’s rep tells you, no matter how durable a touchscreen is, it’s gonna break and it will always be at an inconvenient time.

While projection systems require maintenance, lamp replacement schedules are highly predictable.

Touchscreen bezels are germ magnets. Vision-based systems, like Surface can be designed with a flat, replaceable top.

Sanitary issues are huge in healthcare and public facilities. The device will either have a million hands a day on it…or be in an environment filled with biohazards.

The best medical electronics are sealed and don’t require ventilation. It is definitely possible to design a vision system with this in mind. I don’t think Surface was designed this way.

Users Don’t Need to Make Direct Contact With the Surface

User can wear white gloves (Think surgical gloves. Dark colors don’t work very well).

It may be possible to cover tabletop with a thin piece of material for use in clean rooms (I haven’t actually tried this and have no idea how it would impact camera calibration/false positives).

Order Accuracy

Multitouch solutions are great for kiosks that require high order accuracy and order confirmation. This is because they combine the accuracy of a barcode reader with the flexibility of a touchscreen… If only Surface could read UPC code.

Group Decision Making (Social Computing)

The ability to work together on one screen or over telepresence.

What benefits would you add?

What sorts of clients have
these big hairy NEEDS?