iTV – Continued

Rumors intensifying and details being leaked suggest that bringing App Store to your TV set will not be the only killer feature in iTV. Following Apple’s philosophy on user experience, it seems that they have managed to completely revamp the overcomplicated interface of current TV sets.

Pile of remote controls

It is not only the growing number of remote controls  you surely have on your coffee table, but also the complexity of them. On screen menus actually did not deliver any simplification, all of the opposite, they added more and more features hidden under long lists of complicated options. So will Apple be able to change this?.

If we take a look at their history, the answer is quite clear. There is one fundamental thing the guys in Cupertino have been able to do. They have been able to make technology that is not felt as technology, and does not look like technology. They look like sophisticated products that anyone can use and enjoy.

Computers that do not look like computers, and do not require any technical knowledge to be used. How many technical messages, data, black screens do you see when your Mac starts. How many of you upgraded to OSX Lion with a few clicks?. SmartPhones and Tablets with an incredibly natural user interface, that does not feel techy at all.

So when the TV set industry is going on a completely opposite direction, are they ready to really break this trend and revolutionize the way you use your TV?.

Siri

Think Siri. This might be the answer to the way they would want to approach the relationship between you and your TV. No more remote controls. No more buttons. Talk

to your TV.

Thinking about it, probably the TV is one of the first stops in a long conquering journey. Voice interfaces have been there for a long time, but never this natural. Siri is an impressive piece of technology that… doesn’t look like technology. Game changer.

 

 

 

 

Breaking the screen barrier

I must admit that when I first got introduced to Microsoft Surface 2 a few weeks back in a Microsoft event I was a bit skeptical about its potential applications. Maybe it’s the size or the price tag, but after reflecting on it a bit I think there is one

Customer interaction

fundamental thing in which it can be extremely useful. Breaking the screen barrier. If you think about customer interactions, a big number of them happen in front of a counter or desk, where the an agent is normally looking at some information in a computer screen in order to complete a transaction, hotel or flight check-in… What about configuring your new car with the sales agent?.

Surface 2

I do find this situation a bit odd, as the screen is not shared, so the customer experience is somehow affected by this barrier. This is precisely where Surface can bring a completely new customer experience by allowing the customer and the agent share the same screen, not only by placing the screen in a horizontal manner, but also not having a default orientation. This means that content can be placed, rotated, fliped, etc. so it can be looked from any angle. This is new. So now you have your customer and your agent interacting with exactly the same information. The multi touch experience adds so this, actually Surface can handle up to 50 simultaneous touch points, and that is a lot of fingers.

When you think about it, this can be really have a great impact in your whole customer interactions. Imagine a financial planning session with your relationship manager in your bank, looking at the same widgets, market reports and graphs, your expenses and investments, your risk profiling. You can now have all these elements in the screen, and they can be placed, moved around, zoomed, all in a shared manner. Or maybe you are checking in for your next flight, so no longer you are looking over a counter where the airline staff key in cryptic commands in order to find you your preferred seat. Now both of you can share the same screen, look at the seatmap, use gestures to zoom and pan around it.

Actually Surface 2 brings a lot more than the ability to look at a screen from many angles and have multiple interactions with it. It opens a whole new way of human to computer interaction. Actually the screen not only recognizes your touch, but can also see you. Or any object placed on it. This opens yet another completely new dimension, but I admit I need more thinking into it before I can imagine practical applications. However, I still wanted to share the customer interaction bit which is more due to the form factor and the multi touch capabilities rather than the new Pixel Sense technology which brings the vision capability.

Now just imagine a 15 inch Surface and you have something that can fit on every customer service counter and deploy massively into branches, airports and hotels.