We have all heard of Microsoft’s Surface system. It was released back in July 2008 to commercial partners as a new form of touch computing for public environments. There has been a lot of interest about this product over that last 10 months – clients and partners are asking us about it’s functionality, costs, specifications, etc.
The easiest way for people to experience Surface is to visit a few select AT&T stores (including one here in New York) where they are using the system to help educate customers about cell phone features, plans, coverage zones, etc. The experience is pretty basic and somewhat satisfying, assuming you are attempting to compare different cell phone models as part of your purchase decision. Here is a video clip.
This was obviously not enough exposure to the system for my perspective so I met with our Microsoft rep who gave me a demonstration at the Microsoft Technology Center in midtown Manhattan. Here are some of the elements of the system that I really enjoy and some I’m not so happy about.
Like other IR based multitouch systems, Surface can recognize physical objects that reside on the screen surface. They use visual tags that can be adhered to an object e.g. the back side of a cell phone. They are very small reflectors (about 1 inch) that are printed on stickers that react to IR light and trigger a response in the application. They can also be produced to be invisible to the human eye, which is very cool.
The system can also recognize physical objects without visual tags as long as they can reflect IR light and are a consistent shape. This works great for encouraging visitors to use their own objects such as coins or the bottom of a wine glass.
The price is approximately $13,000 which is pretty cheap for a fabricated enclosure, computer hardware and software platform all in one. The projector is only 1024×768 which is a little concerning but the pixels per inch is acceptable, since the screen is small.
Which is one concern – the screen size is 30inch diagonal, which is good for a 1-person experience, or maybe 2 people who know each other. The surface that you touch is an acrylic material that has a specially designed texture to enhance the tactile feel on your fingertip and help with maintenance and cleaning.
The form factor of the table is very low and seems useful for bars and lounges where the visitor is seating on a couch but not ideal for walk up environments. In the AT&T deployment, they fabricated a new enclosure that raised the Surface table off the ground so that visitors can interact with it while standing.
In order to create a digital experience that lives on Surface you must develop it using Expression Studio. WPF is the only format that plays on this platform. So Flash and other web based technologies are not an option. This means a learning curve for some developers but one that I think is worth the effort. This is the same development environment used for Silverlight applications.
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