Touch Screen – The Next Step for Outdoor Digital Signage

The digital signage market seems to be in constant flux. New developments, innovations and the reinvigoration of old ideas already exhausted in print media means there is always something happening in the world of Dooh (digital out of home).

In the last few years digital signage has gone from primarily indoor locations – the digital posters and kiosks found in shopping centers and retail stores – to being almost as ubiquitous outdoors with outdoor digital signage adorning high streets and digital billboards along highways.

Part of this rise to outdoor has come about due to the development of waterproof LCD screens and the prevalence of outdoor LCD enclosures that protect standard hardware in these less than hospitable environments.

Indeed, the outdoor digital signage market seems to trail the indoor sector by a few years, so what emerges in our shopping malls, transport hubs and in-stores, inevitably ends up outside. And as touch screen is the latest beau of the indoor digital signage market it won’t be long before many of the high street outdoor digital signage systems will involve touch screen

While touch screen has gone a long way in recent years, mostly due to its use in the thriving cell-phone and tablet market, it still has difficulty operating efficiently outdoors.

Cadbury interactive touch screen in a bius shelter

There are various different methods of touch screen technology. Most modern touch screens use resistive or capacitive technology as the touch sensor.  In brief, resistive touch screens rely on pressure form the finger while capacitive touch screen use an electric field over the screen; however, both these methods can struggle in outdoor locations, especially when it is cold or very hot. Furthermore, these systems struggle to work when people are wearing gloves and protecting the face of a touch screen can be extremely difficult leaving you to compromise between protection and sensitivity.

Despite all this there has been a surge in outdoor kiosks and outdoor digital signage screens that implement touch screen technology – bus shelter campaigns with interactive games and adverts have been one example of how they can add a new interactive element to digital signage and now, several companies are producing touch screen kiosks specifically for outdoor locations.

And touch screen enclosure and outdoor digital signage enclosures that allow touch screen are going to make this technology a lot cheaper and easier to implement in the future.