We delve into the psychology of interactive technology, is it still an effective way to engage users? Paul Milligan explores touch tech.
Interactive technology has become so widespread it’s hard to imagine our lives without it. Touchscreen interfaces are used by billions of people and have become one of the most commonplace technologies of our time. If you want an indication of how comfortable we’ve all become with touchscreen technology then look at your phone, which was probably the first device on which we all encountered interactive screens, it’s probable it doesn’t have even a button on the front. They aren’t deemed necessary anymore.
And unlike most technologies, the adoption and competence is cross-generational. Ok, you may have had an experience that had you wanting to pull out your hair when trying to get an elderly relative to change a password for a particular app, but everyone aged 2 to 92 can answer a call etc by pressing a button on the screen. In fact, the speed at which very small children can pick up the technology has been a concern to some but shows how innate the psychology of interactivity is.
The article will look at the how we interact, why we interact, and how interactive technology might change in the next five years. Interactivity has been around for two decades now, can we view that as a positive because we don’t have train people how to use it or could it be a negative, because older technology isn’t viewed as desirable? “It’s very positive because it’s been going on for a long time so it’s not something we have to explain,” says Maximilian Geppert, project and account manager at Interactive Scape, a manufacturer of multitouch displays and object recognition technology.
But by being so established, it also ups the pressure for those delivering interactive systems in 2025 he adds, “It’s approachable for people because it’s something they expect, which also gives us a challenge that you have to do something new or something that creates the wow effect, where people are baffled or happy or smiling.” Interactive products are more popular than ever, despite their age says Miguel Fonseca, CEO at touchscreen manufacturer Displax. “Volumes are still going up; the market is still growing. We’ve have been doing this since 2012 and every year has seen 10-15% growth, and there are more use cases than ever if we compare it to several years ago.”
Fonseca can see a day when all screens sold in the AV market are touch enabled, “I’m sure there will come a time where it’s doesn’t make financial sense to not just insert the technology inside.” For Remco Molenaar, project director at digital design agency Kiss The Frog, interactive technology is in our very nature as humans. “It has to do with what they call the playful human. We have always had this tendency to understand and learn in a better way when we can do a certain activity. If you’re talking about interactivity, it’s just another way of facilitating this, tinkering and finding out, and learning stuff. I see it as a second nature to all of us.”
It’s easy to use, and its adoption has been pretty flawless and widespread so far, but is it still effective? Is interactive technology still the most effective way to get small groups (one to three people) involved in the message you’re trying to convey? “I think it’s very powerful when you compare interactive technology versus people walking up to a display and watching a film. It gets people’s brains much more involved,” says Juan Garcia, head of AV systems design at integrator Crossover AV. Interactivity is becoming vital because of wider changes in society says Molenaar. “It’s important because with younger kids using digital devices, attention spans are getting shorter and they can’t take in information, especially when it’s written information. If there’s a way where you can drip feed them with little bits of information, it’s more efficient and then the information sticks, it’s better than providing them with big chunks of information.”
The design of interactive systems is absolutely crucial to their success says Garcia. “The problem is that just interactivity per se doesn’t do it. It needs to be really well designed. People start putting buttons all over the place and say this is interactivity. If you have a small group it ends up being pretty lame, yes you can press a bunch of buttons, but that’s no way to lead users through that experience. In that case, it’s more powerful to just show them a movie than treat them to a sub-par interactive experience. Sometimes it’s just more powerful to have a single button that does one basic thing than do all sorts of interactive things, with no story or no strength to what’s actually going on. Touchscreens can get abandoned because people press them for five seconds and then just move on to the next thing.”
If we accept that interactive interfaces are now commonplace in society, does their ubiquity make them easy to ignore? If so, what techniques are there to draw people to interactive screens/exhibits rather than fitting a giant ‘touch me’ button above a screen? There are two elements to this says Fonseca, getting the content right and the technology itself. “Nowadays people are very well trained on using touchscreens. There’s zero learning curve which is extremely important for any technology to grow. It’s important to give the same experience that people have traditionally had. The other part is the content, that’s what makes someone go and touch the screen to get more information. There are lots of people who are good at this, McDonald’s/Burger King for example, they study, they take care about how that is done.”
In a perfect world, for interactive technology to be successful we should be talking about the design of the environment, the lighting and the hardware says Molenaar. “How do you get people to understand what they need to do or where to touch the screen? Usability design is a job, we’ve got a number of people [at Kiss The Frog] who have a very solid design education background, especially in this field.” He gives one example of where the basic techniques in the design of visual information have been a success, at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. “All the signs are where the gates are, and where the exits are. It’s based on the principle of providing people information when they need it, instead of hitting them with everything you’ve got, with every button and every option.”
There’s nothing worse than a black screen or a screen where nothing is moving says Geppert, “We like to trigger directly relevant content, to make it a bit more intuitive.”
He adds that Interactive Scape often works with second screens and explains why. “For our showrooms we almost never only have one table displayed because you cannot see from afar, you only see the people that are standing around it. It also attracts other people in as well.”
You have to keep the content moving says Tobias Schwirten, managing director at AV systems manufacturer Exact Solutions. This can be done by simulating usage or flipping through slides etc. “Also, you could add a sensor that detects presence of potential users and once detected try to get them into further engagement. Gamification or multi-user interaction will motivate users to participate, make it more memorable but also promote exploration, collaboration, and learning.” In Jan 2023, Yunxin Liu published a report in the Personal and Ubiquitous Computing scientific journal entitled ‘How and why a touchscreen interface impacts psychological ownership and its downstream consequences’. This research found that touchscreen (vs. non-touchscreen) interfaces induced higher psychological ownership.
The results also show that touchscreens (vs. non-touchscreens) result in positive product evaluations (i.e. a willingness to purchase). Another study, by Eindhoven University
of Technology in 2022 had similar findings, that touchscreens users engaged on a more emotional level than on other devices, and also found that certain gestures (poke, pinch, press) had more satisfying outcomes to users than others (shake, stroke, massage) did. Again the message is about the simplicity and consistency of delivering the information.
Have those in the AV industry ever explored the psychology of why people interact with some screens or not others? Does it play a big part in the success of interactive technology? Kiss The Frog is a big believer in usability design, which is based on a number of psychological principles explains Molenaar. “What we do is evaluate and test in a very early stage. As soon as we’ve got something interactive going on, we invite people, preferably from the target audience, to play with it, because a lot of things you can’t predict. The trick is to let the development go hand in hand with the actual target audience and explore it along the way.”
Several aspects dictate success says Fonseca. “It’s the whole package of the touch display - the brightness, the look and feel, the size of it, how the content is shown, where it’s located. Does it look like an iPad? Because if it does, I know it’s a touchscreen.” The technology is just the enabler to access information. “It has to be reliable and bulletproof in a way that never fails.” The hardware must work 24/7, otherwise it affects the psychology of the very people you are trying to get to use it. “In a public space the touch can never fail because people will be ashamed of touching something that doesn’t work. It makes them feel stupid and people hate that,” Fonseca adds.
We have discussed touch almost exclusively when it comes to interactivity, but gesture-based interactive applications can be successful too. Is the AV industry looking at this tech seriously? “For us it’s another tool in the toolbox. What we tend to do is we come up with a concept or an idea of how we want to interact with certain subjects and if that means that camera tracking is the right tool for the job then we’ll go with it,” says Molenaar. “In our experience we don’t use it that much because people are used to work on surfaces, and things that are much more stable and are used to reference points,” adds Geppert. “What happens is that sometimes the idea is good, but then the execution ends up not as good for what they want to do i.e. there’s too many people in the background, etc,” explains Garcia.
The technology has promise, everyone we spoke to agreed on that, but it seems to suffer being compared to touch technology, which is easy to use, easy to implement, and has hit mass adoption. “What I noticed is that it (gesture-based systems) are often not as easy for users compared to actually touching a screen,” says Schwirten. One similar technology segment where Exact Solutions does see some promise is in Gaze Tracking. “It’s a technology that has fascinated me for many years, where the system tracks the point at which a user actually looks at the screen.” It may need more development time, but the results can be stunning and beyond that of an everyday touchscreen.
How important is haptic feedback to the success of interactive systems? It’s a key element for many. “We are humans, most of us mix several senses - sight, hearing and touch. Of those, touch and hearing are extremely important, pressing a button and hearing something or getting a visual confirmation that something happened is really important,” says Fonseca. “I love haptic feedback,” says Garcia, “It has a subtle way of reinforcing content.”
Are there any other trends that are making their way into the interactive market? LED with touch is on its way. “Large interactive walls are perfect for a public space experience involving multiple users. Beside the direct interaction those walls have a reach beyond the single user and are very versatile. In the past, very often ultra narrow LCD displays were used. Nowadays direct view LED walls are more and more attractive as price is decreasing. Pixel pitches should be below 1.5mm ideally, even below 1.0mm. Technologies such as GOB (Glue on Board) and surely more important in the future COB (Chip on Board) make the screens more robust and nicer to touch,” says Schwirten. Displax’s Fonseca agrees, LED is going to have a big impact on this market. “Now the touch market is moving to LED. LED will be dominant in five years. We have started development on how to make LED touch in an innovative way. It will take one or two years to arrive but I think it’s going to be a really interesting step.”