paper-like displays

Tags: Design,  Devices
January 16, 2006 by Barbara

Back in 1998, an industrial designer introduced me to the flexible display concept, specifically E Ink. His vision was (among other things) that product packaging could be made with such displays, which are persistent, only requiring power to change the display. He had the idea that the packaging could change from "buy me" in-store graphics to as-needed user instructions, all on the same surface.

I was intrigued, and learned a bit about the technologies and the companies involved. The displays do not emit light; they instead change the reflective characteristics of the surface. Since the change is mechanical, it has a slow refresh rate but also stays put once the refresh is made. The manufacturing process also allows for arbitrarily large (just limited by the size of the machinery) displays.

Gyricon developed a similar technology and had access to interesting supporting technologies such as plastic circuit boards. They focused on the easy-to-implement changable signs. Xerox, the parent company, has decided to close down Gyricon and there is no indication on their site that they are serious about "licensing the underlying technologies" - a search of their site for ;flexible displays" generates only one hit, almost two years old. To me, this seems like yet another example of Xerox's long history of developing great technologies and being completely unable to commercialize them.

Xerox relinquished, and the E Ink technology is being actively developed.

While I liked the Xerox technology slightly better, the E Ink product vision was a lot closer to mine, with a (future) focus on mobility. And this year, things are finally starting to look interesting. I'll leave the book readers for a future post.

Ambient Devices is making good use of E Ink with their 5 Day Weather Forecaster, making a clean, easy to read display with low power requirements. Lexar did something even more interesting: they created a pocket drive with a capacity used meter.

The Lexar product is an example of how E Ink might transform the nature of some of our information devices. A laptop computer might have a display on the outside with its owners name, possibly including corporate tracking data. This would make asset management easier for corporations. A handheld device might have static information on the outside, including contact information in case the device is lost - I would be more willing to lock my device if that were in place.

Alternately, an Ambient-style display on the outside of my phone could let me know the time, current weather/stock/traffic information, and whether I have missed calls or received messages - all with negligible power draw. This would be less expensive, less fragile, and more informative than current sub-LCD screens.

I'm also particularly interested in truly flexible rollable displays Phillips has prototyped. This concept solves the problem of how to get a large screen into your pocket: roll it up! I'd love to see a GPS/map device with this type of display, as tiny maps do not help me understand how to get where I am going.


«« Repetitive Stress Injuries  |  Fitt’s Law for mobile devices »»

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.