IMCCA Special Report
Sharing
perspectives on industry activities and what they mean for the future of
collaboration.
Author –
David Danto, IMCCA Director of Emerging Technology
Touch and Collaborate!
The Interactive Display Comes Of
Age
It was
the best of times, it was the worst of times… Yes, the story of
interactive displays is a tale of two births and two lifecycles. The first interactive “touch-capable” large
displays were born around 1991 when David Martin and
Nancy Knowlton released their first interactive product - called a “Smart Board.” While this first birth represented a
breakthrough, it isn’t necessarily the most significant beginning. The second birth event can actually be
tracked to 2007 – when Steve Jobs and Apple released the first
iPhone. Yes, touch-enabled devices and interactions
existed in many forms before that, but the iPhone / iPad marked the beginning
of the second significant phase of this product class - because it was the
first device that came to market without an instruction booklet. This represented the birth of users’
expectations that touch-screens would be intuitive. Those two events ultimately led to the point
where we are today – on the precipice of a huge growth cycle (and related hype
cycle) of enterprise and classroom interactive displays - now generally
referred to as IWBs or EIDs (interactive white boards / electronic interactive
displays.) Sadly though, this best of
times will invariably lead to its own worst of times conclusion – that despite
all the amazing features and functions of IWBs, they’re really only useful (and
therefore really only well utilized) in a few specific use cases. Hardware prices into the tens of thousands of
dollars per unit - either in up-front or ongoing costs – have
not been and will not be successful considering this narrow
utilization. Thankfully, there are a new
breed of devices coming to the space that drastically reduce the required
investment per unit. These devices will
lead to an ROI model that – for the first time in the IWB space – will be
sustainable.
How the Interactive
Whiteboard Changed the World
Throughout the history of
this product class we have learned a lot about its technology, and about our
behavior while interacting with it. In
order to understand where everything is going one needs to look at where it’s
been.
The problem that IWBs
address was and is real. It manifests
itself when people gather in a space to exchange ideas. (The space in question can be anything from a
classroom to a boardroom to a garage.)
This exchange of ideas is frequently accompanied by visual images – such
as a slide, a graphic, a chart, or a spreadsheet. These images frequently inspire real-time
changes – such as drawings, annotations, highlights, corrections and the
like. Then, when the meeting ends, all
those changes and annotations are lost.
How can we save and distribute the changes that were made in real time?
Before IWBs there were
few solutions. Dry-erase boards in
office conference rooms would have “DO NOT ERASE” signs hung on them for
days…or weeks. People would attempt to
take notes copying the material. Nothing
worked very well. A few early solutions
came to market in the form of whiteboards that would capture the images with
the press of a button when the meeting was over. But these worked so poorly that they soon
disappeared.
When the first IWBs hit
the market they were comprised of a bunch of different technologies. The most typical included projectors that
were combined with whiteboards and electronic pens – ones without real
ink. These systems would know which
color pen you picked-up because of which slot in the pen-tray it came out
of. They might know where on the board
you were pressing because of the sensitivity of the surface, or because of tiny
optical sensors (cameras) around the board.
You would be able to recognize these systems in most enterprise
environments because of the oversized pen tray, and because of the impossible
to erase ink marks they sported - caused by people mistakenly using real
markers on them – but I’ll get back to that later.
Later models came to
market using see-through electronic overlays designed to cover the new flat
displays of the day; and then finally as one-piece displays with
touch-sensitive glass.
When used as intended,
visual thinkers could now be fully interactive with their presentations -
making drawings, highlighting sections, correcting errors, etc. When the presentation was over, the material
could be saved and rapidly distributed.
People who became fluent in the skills required to use these IWBs could
do some amazing things. They could use
OCR features to turn writing into data; they could cut and paste graphics, spin
them around, change their color, and resize them – all the while making notes
on the screen. With later models and
server based software they were connected to these sessions could be shared and
participated in simultaneously from multiple locations (each connected to the
server or service.)
Yes, many systems in this
product class needed a lot of support.
Boards would often need recalibration, and the software had issues and
bugs. But for the first time ever, ideas
created in one room could now truly be collaboratively shared to and from
anywhere. It was nothing short of a
revolution.
Education and the Enterprise
The educational community
was one of the first to make excellent use of these IWBs. They started appearing in classrooms as a
powerful and successful teaching tool.
Watching an instructor use an IWB was like watching Picasso paint – it was
art. Charts and graphs would fly around
the screen, multiple color highlighting would appear in real-time, handwriting
would turn into text…the graceful proficiency was beautiful.
The educational market
was a clear winner for IWBs, making-up the majority of demand. Conversely, IWB sales were not very
successful in the enterprise market.
When one takes a look at the human-factors involved, the reasons become
obvious.
Here’s
the true story I love to tell about IWBs to explain this phenomenon. An enterprise vice president goes to his
child’s school for parent- teacher
night. He sits in the classroom watching
the teacher give awesome presentations on her interactive display. His jaw figuratively hits the floor. The next morning he calls his IT / AV /
Facilities team and instructs them to order one of “those amazing boards” for
every conference room at their firm.
He’ll accept no debate or discussion on the matter as he knows how
amazing these boards are. The boards are
ordered, installed, and for the most part never used (or they become the ones
with the permanent marker stains I mentioned above.) A few years later and / or at other firms,
this cycle repeats…and repeats…and always would.
There are two specific
reasons for this. The first one is that
IWBs are generally very hard to use. (I
was fully trained to use a Smart Board many years ago, yet after a couple of
months away from one I have to re-learn it for an hour or so each time.) A classroom has an owner – the teacher. He or she uses the technology in the space
every day – and becomes familiar and fluent with it – achieving that graceful
proficiency I described above. In an
enterprise however, rooms don’t have owners.
People expect to walk into a general purpose conference room and begin
meeting or presenting. They didn’t have
the full day available to get trained on how to use the board, and they don’t
have that hour available to re-familiarize themselves each time they use it
after a while. That’s the main reason
why these boards were and are underutilized in Enterprise environments –
they’re too hard to use.
The second reason for
this is far simpler. In enterprise
conference rooms, people sit. They find
the best available chair, plug their device in, and keep sitting. They rarely get up to annotate on a
board. Yes, there are a few specific use
cases that don’t follow this pattern.
Trainers / instructors, engineers, designers and a handful of others will
make extensive use of IWBs. However, the
rest of the users in an enterprise, generally won’t get up to use them.
Therefore, when you take
a product that is expensive and hard to use, and put it in an environment where
people generally don’t get up from the table, you get what the IWB market has
achieved in the enterprise space – very little traction.
A New Hype Cycle Begins, And The
Old Hype Cycle Repeats
In order to understand
what is happening in the IWB space today one only has to go back about ten
years to see what happened with Immersive Telepresence. The parallels are astonishing.
Immersive Telepresence
generally describes videoconference systems that use a number of large displays
in front of a table that are meant to simulate all parties being in the same
room.
At the beginning of the
immersive hype cycle, the videoconferencing market had a number of solutions
available that were generally perceived to be poor. The reasons for the perception included
difficult and non-consistent user interfaces, poor connections between systems,
and poor maintenance and management of the endpoints – all problems that were
solvable but were usually neglected.
There were also niche providers providing immersive systems, but their
expense and minimal distribution prevented their popularity.
Then, one large manufacturer (Cisco) decided
that the space was ripe for disruption.
They built a system (CTS 3000 TelePresence)
that was very reliable (simply because it addressed the solvable problems
listed above) and put a lot of muscle behind the marketing and distribution of
it. While these systems carried a list
price of hundreds of thousands of dollars (not even including how much the room
remediation would cost) Cisco’s management would often give the units to large
customers for free, seeding the market and driving demand for additional
endpoints.
Rather than compete
against these TelePresence systems and their obvious
flaws (expense, technical limitations, practical limitations, limited use
cases, etc.) the other manufacturers in the space adopted a “we have one too”
stance. (All boats rise with the tide…)
Shortly thereafter, immersive telepresence was the thing that everyone
had to have. Instead of selling
videoconferencing endpoints (bad
connotation) for about $20k each, they got behind selling immersive systems
(good connotation) for hundreds of
thousands each. The sales numbers were
staggering – everybody had to have these – along with the expensive management
and exchange services needed to connect them.
It took about five or six
years for the market to come to its senses and realize some very basic truths:
·
Immersive
telepresence wasn’t “better” than the videoconferencing systems that preceded
it. It just utilized better connections,
better maintenance, better management, and easier UIs. These could have been applicable to the
inexpensive systems all along.
·
The
immersive nature of the rooms were a terrific benefit in only some very narrow
use-cases – for example, when only two locations had groups of less than six
people in a meeting for extended periods of time. The rest of the time they were not a good
choice of collaboration tool.
Today you will still find
immersive systems in use, but they are limited to those applications where they
are actually a benefit.
If you look at the IWB
space, the parallels to Immersive Telepresence are dead-on:
·
The
collaboration space included many systems, but most were not perceived well
·
There
were a number of IWBs available from niche players, but their complexity and
minimal distribution prevented their popularity
·
A
large firm (Microsoft) decided that the space was ripe for disruption, and
introduced a system that was perceived to resolve the problems (Surface Hub)
which carried a very hefty price tag (~$22K for an 85” system)
·
Rather
than compete against the system’s weak points (expense, technical limitations,
practical limitations, limited use cases, etc.) the other manufacturers in the
space are adopting a “we have one too” stance
Thusly, the IWB space is
poised to explode, with current offerings from existing players now set to compete
against new offerings from huge firms such as Google and Cisco. (All
boats rise with the tide - or here we go again…)
In addition, many of the
new products can be classified as “ecosystem plays.” Because the cost of collaboration hardware is
shrinking, the manufacturers realize there isn’t as much profit in selling
products as there is in selling services.
So the manufacturers of new systems on the market aren’t looking for
sales profits as much as they are looking for ongoing revenue in the form of
subscriptions. Google’s and Cisco’s
products will be less expensive than Microsoft’s recent offering, but they will
require a monthly subscription to their platform.
The Pendulum Will Eventually Swing Back
After a few years of
industry healthy hype, the IWB market will swing back to focus on the realities
of these units’ capabilities. Just as in
Immersive Telepresence, the value and use of an IWB is not universal. Or, said another way, a hammer is a great
tool, but there are many applications – like cutting glass - where using a
hammer is a poor choice. User firms will
soon realize the limitations of IWBs (as mentioned before - complex UIs and the
fact that people that “don’t get up”) and begin deploying them only in
applications where they make sense.
These appropriate applications include:
·
Engineers – When working on complex drawings, equations,
schematics and the like an IWB can support manipulating objects in real-time –
and save and easily distribute all work.
·
Educators – Whether in a classroom or an enterprise
instructional environment, the IWB is ideal for conveying ideas, annotating and
highlighting points and presenting information with a flair.
·
Designers – IWBs allow visualization of real-time object
corrections and manipulation. Do you
want to see what the shirt will look like in pink, then blue? Do you want to see it with long sleeves,
short sleeves, or sleeveless? IWBs allow
for real-time sharing and distribution of all of the changes.
·
Architects – How will the new building look with a front
garden as opposed to a courtyard? What
will a change in the exterior material do to the overall building’s look? What will a different color carpet make the
new floor look like? How will more
private offices fit on the floor plan?
All of these and more can now be manipulated and exhibited in real time
instead of waiting for new plans to be printed.
·
Team Leaders – If your organization utilizes stand-up
meetings in specific rooms or open areas, and uses a person to lead such
meetings graphically on a whiteboard, the IWB is an obvious extension of such
meetings that can carry the information outside of the location where they are
taking place.
The big question of
course is, are IWBs useful for general purpose meeting rooms? That’s a tricky one to answer. If they are complex to use and cost tens of
thousands of dollars for each room (either in upfront or ongoing costs) then my
personal opinion is no. Just like with
Immersive Telepresence, the solution is not practical nor scalable. If however the UI is vastly simpler than it
has been in the past (think about that iPhone / iPad again) and the costs are
far lower than we’re generally seeing today, then yes, in my opinion the IWB
becomes like the room’s speakerphone. It
may not be used for every meeting, maybe not even for most meetings, but if it
is ubiquitous and available when needed – and as easy to use as that phone – it
will be a valuable addition to the room.
It also needs to be said
that we are no longer in a hardware centric world. In the past, meeting rooms were defined by
the hardware that they sported, such as a videoconference room or a
telepresence room – or a room equipped with an IWB. These hardware tools have helped drive
productivity within enterprises – but only to a point. Today, instead of creating collaboration
systems that users have to conform to when entering a space, best practices
indicate that we have to develop environments that will conform to the users
and the tools they are already carrying – like smartphones and tablets. Expecting a traditional IWB to meet today’s
needs is no longer an optimal strategy.
It’s more realistic to work with a software platform that meets the user
expectations on their ubiquitous devices, then ensure that the IWB can perform
as an extension of them. Many
manufacturers / software providers want to get users onto their software
ecosystem for that reason. End users
however have to be aware of the ongoing costs of that ecosystem. Are you expected to pay for an enterprise
license for all your employees? Are you
expected to pay monthly fees for each device?
Or is the software platform something inexpensive that can be limited to
only the users that need it?
Additionally, more than just the expense, does the software platform
meet the “no instruction needed” iPhone / iPad test?
IWB Classifications And
Considerations
At a very
generalized level, IWBs can be classified into four different types:
·
Complex ecosystem products These are displays – generally from a manufacturer
or service provider with businesses in many other areas – that enhance the use
of that company’s platform via interactivity.
Microsoft’s Surface Hub supports and extends the use of the Microsoft
ecosystem. Google’s Jamboard
enhances the use of G-Suite applications.
A few more manufacturers are poised to bring similar ecosystem products
to market. If you are an extensive user
of such an ecosystem then these devices can be considered useful extensions of
them in the appropriate applications listed above. If you don’t use these ecosystems, or use
them but don’t have a significant amount of the appropriate user applications,
then they are a generally unnecessary expense.
·
Stand-alone products – These are displays that have some IWB
software built in from the display manufacturer, either as an add-on to enhance
the value of the display, or as a specifically intended IWB product and
application suite. InFocus, Smart, and a
few others make products in this space.
While easier to use than they have been historically, these products
still have very complex UIs that will likely only be useful in those
appropriate applications where users interact with them every day.
·
Enhanced Whiteboards – These are physical writing surfaces - often resembling and operating just like
real whiteboards - that can be joined from remote sites, and enable the
sharing, saving and distribution of what’s written on them. Smart’s Kapp product is an example of one of these. The limitation with these devices is that the
collaboration is only one-way – the remote sites can only see the drawings, not
participate.
·
Add-on Products – These are engines
that can be added to your existing display or whiteboard to add interactive features. These have ranged over the years from cheaply
made pucks that attach to a flipchart (which have exhibited questionable
reliability) to brand new, feature rich products hitting the market. One example of this is the new TouchJet
Wave –
which turns any display up to 65” into an IWB by adding an Android based
processor and pick-up to the top. The
advantage of products like the Wave are that they generally work with your
existing displays, requiring you to purchase only the IWB device and software –
with a price tag of about $300 each. If
your organization already owns displays in your conference rooms, you can add
interactive features to over seventy of them for the price of one large Surface
Hub. At a 70 to 1 ratio an organization
is likely able to finally achieve the scalability necessary to justify putting
them in all rooms - in that speakerphone model I mentioned above.
No matter what product
you choose, there are a number of factors that need to be considered about
their ongoing operation.
One of these factors is
connectivity. While just about any IWB
can save the work done on it, clearly, the ability to share work with others in
real-time is a very valuable feature. In
order to accomplish that an IWB needs to be connected to the other users. How each system connects is a critical
consideration:
·
Will
you need to purchase and install a server?
What are the one-time and ongoing costs of that?
·
Can
the IWBs connect to each other without a server?
·
Will
you need to connect the IWB to a cloud service?
Is connecting to the public cloud something your organization allows, or
are there compliance concerns around that?
·
Will
you need to commit to purchase an ecosystem license to use the system? What is that cost and what kind of time
commitment are you required to make?
What does that price do to the ROI of the units? Do you need to purchase an enterprise
software license for your entire organization…or one for each unit, or can
software be purchased only for the users that need it?
Another factor to
consider is that the ownership of an IWB doesn’t end with the purchase of the
unit and any required license. If you
buy, install and connect a regular display - you’re done. If you buy, install and connect an IWB you’ve
only just begun. As people touch it,
things will happen that you have to be ready for:
·
How
secure is the product (display mounted to the wall and / or interactive engine
mounted to the display?) “People
touching it” is the number one reason technology breaks. When technology is intended to have people
touch it, it will come out of alignment and need calibration, get damaged, need
replacing, etc. What is your plan for
dealing with all of that?
·
What
is your cleaning and maintenance plan? “People touching it” is also the number one
reason technology gets dirty. How often
do you plan on cleaning the display? Do
you have a “manufacturer approved” method to remove the oils that our fingers
naturally leave on surfaces (like fingerprints and smudges?) Do you have a “manufacturer approved” method
to erase the ink and marker smudges that people will inevitably create on the
surface “by accident?” The dirt and
grease will pile-up, and cleaning it when someone complains isn’t a real
plan. Will your custodial crew come up
to speed on how to regularly handle the technology or will your level-one
technicians become de-facto screen cleaners?
The wrong time to
consider these issues is after your purchase and when you’re forced to face
them. Maintenance and ongoing costs need
to be considered as part of the expected ROI of the system. This is another area where the relatively
inexpensive, scalable add-on product has a significant advantage. It’s far easier to replace a $300 unit with a
spare from your supply closet then it is to unmount your 60”-85” unit from the
wall, waiting for a spare to be delivered, and then having it reinstalled on
the wall.
The Future
As mentioned earlier, I
see the IWB path developing in a completely parallel manner to the Immersive
Telepresence hype-cycle. There will be a
significant amount of interest – almost classifiable as a “craze” - around
these products for the next 18 to 24 months.
If your favorite display or collaboration manufacturer / service
provider isn’t offering a solution, then just wait a few weeks – it will
be. The question end-user organizations
have to ask is where they want to be when the dust settles. Ask firms that invested early and heavily in
Immersive Telepresence products what their experience eventually turned-out to
be, and most will tell you that these systems – installed at high cost and
operated at high costs - have been or are being removed – also at high
cost. When we reach the downward slope of
the IWB’s hype-cycle curve what position do you want your organization to be
in? My advice is as follows.
Organizations will want
to ensure that:
·
IWBs
have been installed where they are most likely to be used. Again, these are with instructors, designers,
engineers, architects – roles where people are frequently interacting with
diagrams and demonstrations to accomplish their tasks.
·
Significant
funding hasn’t been expended until the value of their use-cases has been proven
out.
·
The
software that lives in the IWB is useful for people that simply will not get up
to use it. It will have to be effective
for remote participants, seated participants, etc. It should be as easy to use on a smart device
as it is on the IWB.
·
The
hardware is small enough / simple enough to be easily moved from a location
where it isn’t being utilized to one where it will be (or to the unused
equipment recycle bin.) If you are
spending thousands of dollars to buy a unit and thousands of dollars to install
and maintain a unit, and will need to spend thousands of dollars to remove
units, you’ve probably not made the wisest choice available. If however, you purchase a number of the
low-cost systems and find that you have significant demand from users willing
to learn more complex systems you can always reassess your product choice and
spend more where warranted.
Whatever you do, be sure
to seek advice from partners other than the manufacturer. This hype-cycle, just like any other, has
manufacturers selling based on their roadmaps – not based on features that are
currently available. Installing a system
that doesn’t work as needed today will be the quickest way to irreversibly
prevent adoption. Try the systems before
buying them. Speak to current users of
the systems. Ensure that what is
available today has the features and functions you need. Only after examining all of the units
available – or consulting with an independent source that has examined them –
will your organization be able to make an informed decision that isn’t
influenced by the hype.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This article was written by David
Danto
and contains solely his own, personal opinions. David has over three decades of
experience providing problem solving leadership and innovation in media and
unified communications technologies for various firms in the corporate,
broadcasting and academic worlds including AT&T, Bloomberg LP, FNN, Morgan
Stanley, NYU, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan Chase. David is the IMCCA’s Director of
Emerging Technology. He can be reached at DDanto@imcca.org and his full bio and
other blogs and articles can be seen at Danto.info. Please
reach-out to David if you would like to discuss how he can help your
organization solve problems, develop a future-proof collaboration strategy for
internal use, or if you would like his help developing solid, user-focused
go-to-market strategies for
About the IMCCA
The
Interactive Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance (IMCCA) is a
not-for-profit user application and industry focused association with
membership comprised of service and product providers, consultants, and users.
Members benefit from the understanding and the use of various interactive and
collaborative communications technologies in their professional and everyday
lives.
For further information please contact Carol Zelkin, IMCCA Executive Director,
at 516-818- 8184 or czelkin@imcca.org. Visit the IMCCA web site at
www.imcca.org