Design is something that gives products personality and a feeling and is often the unconscious reason for personal preference for a certain product over another. In a recent event in Norway called Design Day 2013, Albert Shum and Todd Simmons discussed the design decisions that let to the metro interface we currently have on Windows 8, Windows Phone and the Xbox.
During the presentation, they displayed a number of videos about the background, but more interestingly also presented some concepts that were far more future looking. Take the above image for example, the one on the right in particular, this invokes a delight of vision into how the walls of the future may in fact all be displays.
Currently you have one large piece of glass in your living room and maybe a couple of smaller displays in the bedrooms or study. With display sizes today increasing to a massive 84” we’re about to hit a major physical limit. That limit is the physical dimensions of doorways, this means if display manufacturers want this trend to continue, we need to reconsider the way we use displays in the home or business.
We’ve already seen an window into how this technology may be achieved. Take Xbox Illumiroom technology that is rumoured to be included in the next Xbox. This allows the action to extend outside the diameter of the TV and essentially take over your entire field of view. It’s not a difficult leaps to see the need for the current TV to be removed and simply use walls as the display surface.
Typical projectors look poor when increased to 100”+ sizes, but with 4K and even 8K on the way, the image quality could be spectacular. Stepping way from games, the applications for running multiple applications as picture above is seriously interesting. If this was to become a reality, it’d make the multi-monitor setups we currently use, a thing of the past.
You can watch the whole video below, it’s long at 45 minutes, but if you’re a designer or like concepts of what the future may bring, it’s definitely worth your time.