Announcing IntuiFace Version 4

Groundbreaking Advancements to the Industry’s #1 Solution for Creating Interactive Experiences 

IntuiFace - the new name for IntuiFace Presentation - has already established itself as the go-to software option for anyone who wishes to create cutting edge, visually engaging, highly functional interactive experiences without writing one line of code. Hundreds of customers in more than 45 countries are proof that there is no better way to build multi-touch, remote gesture and input tag-driven applications for the tablet, kiosk, table-top and wall-mounted device.

With Version 4.0 we continue our innovation leadership by introducing capabilities once thought far out of reach for anyone without deep programming expertise. The following advancements are unmatched in the industry and ensure users can create interactive experiences that will even amaze themselves.

Work with external data:

Connect visual elements in your IntuiFace experience with ever-changing cloud-based data. Always display the latest graphics and info. Make content changes without requiring a stop and restart.

Integrate public and private APIs:

Collect user input and exchange it with your own or third party APIs. Incorporate any business process, from retail point-of-sale to social media, trade show lead management and academic research.

Consume new, ready-to-use assets:

Incorporate live Twitter and RSS feeds, Flickr image streams and local weather reports in your experiences with our out-of-the-box assets. Then create your own assets based on these implementations.

Bind visual and data-driven properties: 

Mirror properties, trigger parameters and action parameters. Cascade changes in one source asset to all bound assets including appearance-based properties and data.

New branding:

To capture the expansion of our coverage from presentation creation to application creation, we have dropped “Presentation” from our software’s name and updated all icons and logos for a fresh start.

New website and pricing:

We continually revisit how people find, learn about and purchase our software. For Version 4.0 you will find a brand new website, extensive instructional videos and reduced cost for annual subscription pricing.

A host of additional improvements are also available:

• New “Group” collection. Enable collective resizing of multiple assets at the same time. Useful for the creation of product cards and data sheets.
• New Text Input asset. Visitors to your IntuiFace experiences can enter data that you can pass along to 3rd party business services.
• Composer Redesign. Improved color scheme and layout flexibility. Enhanced Space Content panel for greater clarity. Simplified access to additional asset properties and an all new “asset binding” panel.
• New properties, triggers and actions. Includes the ability to make assets transparent to interaction, increase the DPI for pdf’s and other displayed documents and display Bing Maps labels in different languages.

If you’d like to try it out yourself, head on over to http://intuilab.com and click the Try It Free button at the top of any page. You will have 21 days to try out every feature. If you have previously installed Intuiface Composer, your account is still valid and you are entitled to a new 21 day trial period. Head on over to your License Dashboard to get a copy.

To get up to speed quickly, watch the videos in our new Instructional Video Library as well as review all of the new articles in our Knowledge Base. And as always, head on over to our Discussion Groups with your questions.

Tell us what you think - and have fun!

Geoff Bessin

CMO

Partner Spotlight: Elo Touch Solutions

Welcome to our new blog series: IntuiLab Partner Spotlight. In this first edition we will start with a hardware manufacturer well known around the world for its best-in-class touch technology: Elo Touch Solutions. Elo is a premier global supplier of touch solutions including touchscreen components, touch monitors, and all-in-one (AiO) touch computers. They offer a wide range of touch technology options including surface acoustic wave (SAW), resistive, projected capacitive, acoustic pulse recognition (APR), infrared (IR) and optical.
 
IntuiFace users can look to Elo Touch Solutions when interested in digital signage, retail, point-of-sale (POS), hospitality, medical/healthcare IT and industrial touch technology.
 
Something we find to be very helpful on the Elo Touch Solutions website is its Guide to Choosing an Elo Touch Technology. This guide identifies suitable touch technology options for given use cases. For the not-so technologically savvy, Elo also offers a comprehensive overview of Touch Technologies, reviewing the advantages and typical uses of each technology, a description of how each technology works, detailed specifications and a review and detailed comparison. Overall, their website is quite helpful for customers looking to invest in touch technology, regardless of their final hardware provider.

The Benefits of Interactivity achieved through Natural User Interface (NUI) Technology

Why interactive digital experiences like multi-touch and gesture control? Why not just stick with the good old mouse and keyboard? Based both on our experience and our passion, we propose five major benefits of interactivity that is achieved through natural user interface (NUI) technology such as multi-touch and gesture control:

1.      Intuitiveness (easy to learn, use)

• Humans are naturally drawn to technology. When approaching a shiny, colorful screen with a big Touch Me button flashing in the center, our first instinct is to touch. Interactivity plays on this instinct and guides humans in a visual and tactile way through any number of experiences by exploiting the straightforward and simple interface of touch technology, without the need for mediating technologies such as keyboard and mouse.

2.      Collaboration (multiple people working either together or in parallel)

• We can propose that one of the purposes of interactive technology is to connect people to each other and to information underlying an interactive experience. Many natural user interfaces enable people to work together in a common virtual ‘workspace’ and share the experience enabling the creation of a communal digital activity.

3.      Engagement (both when used hands-on or when watching a presenter)

• Have you been lucky enough to see some of the new interactive wall installations being implemented in many museums today? Topics that may have once been considered dull or difficult to follow instantly become interesting and worthy of a closer look. Natural interactivity calls its viewers to come closer, to touch and experience, and to see what is behind the closed door. Meanwhile, a presenter using an interactive approach is armed with graphics and dynamic story flows that come alive for viewers.

4.      Attraction (catches the eye of passers-by)

• When well executed, interactive experiences can be quite beautiful. The intrigue captures attention and that makes calls to action unavoidable. The ability as a viewer to customize an experience, to move content the way you want, watch video clips specifically picked to catch your attention, zoom in and out of objects with no limitations to the details you can achieve… the creative potential is endless and the desire to interact is strong.

5.      Cross-generational (cutting edge)

• Ever see a young child (starting with toddlers) assume every display is interactive? Ever notice the increasing frequency of iPhone use amongst the older generations. Thanks in part to the benefits identified above, interactivity is being enjoyed and exploited by just about anyone of any age. In fact, the rate of maturity on today’s touch devices amongst older generations already exceeds the mouse-and-keyboard savvy while, for the younger set, interactivity meets expectations, establishing a modern, hip appeal.

Responding to your questions on IntuiFace Version 4

A few days ago we released a trailer video to introduce the world to IntuiFace Version 4, our industry’s next big step in the evolution of interactive experience creation. Today we wanted to send out a big thanks to all of our community members who expressed their enthusiasm. We received a few questions in reaction to the trailer whose answers we thought should be shared with everyone:

Is it just me or have you changed the product name?

It’s true, we have modified the name. In particular, we’ve dropped the word “Presentation”. The results are IntuiFace Composer and IntuiFace Player. With all the advancements we’ve packed into Version 4, the software will now enable the creation of what we call “experiences.” IntuiFace 4 will have all the same seamless presentation creation capabilities as previously and now go beyond to offer you advanced functionalities. Stay tuned for more details on this.

Am I entitled to the upgrade?

Everyone with an active subscription and/or active MSU (Maintenance, Support, Upgrade) entitlement for their perpetual licenses will be eligible to upgrade to the new version upon its release.

Can I upgrade my 3.X presentations to the new 4.X version?

Yes, all presentations created using IntuiFace 3.X can be permanently upgraded to Version 4.

Can I have 3.X and 4.X on the same machine?

Yes, this will be possible without having to purchase additional licenses.

If my trial has expired or will expire before version 4 is released, will I be able to evaluate it?

Yes.  Considering the number of improvements and additions in Version 4 we thought it best to give everyone the opportunity to run the trial, even if you’ve trialed the product in the past. We won’t hold it against you for not joining us in the first place!

Is the price of IntuiFace changing as a result of all the upgrades?

No, IntuiFace is getting an overhaul but our prices remain the same.

Will there be new tutorial / videos that I can participate in to learn about the new functionalities?

Along with the launch of Version 4 will be a brand new website, revised from top to bottom and stocked with multiple ‘intro-to’ and ‘how-to’ videos.

Thanks again for your interest! Don’t forget you can always reach out to us with questions and concerns.

Preview of IntuiFace Version 4.0

The IntuiFace platform is already the world’s premier no-programming solution for the creation of interactive digital experiences. In Version 4.0 we are revolutionizing it to match developer-only solutions in capability while exceeding those solutions in simplicity and time to creation. Without writing one line of code, designers can create “connected” interactive applications that access both local and cloud-based information, ensuring the display of up-to-the-second graphics and data. We have also added significant layout and design upgrades so designers can make their interactive applications smarter and more dynamic with just a few mouse clicks.

Scheduled for release in May 2013, the launch will coincide with the release of a brand new website, filled with video tutorials and information to ensure users of all skill sets can be productive from Day One.

All active IntuiFace customers are entitled to the upgrade. All those with an active trial will be permitted to restart their trial when Version 4.0 ships.

Samsung and IntuiLab Create Interactive Retailtainment App for Paris Flagship

In February 2013 Samsung launched an interactive retailtainment application in its flagship store in Paris, France. The application, “Discover Samsung’s Apps and Services” was created by IntuiLab in conjunction with Samsung France with the goal of using gaming to inform in-store customers of available content and services offered by Samsung for multimedia devices.

Customers are invited to browse through various “pages” of the application with a scroll bar at the base of the screen. Each page represents a particular service and features an interactive game. At the conclusion of each game, regardless of whether the customer wins or loses, access to information about Samsung services is unlocked. Games featured in the app include quizzes, memory tests, find the device, spot the difference and trivia.

The interactive display provides another channel of communication between Samsung and their in-store customers while adding an aspect of entertainment and engagement to the onsite purchasing experience. Each interactive screen is placed at the entrance to the Kids Fun Zone in the Samsung store. Coincidence? Definitely not as customers visiting the Samsung store with children will have their own Fun Zone experience in the spirit of education. :)

This video shows the application in action. Feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions about the application or require further information: info@intuilab.com.

This ‘Inkscapes’ installation, created by Adrià Navarro – a student in NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program - and DI Shin, presents an intelligent way to turn tablet doodling into something more profound. The installation streams live iPad drawings across a giant, 120-foot-long display, located inside New York’s InterActive Corps building.

IntuiFace Presentation users can reproduce this experience using the IntuiPad and any large, non-interactive display. What other artistic uses of IntuiPad and IntuiFace Presentation can you envision?

Welcome to our new blog series, “IP Feature Highlights”. Our software, IntuiFace Presentation, has a number of features that enable users to create spectacular, interactive presentations without writing a single line of code. We hope this blog series will help our new and existing users learn about features they may not have considered, adding even more techniques for creating beautiful, memorable and highly functional interactive presentations.

Today we will start with a feature introduced in IntuiFace Presentation Version 3.8 just a few weeks ago. The feature, known as the Slide Show collection, is a member of the Collections family within our software. Collections enable you to group and display sets of images, videos, documents and other content media – even other collections - in a creative, organized and fully interactive way.  

The Slide Show collection reproduces the Ken Burns effect. Due to the behavior of this effect, this type of collection is typically used for images. The effect displays elements one at a time and as each element is displayed, a slow pan and zoom occurs, followed by a fading transition into the next element. Here’s a video demonstrating the Ken Burns effect:

Ken Burns Effect Image Montage

To find this collection in Composer, either use the Insert menu or select the last icon in the Collections portion of the quick access toolbar to the left. (See image below.)

An empty box will appear within the active scene. Drag and drop images from the Content Library into this box or into its representation in the Space Content panel. Then select the “More Properties” button for this collection to adjust animation effects. For details about these animation effects, see the description here, in our Knowledge Base. 

We hope you’ll try out this feature for your next presentation. Should you have any questions regarding this functionality, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

The recent Retail Connections show we attended in Venice, Italy was a success. One great output of the show was this article (article is in French) highlighting IntuiLab on the subject of innovations revolutionizing the store of tomorrow.

IntuiLab was featured for our product’s ability to assist retailers in transforming the simple point of sale into an interactive showroom. Using a multi-touch surface with a customized, interactive application, customers can discover products via images, videos and 3D models and then proceed to checkout. The customer could optionally customize products and share their creations through social media, a smart way to get customers to promote a brand.