Don’t Touch! Touchless Interactions in the Post-COVID World

Less than nine months ago, the deployment of touchscreens was accelerating. Everywhere you visited or shopped, there were new self-service touchscreen devices to help you find directions or product information, order services, or dispense food and drink. However, one of the fallouts of the COVID-19 pandemic is that consumers are now resistant to touch these public devices.

To continue providing customer self-service, the user interaction with these devices must offer a safe, touchless alternative. Voice is an obvious option, but it is problematic in noisy, public environments. Consequently, many companies are employing multiple strategies in addition to touch and voice, including facial recognition, gestures, sensors (e.g. thermal cameras and RFID readers), and innovative companion apps that use a consumer’s own smartphone as the touchscreen for a public device.

In this webinar we discuss use cases as well as strengths and weaknesses for these alternative measures, including:

• Voice interaction
• Gestural interfaces 
• Facial recognition
• Sensor-based and RFID technologies
• Companion apps