Steelcase Labs New Privacy Film Makes Digital Signs Look Like Black Rectangles

January 30, 2017 by Dave Haynes

Via Wired

Technology that would block the light emitted by LCD screens and LED displays would seem about the last thing a digital signage deployment might want, but a new privacy film developed by the office furniture firm Steelcase might actually have some interesting use cases in this sector.

Casper Privacy Film, developed by Steelcase’s in-house design incubator Designtex, is a two layer film for meeting room glass windows. One layer is transparent and printed with geometric patterns, and a second layer is a cloaking film.

As an article in Wired explains, the cloaking film “blocks the wavelengths of light emitted by LED and LCD screens.” So passersby can see who is in the meeting, and what’s generally going on, but the display panels being used to show sensitive presentations or financial material just look like black rectangles to viewers.

It’s a bit like privacy film installed on some display monitors that enable people directly in front to see just fine, but people to their left and right really can’t see what’s on the screen.

So in a business that tends to want as many people as possible to see what’s on a screen, why would this be useful?

Interactive applications, for one. In most cases, the users of touchscreens would have no reason to care whether onlookers can see what they’re looking up or doing on a display, there are cases where the information they’re looking at or inputting is more sensitive.

I’ve also raised the idea of visualized sales performance data in corporate communications, but been told they didn’t want people who weren’t in that department passing by the access-carded department and seeing that sort of thing through an interior window. This would solve that issue.

Limited possibilities, sure, but interesting to know the tech is out there.

  1. Steve Edgar says:

    Cool! Way to go Steelcase!

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