Non-Planar Climate Control Panel for Multi-Axis Touch Interaction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional control devices with planar display screens, such as thermostats, lack intuitive user interaction and enhanced viewing capabilities, as they restrict user input to a single plane, limiting functionality and usability.
Innovation Solution
The integration of a non-planar display screen with a flexible electronic display technology, such as an arc-shaped screen, allows for user interaction along multiple axes, incorporating touch-sensitive segments and alphanumeric displays, enhancing user engagement and control through varied orientations and shapes like arcs, cubes, and cones, which require X-axis movement and multiple angles for operation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If a planar display screen is used, then the device structure is simple and easy to manufacture, but user interaction is limited to a single plane reducing intuitiveness and usability
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies dimensionality change by transitioning from a planar (2D) display to a non-planar (3D) display surface. The display is configured to have multiple planes or surfaces that extend in three-dimensional space, allowing users to interact with controls across different spatial dimensions. This enhances user interaction intuitiveness by providing tactile and visual depth, while the display structure integrates multiple segments (first, second, third segments) on different planes within a unified housing framework.
2Adaptability or versatility
If a non-planar display with multiple segments on different planes is implemented, then user interaction along multiple axes is enabled enhancing usability, but the device structure becomes more complex
Solution Approach 1:
The display is segmented into multiple distinct segments (first segment, second segment, third segment), each positioned on different planes. This segmentation allows each segment to serve specific control functions, enabling versatile user interaction along multiple axes. The segmented structure is mounted on the housing using a bridge member that connects the segments to the housing, providing structural support while maintaining the multi-plane configuration.
Solution Approach 2:
The non-planar display structure provides multi-functionality by enabling various control operations across different planes and orientations. The display can present information and accept input in multiple spatial configurations, making it adaptable to different user preferences and interaction styles. The same display structure supports diverse control functions including touch-sensitive segments, alphanumeric displays, and graphical interfaces.
3Adaptability or versatility
If touch-sensitive segments are added to enable multiple control functions, then control versatility is enhanced, but the display structure and connectivity requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple control functions are merged into a single integrated display structure. The display combines touch-sensitive segments, alphanumeric display areas, and graphical interfaces on different planes, all connected to the circuitry through a bridge member. This merging approach provides versatile control functionality while consolidating the structural support and connectivity requirements into a unified mounting system.
Data Source
AI summary
A control panel includes a current altering device for control of peripheral devices and a display having a first segment, second segment and third segment and the first and second segments are not located in the same plane. The display includes at least one touch sensitive segment to operate a peripheral control function. The display includes alphanumeric display areas adjacent to first and second segments. In an embodiment the display may have an arc shape and the first segment is located at an apex of the arc of the display in a first plane and a second segment is located in a second plane.