Desktop Topper

The Desktop Topper is a bespoke piece of touch sensitive digital furniture made possible by the adventing of digital paper and advances in flat screen technology.

The clear plastic screen overlays your existing desk surface underneath the pot plants, tea cups, paper files and pencil sharpening machinery.

At it's most basic, the device provides a graphical display of the files available to you. Obviously private folders are either not displayed or get hidden under the petunia. More glamorous screens can provide 3d representations that look like the inside of a virtual drawer and may well cause the un-initiated a number of stubbed fingers.

Further use of the Topper is the potential for both yourself and your customer to see the same document at the same time, to edit it together, with them using the back of a biro and an on-screen keyboard. File actions are a mere point and 'screen-gesture' away, as are opening, emailing, printing and deleting. Such a desk could also pull out from the bottom of a laptop on the kitchen table.

I'm all for leaving it on while the computer is off. Then you can leave silly messages for the cleaner, reminding her to water the plant and not wash the tannin out of your mug. Or a picture of a bit of dirt, that moves every time it is wiped.

Finally, this needs some sort of USB interface so that memory sticks can have files passed from them to a temporary holding folder for you to check before you turn on at your return to the desk.