Small Surfaces

“The level of communication between users and their electronic devices has been largely limited to a pointing interface. To date, a few common extensions to the pointing interface exist. They include single- versus double-click or tap devices and devices that allow users to hold down a button while moving the pointing focus, such as mice, trackballs, and touchscreens. A user’s ability to naturally communicate with a computing device through a gesture interface and a speech-recognition interface, such as a multitouch display or an optical-input system, is still largely an emerging capability. Consider the new and revolutionary mobile phone that relies on a touchscreen-driven user interface instead of physical buttons and uses a predictive engine that helps users with typing on the flat panel. This description could apply to Apple’s iPhone, which the company launched in June, but it can also apply to the IBM Simon, which the company launched with Bell South in 1993, 14 years earlier than the iPhone. Differences exist between the two touch interfaces. For example, the newer units support multitouch gestures, such as “pinching” an image to size it and flicking the display to scroll the content.”

Link: Recognizing gestures: Interface design beyond point-and-click (edn.com)