At last, the kind of touchscreen I’ve been waiting for – a full screen touch UI with haptic response and tactile finger targets. This is the kind of touchscreen device you could use with one hand. Look forward to seeing more developments in this direction.
Link: First Video of Moto ROKR E8’s 100% Buttonless Touch Interface (gizmodo.com)
Link: Motorola Rokr E8 (motorola.com)
Carlo Longino muses on touchscreens, and he’s not convinced they’re great. I agree with his complaints, but (like I’ve said before) I think that once touchscreens with haptic response are on the market it will all be over for hardkey-based phones.
“I think part of the problem here is that vendors and consumers are, to some extent, still focused on finding the perfect all-in-one device, whose form factor and interface support all manner of applications in the best possible way. This drives “big screen” thinking — the idea that the screen’s got to be a big as possible for web browsing or email composing or video playback. And if you’re going to have a big screen, it “has” to be a touchscreen…So, just as there will continue to be a diversity of devices with different form factors, feature sets and price tags, there should be a diversity of UIs as well.”
Link: The Question of Touchscreens (mobhappy.com)
Research about the use of haptics in mobile devices.
“This degree project aims at exploring and testing new interaction techniques using the touch sense in particular. The skin is a very complex and refined organ. It offers extreme sensitivity and tremendous capabilities as a medium between the outside world and us. The experience of touching or feeling is something that is very hard to match across other senses.”
“The new phone goes much further, using very precise actuations of its built-in motors to produce realistic, button-like clicks whenever an onscreen button is pressed. “Using a touch-screen, you normally lose the tactile confirmation you get from pressing a button,” says Mr Viegas. But with haptic feedback, on-screen buttons can be made to feel real and are easier to use. “You get the feeling that you have somehow really touched this object on the screen,” says Tapani Ryhanen, head of strategic research at Nokia, the world’s biggest handset-maker, who has been investigating the idea of adding haptics to Nokia’s phones as well.”
Link: How touching (touching-people.com)
Supporting one-handed interaction on touch screen devices is a challenge. Two of the biggest design challenges for touch screen devices are single-handed operation and haptic response. The Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland is researching the one-handed challenge.
“We are developing interfaces to support one-handed use of small devices. Most cell phones already support one-handed use, but most lack touch screens and thus interaction is limited to keypad-mapped menus and directional navigation. Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) on the other hand, do have touch sensitive displays, but are poor at supporting one-handed use for two main reasons. The first is that software interfaces for PDAs typically feature input targets that are too small for finger tip actuation, thus requiring a stylus, and two hands to use. The second reason is that the entire screen is valid for user input, which typically exceeds the extent of the thumb when held in one hand.”
Link: Interfaces Supporting One-Handed Use of Small Devices (cs.umd.edu)
Published by Gabriel White.