Link: Tap is the New Click (vimeo.com)
Posts Tagged: touchscreen
29
Aug 08
Overloading Car Dashboards
“So what has probably happened here – Toyota had to create this one product that integrates the GPS, CD changer, the blue tooth telephone, the trip information and the other 15 things I have not discovered yet. It probably started as one component, which then had to be reworked to integrate the second component and so on. When everything was said and done, we have what I get to use now. It sure does meet all product functionality requirements that it was set to achieve, but it falls well short of usability requriements – thanks to product integrations. Do your products suffer from this same problem?”
Link: Product Integration – Usability killer? (productmanagementtips.com, via)
17
Jun 08
Design of the new Wells Fargo ATMs
“With the new UI, we were able to use the entire screen for user input. This came really handy when we approached the workflow for envelope-free check deposits which allow much shorter processing times and the ability to print receipts with an actual image of the check. It also saves the bank processing costs.”
Link: That design is money! (physicalinterface.com, via)
31
May 08
Organic User Interfaces
The latest edition, June 2008, of ACM’s Communications has a bumper selection of articles about Organic User Interfaces (OUIs). Organic User Interfaces have “non-planar displays that may actively or passively change shape via analog physical inputs”. The lead article describes these major attributes of OUIs:
- Input equals output: where the display is the input device
- Function equals form: where the display can take on any shape
- Form follows function: where displays can change their shape
The today-existing analogues for these are touchscreens, custom form displays and folding displays. The articles each explore the future of these in much more depth and complexity; this stuff is incredibly important for the next generation of mobile computing devices.
There aren’t any traces of the magazine online yet (?!?), but it’s worth tracking down (it should appear here when it does).
UPDATE: The articles are posted at organicui.org
22
May 08
OLPC rides again
The OLPC horse is still being flogged, this time in a smaller format and with dual touch sensitive displays (see the pics below). What consistently confuses me about this project is the lofty goals OLPC espouses without truly connecting with the situation into which it is supposed to be introduced.
Bruce Nussbaum summed it up quite well: “The problem from the very beginning was that this is a Western educational concept encased in a beautiful little childrens’ laptop designed by Westerners (Boston-based Continuum and fuseproject’s Yves Behar) for non-Western children and non-Western cultures and educational institutions. The education ministeries in India, China and elsewhere saw OLPC as a challenge to their authority and their abilities. After all, the rise of China and India and the lifting of half a billion people out of poverty in the shortest period of time in history is based on their existing educational institutions. They argues that with US companies chasing Chinese and Indian school graduates, why change their systems to conform to some Western ideal of learning?”
Dual display ultraportable computer: interesting. Dual display ultraportable computer that bridges the digital divide and creates better learning experiences for the impoverished: very questionable.
Link: First Look: OLPC XO-2 (laptopmag.com)
8
May 08
HTC Touch Diamond Demo
If I paid a dollar every time Horace Luke of HTC says ‘simple’ in this product launch I’d be down about $132. Hyperbole aside, it’s an interesting piece of design.
Demo of the overall experience:
Demo of the the web experience:
Link: YouTube – HTC TouchFLO 3D Video on HTC Diamond (youtube.com, via)
7
Apr 08
iPhone’s breakthrough: touchscreen
InUseful published a usability report on the iPhone.
“What is it then that makes the iPhone different? Most importantly, it has removed one level of abstraction by allowing the user to act on objects using the finger directly on the phone’s surface. The difference between this and having to press keys on a keyboard and watch the screen to see what happens is striking. Instead of having to press one key to focus on the list item representing your contact and then clicking another key to make the call, the iPhone allows you to actually click the contact right on the screen. To scroll, you pull the list itself instead of clicking a down-key, and to flip between pictures in the album, you drag them from one side to another.”
Link: Free iPhone usability report (inuseful.se)
7
Jan 08
Rokr E8, touchscreen with haptics and tactile targets
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)
21
Nov 07
Design for being in the world
Matt Jones takes a Heideggerian turn when he talks about design for being in the world, rather than being on the screen.
The “iPhone is a beautiful, seductive but jealous mistress that craves your attention, and enslaves you to its jaw-dropping gorgeousness at the expense of the world around you…[but] I was strongly convinced that [embodiment] was a direction that could take us down a new path from recreating desktop computer UIs on smaller and smaller surfaces, and create an alternative future for mobile interaction design that would be more about ‘being in the world’ than being in the screen.”
Update: Matt Jones’ site seems to be down at the moment, see the cached version of the article here.
Link: Lost futures: Unconscious gestures? (blackbeltjones.com)
18
Jul 07
Microsoft’s “Shift” for touchscreens
Microsoft’s Shift uses call-outs to deal with the problem of fingers covering targets on touchscreen devices.
“Retrieving the stylus of a pen-based device takes time and requires a second hand. Especially for short, intermittent interactions many users therefore choose to use their bare fingers instead. Although convenient, this increases targeting times and error rates. We argue that the main reason is the occlusion of the target by the user’s finger. We propose a pointing technique we call Shift that is designed to address this issue. When the user touches the screen, Shift creates a callout showing a copy of the occluded screen area and places it in a non-occluded location. The callout also shows a pointer representing the hotspot of the finger. Using this visual feedback, users guide the pointer into the target by moving their finger on the screen surface and commit the target acquisition by lifting the finger. Over large targets, in contrast, no callout is created and users enjoy the full performance of an unaltered touch screen.”
10
Jan 07
Apple Finally Gets a Phone
Apple finally got their phone. I had two immediate reactions. It’s fantastic that a company has released a touch-screen phone that’s hitting the mass market. I hope this is a wake up call to other manufacturers: touch-screen devices are not just for the high end PDA market. Second, I’m very interested to experience text entry on the device. One of the most difficult things to do on a touch-screen is text entry (text entry while in motion can be exceptionally difficult, and is almost impossible one-handed). While the iPhone solution looks interesting, it’s not clear that the solution is completely baked.
Link: Apple – iPhone (apple.com)
Link: The Apple iPhone runs OS X – Engadget (engadget.com)
12
Dec 06
One-handed touch screen interaction
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)
