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3.1. Read the text
TOUCHING THE FUTURE
The proliferation
1
of touch screens in
electronic devices
over the past two or three years has been so rapid that you
may have found yourself trying to press an on-
screen button
or icon when
sitting
at your computer only to realize
that it is not a touch screen. Many
mobile phones
now have
touch-screen interfaces
, as do
satellite
-
navigation
systems
and portable
games consoles
.
So the touch screen could be on the verge of becoming a standard part of computer interfaces, just as the mouse
did in the 1980s. Many people thought that would never happen: surely switching between keyboard and mouse
would slow people down and make them less productive? In fact, mouse-driven interfaces can be far more efficient,
at least for some tasks. The same seems likely to be true of
touch-screen interfaces
. The touch screen will probably
not replace the mouse and keyboard, but will end up being used for some tasks.
Today countless supermarket checkouts
2
, restaurant tills
3
, automated-teller machines
4
, airport check-in kiosks
5
,
museum information-booths
6
and
voting
kiosks
use touch screens. In these
situations
, touch screens have many
advantages over other input methods. That they do not allow rapid typing does not matter; it is more important that
they are hard-
wearing
, weatherproof and simple to use.
But breaking into the consumer market was a different matter entirely. Some personal digital assistants had touch
screens. But the PDA market has been overshadowed by the rise of advanced
mobile phones
that offer similar
functions, combined with communications. Furthermore, early PDAs did not make
elegant
use of the
touch-screen
interface
. When there was a touch interaction, it wasn't
beautiful
.
That is why the iPhone matters: its use of the touch screen is seamless
7
, intuitive and visually appealing. When
scrolling quickly through lists, for example, the lists keep moving, apparently under their own momentum. On-screen
objects behave in physically
realistic
ways.
Until recently, the
computing power
and graphics capabilities of
desktop computers
, let alone hand-held devices,
were not good enough for
elegant
touch-screen interfaces
to work. And even if they had been sufficient, the public
might not have been ready for such interfaces. In the 1990s people were still getting used to Windows 95. But right
now the public is ready—even the most lay person can use a mouse.
Another factor that has held back touch screens is a lack of support for the technology in operating systems. This is a
particular problem for multi-touch interfaces. Modern operating systems, driven by keyboards and mice, are unable
to cope with a system that is, in effect, like connecting several mice at once. Instead, they are based on the idea of a
single cursor that
glides
from one place to another. In developing touch screens, it's necessary to create a separate
operating system because Windows and Linux really don't understand more than a single point.
Microsoft is also developing
gestures
, and Apple has already introduced several of its own on its multi-touch
enabled
laptops
, such as two-fingered dragging to scroll, and three-fingered flicking
8
to go forward or back a page in
a web browser. The danger is that a plethora
9
of different standards will emerge, and that particular
gestures
will
mean different things to different devices. Ultimately, however, some common rules will probably emerge, as
happened with mouse-based interfaces. Double-clicking didn't used to be universal, but now it is accepted as the
standard way to open a program or document on most computers.
What will be done with multi-touch and pressure-sensitive screens is still unclear. A lot of the applications have yet to
be developed that really take advantage of this technology. But touch screens seem likely to become more
widespread in desktop
PCs
,
laptops
and
mobile phones
. Despite the iPhone's success, it may
prove
to be
PCs
, rather
than hand-helds, that benefit the most from touch-screen technology. That is because touch screens, like mice, are
best suited to manipulating information, rather than inputting it in the first place—an area in which keyboards remain
unchallenged.
PCs
with keyboards and touch screens (not to mention mice or
trackpads
too) could offer the
most
flexibility
, letting users choose the appropriate input method for each task.
Technology Quarterly 4 September 2008
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