Touch Usability

Jitouch gestures for macbook and magic mouse

Jitouch is an impressive looking suite of gestures to add to your MacBook or Apple Magic Mouse. I haven't tested it out, but I'm impressed with the attention to detail evident from the web site, particularly in how they've documented the gestures.

Link: Jitouch. (Via ignore the code.)

MOTO's simple touchscreen stress test

MOTO labs has posted a good article discussing touchscreen accuracy. They describe a simple line-drawing test you can do on touchscreens: DIY Touchscreen analysis. The basic ideas is to slowly draw diagonal lines in a drawing program, and then watch how linear the result is. They also look at edge performance.

Of course this is just one part of the picture -- there are other measures of accuracy and responsiveness (this doesn't say much about touch-down/lift-off accuracy, for instance). And as MOTO points out, the touch sensor is just one factor among many that contributes to quality. They sum up with some dos and don'ts:

MOTO has worked with capacitive touch interfaces for more than 15 years, and here are some essential dos and don’ts for anyone entering the field:

• Don’t skimp on materials. With touchscreen hardware, manufacturers get what they pay for — and consumers will notice the difference.
• Allow ample time to develop your algorithms. Don’t treat touchscreen algorithms as an element of component sourcing; for best results, create a distinct touch development track under your own roof to make sure your products are both responsive and accurate.
• Closely integrate touchscreen hardware, software, and user interaction development, and do so as early as possible in the product development process. Never treat them as separate tasks.

Link: DIY Touchscreen analysis (via Engadget).

Motorola Backflip with back-of-device interaction

It looks like Motorola is the first to put "back-of-device interaction" into production. That's an idea that HCI researchers including Patrick Baudisch have demonstrated in the past few years (see his nano touch page for details). Putting a touchpad on the back of a device gets your fingers out of the way of the screen and gives potential for more precise interaction as well as new types of gestures.

More at Slashgear and Engadget. (Images from Slashgear.)

p.s. I should have mentioned that the Fuse concept phone also implements this idea (albeit in a prototype). Fuse is a collaboration between Synaptics, TheAlloy, TAT, Immersion, and Texas Instruments: press release, Engadget's coverage.

Are dual touchpads the way of the future?

Probably not, but it's an idea worth exploring, and a couple of dual-touchpad designs have been in the news recently. As I wrote in a previous post, I'm interested in dual touchpads as a way to support two-handed interaction (by enabling separate, parallel actions or combined actions using both hands together).

Asus has shown the NX90Jq, designed by Bang & Olufson, with two "turntable-like" touchpads at either side of the keyboard (see Engadget, second post with video). It sounds like they haven't added any new interaction techniques, but presumably you can do two things in parallel, like point with one hand while scrolling with the other.

The touchpads are at the sides rather than on the palmrest, which is one way to avoid the problem of accidental contact that comes with large touchpads.

Wired's gadget lab also reports on this Asus machine, and asks "Who knows why we would want two touch pads, though." I'll bite! Like I said, there is the possibility of doing things in parallel, or maybe not literally in parallel but more efficiently. You might not have the coordination to scroll and point at the same time, but the switching time between the two tasks might be shorter than if you are using only one hand for both. This classic paper by Buxton and Myers talks about such benefits: A study in two-handed input (from CHI 86).

A couple of weeks ago, also via Engadget, I spotted this Fujitsu MH380 laptop with two touchpads. In this case the second touchpad only does circular scrolling (I think).

I wonder why they put the scroll circle on the right rather than the left. Most users are right-handed and would probably get more of an efficiency boost out of this design if they could scroll with their left hand. My guess is that two-handed use wasn't really part of the thinking here and that the scrolling is on the right because that's where the scroll strip normally is.

In any case, these are neat designs, and I'm guessing we'll see more experiments like this with multiple touch surfaces on laptops.

Inside Blackberry's Optical Trackpad

Over at the official Blackberry blog, they've posted a glimpse of the optical sensing technology in the new trackpad that replaces the trackball for navigation on some models: Inside the Trackpad: A Blackberry Science Lesson.

International Research Study about Touch Gestures

Several usability companies under the banner of International Usability Partners have conducted a major user research study about touchscreen gestures in different cultures. The research was presented at the recent Human Factors and Ergonomics Society conference among other places. Dan Mauney of HumanCentric is blogging about the study at HumanCentric's blog. So far the posts have presented the background and test protocols. Future posts will report on the results. From the first post:

Very few studies appear in the literature on the identification and understandability of gestures on touchscreens.  It is truly an emerging convention. Even fewer, and perhaps even none, have studied the identification and understandability of gestures across cultures.  Yet, many of the products that enable gestures will be intended for a global audience.  Designers have a definite need to know how understandable gestures are, and how universal they are, while the field is still young.

The International Usability Partners (IUP) has run a global study aimed at identifying the most common user-generated gestures for control of a touchscreen within a given country and across cultures.  The (IUP) is an established network of 12 independent usability companies based in 12 different countries (including Belgium, China, Chile, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain, Sweden, UK, and USA) who have joined  to provide user experience services worldwide. This research involved collecting user-defined gestures for 28 common commands (like scroll, open, rotate, zoom in, cut, copy, paste) across 9 different countries and analyzing the resultant data for consistency of responses and cultural influence. 40 participants in each country were presented with a “before” screen image and an “after” screen image and requested to make a gesture that will result in that “after” screen image. The gesture made was recorded and catalogued.

Link to all the posts: Gesture Research.

It's very interesting work and I'm looking forward to reading all the results.

IUP also has a new group blog on this theme: TouchThinking.

Don Norman's "Technology First, Needs Last" and Don Ihde's "Designer Fallacy"

Well-known design/HCI guru Don Norman has a good, provocative article up at his site called "Technology First, Needs Last." He begins:

I've come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs. I reached this conclusion through examination of a range of product innovations, most especially looking at those major conceptual breakthroughs that have had huge impact upon society as well as the more common, mundane small, continual improvements. Call one conceptual breakthrough, the other incremental. Although we would prefer to believe that conceptual breakthroughs occur because of a detailed consideration of human needs, especially fundamental but unspoken hidden needs so beloved by the design research community, the fact is that it simply doesn't happen.

The following gives the gist of the article, I think: "grand conceptual inventions happen because technology has finally made them possible" rather than because of design research into people's needs. "Major innovation comes from technologists who have little understanding of all this research stuff: they invent because they are inventors."

Norman's article reminded me of an essay by philosopher of technology Don Ihde called "The Designer Fallacy and Technological Imagination." It's not online as far as I know. I'm quoting from Ironic Technics, a short book that includes this and three other essays.

Here is the abstract of Ihde's essay:

Most literary critics have abandoned the notion that the meaning of a text lies in the intention of the author and have called this the “intentional fallacy.” I hold that there is a parallel found in many interpretations of technology design and call it the “designer fallacy.” This chapter, through examining a wide series of historical technology designs, deconstructs the utility of a simple designer-plastic material-ultimate use model and suggests that one must take into account unintended uses and consequences, the constraints and potentials of materiality, and cultural contexts, which often are complex and multistable. I outline a complex, interactive account of design interpretation.

The argument may be a little clearer in these excerpts:

In simple form, the "designer fallacy," as I shall call it, is the notion that a designer can design into a technology its purposes and uses. ...

While it may be the case that some technologies have come into being and performed as "intended" by their designers (I admit, I can think of none which have served solely in this way), there would seem to be none which can not be subverted to other, to unintended, or unsuspected uses and results. ...

in spite of language concerning designer capacity in textbooks -- recognizably there in engineering, architecture and other design textbooks -- I am attempting to show that the design situation is considerably more complex and less transparent than it is usually taken to be. Both the designer-materiality relation, and the artifact-user relations are complex and multistable. While it is clear that a new technology, when put to use, produces changes in practices -- all of the examples show that -- these practices are not of any simple "deterministic" pattern. The results are indeterminate but definite, but also multiple and diverse. Moreover, both intended results and unintended results are unpredictable in any simple way, and yet results are produced.

Ihde is making a different point from Norman, but it seems to me that they have a similar theme -- basically to show the contingency of design on other factors, to an extent not often acknowledged. To be clear, both are writing about the design of wholly new inventions or new categories rather than incremental designs. They're not talking about something more routine like a web site design.

To make this more concrete, take the example of the telephone (cited in both essays). Norman's point is that the telephone wasn't invented in response to research into people's needs; it was invented because the technology was ready. Ihde's point is that when the telephone was invented, the inventor had a different use in mind than what later happened:

Here the designer intent was for an amplifying device capable of transmitting a voice over distance, and intended as a prosthetic technology for the hard-of-hearing (Bell's mother)... the party line on which all the neighbors 'chatted' was not foreseen, let alone the subsequent telephone wiring of early 20th century America.

I don't think either writer is arguing against the conventional practice of design or design research, but rather suggesting that people keep in mind the many other factors that affect technology design and use. Ihde:

the design process must be seen to be fallibilistic and contingent. Some worry that this recognition may be demotivating -- but it could also be a call for a more cooperative, mutually co-critical approach as well.

Interesting CHI discussion

James Landay has started an interesting (and very lengthy) discussion at his blog about the CHI conference review process and many related things: I give up on CHI/UIST. If you liked Greenberg and Buxton's 2008 paper and panel about how CHI needs to accept a broader type of work (especially papers about systems rather then techniques) then you might like this, as it extends and adds to that discussion. (And both Greenberg and Buxton add their thoughts.)

Fingerless gloves for your touchpad

From Lifehacker comes a recommendation that should embarrass touchpad makers (like, ahem, Synaptics):

Wear Gloves to Stop Touchpad Annoyances

Photo by Nessa Land.

Miguel tells us how he keeps his mouse from jumping on laptops:

If you're writing on a laptop, and you constantly find your palm brushing against the touchpad, thereby making your insertion point dance around, put on some thin knit gloves. It will keep incidental contact from registering on the touchpad. If that makes your fingers too thick for typing, or if you still want to be able to use the touchpad, just cut off the fingers.

Link: From the Tips Box (Lifehacker)

Of course most touchpads do have an algorithm built in to suppress accidental contact. Check out your touchpad settings (on Synaptics touchpads the setting is called PalmCheck). I recommend trying the maximum value. It's not a perfect solution, though. Bigger touchpads and touchpads centered to the palmrest instead of the keyboard have aggravated this problem in the last couple of years.

Bill Buxton on the Mad Dash Toward Touch Technology

Interrupting my blog neglect to point you to this must-read column by Bill Buxton: The Mad Dash Toward Touch Technology. He offers a good dose of realism and some thoughts about true innovation.