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.

Comments

[Philippe Beaudoin]

Having two symmetrical touchpads also makes sense for left-handed, right-handed people. Reaching across the keyboard (and moving the other hand away) to move the mouse would be a major hassle.