Concept: Desktop Touchscreen System
While there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of applications, we only have a handful of operating systems. Probably for the reason that even if you were to create one, it would be hard to get installed onto hardware once you did. And then the operating system is mostly useless until developers start making programs to run on top of it.
All that being said, with the launch of HP’s TouchSmart and TX2 computers, I’m occasionally asked what a purely touchscreen system would be like for a desktop. (It’s rumored that Jeff Han of Perceptive Pixel is currently working on one, and of course, the iPhone, Instinct, Dare, et al have touchscreen OSes for mobile.) With the publication of my book Designing Gestural Interfaces last week, I thought I would discuss what some desktop concepts could be like.
Let’s first look at what operating systems do. They let users:
- store data
- organize data
- display data
- move data between applications
- connect to other devices or networks
- launch applications
- switch applications
- change hardware settings
That’s pretty much the core functionality. It’s surprisingly little, but it does encompass a lot. How would this set of functionality work with a touchscreen? First some principles:
- Nothing overly strenuous. People will be using it all day, so few or no reaches, held positions, or overly-repetitive gestures. This also means that systems like the TouchSmart probably won’t work well, as it requires constant reaching to manipulate.
- Awareness of limitations of fingers. Touch targets have to be larger than they are for a cursor. Menus need to move from the top of the screen to the bottom to reduce screen coverage.
- Take advantage of spatial layouts. We’re used to moving things around on our physical desktops with our hands, why not our digital desktops?
- Man does not live by touch alone. Probably a keyboard and, yes, possibly a mouse or stylus might make sense as part of a desktop system. Use touch for what it is good at doing.
Here are some concepts built with these principles in mind:
Propped-Up Tablet
For touchscreens, keeping the screen as close as possible while still allowing for wrist support is important. Thus, this idea of a large screen that rests on the desktop at an angle. It’s as though your laptop had lost its keyboard, grown taller, and the processor had moved behind the screen.
Circling for Multiple-Select
While the touchscreen will work as we’ve come to expect, some additions such as circling multiple items with a finger to select them will be necessary.
File Piles
In addition to folders, piles of files that can be flipped through with flicks of the finger. Tap a file to open it.
Making the Invisible Physical
Some items that are invisible on current desktop systems might have to be made visible in order to be manipulated, such as items put onto the clipboard.
Fluid Borders
Users should be able to push piles and files off to one side, off the screen (effectively hiding it, or onto multiple monitors). Brushing multiple fingers across the screen moves it around to spaces that cannot be seen. The screen becomes a window into a bigger desktop.
Haptics Keyboard When You Need It
Since touchscreens aren’t naturally great for text entry, a keyboard that takes advantage of haptics (to stimulate key presses) could appear onscreen as necessary. Of course, for writing and longer text tasks, a full keyboard can be hooked up.
Of course, these are just concepts that would have to be prototyped and tested. But it might start us all thinking about what it would be like if our lap or desktop was touchscreen-based.
All images by Tom.
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5 Comments
Have you ever tried a Laser Keyboard? http://www.projection-keyboard.com/store/main.html;jsessionid=abUrh_N1-hEehjG5O4
I’m thinking through surfaces that I can project it on that would provide some haptic feedback, like Jello.
Nice kick-off dan, gets me thinkng (as I post from my iPhone) about the way our systems will need to update and communicate back to us *what* it is we’re doing.
Haven’t read yr book yet, so assume you’ve got something in there about it, but I think the occlusion thing, plus multitouch will be big disruptors of learned behaviour.
I used xp tablet os for about 6 months once. And was really surprised at the way my work practice changed to fit the os so I could replicate my learned experience of a ‘desktop’ os. Floating the stylus to hover, hardly ever using hard buttons.. Etc.
But this phone is soooo different. Mainly coz it doesnt try recreate osx. Its ui limitations define it’s conceptual model really tightly. Perhaps too tightly judging by the muttering you hear about clipboards etc..
Sorry, rambling here.. Artifact of small screen and slow textbox content manipulation.
IMHO a desktop touch system will not be a big iPhone or a touchenabled current os. But that’s infeasible wrt markets, so how it leverages learned behaviour will be important. Big things:
* contextual commands
* subtle & responsive action feedback
* customization (for moving from novice to expert quickly)
Another thought, that you’ve addressed in this article, is physics models (piles, momentum etc) can be extended to create coherent interaction frameworks.. eg extending to collision detection, environmental conditions etc.
and … (sorry for the tract) As our digital things get more tactile, perhaps we’ll want to include them more in our idea of ‘entities’ or ‘identities’ to interact with?
Nice overview of multitouch apps.
Two other keys.
Auras.
Users need to know their contacts have been registered.
Contextual menus.
Touch screens are, by their nature, not “pixel efficient”. An effective system for “finger tip” contextual mark up menus will be a key to decreasing fatigue and speed of use.
Precision Pointing.
The real limitation of touch screens to date has been a lack of precise control…To give a sense of scale, the difference between touch and the interfaces we are used to is the difference between finger paint and the head of a needle.
While there are any number of compensatory strategies, they aren’t solutions.
Did you see this post today on MacRumors (“Apple Exploring 3D Desktop and Application Interfaces”) at http://is.gd/b9ft. Reading this interesting post makes me wonder if a 3D organization model could work somewhat naturally as a touch-screen OS. Maybe a twist motion could indicate tunneling into the background. Food for thought…
Cheers,
Liz
These concepts look like BumpTop, which take advantage of spatial layouts in a very innovation way.
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