Touch Screen Dreams: A Discussion

This is how it started. We were having a meeting about some­thing com­pletely dif­ferent when I was unwise enough to chal­lenge Malcolm Garrett, my co-​​director on the Dynamo London digital design com­munity site when he said that the iPhone changes everything. He’s also been fol­lowing rumours that Apple is appar­ently planning a tablet-​​style device.

I said that Microsoft’s attempts in this area had met with niche success. Later, we followed up the debate on email:

Ian:

Still not con­vinced about the Apple tablet — Microsoft’s Tablet PC was a pretty good platform (I know, I know…) but remained very niche because touch screens are so expensive. Their cost increases expo­nen­tially by size because the fault ratio on LCD panels is so much higher once you add touch. Also, people don’t like ‘typing’ on touch screens because of the lack of physical feedback.

Malcolm:

I love typing on a touch screen :-)   I hated my Nokia btns.

I think we’ll be sur­prised at the way a fully-​​functioning, populist, per­son­al­is­able, pro­gram­mable, portable (rather than mobile) enter­tain­ment, com­mu­nic­a­tions, inform­a­tion carrying, global gps and wireless, device will have infilt­rated daily life before we even know it. iPhone is a real trojan horse. I don’t think the Microsoft tablet was any comparison.

IDEO had been saying for years and years that a touch screen device would NEVER be attractive to the public and con­sequently never be suc­cessful. I sure I saw Bill Moggridge say it in another article again at the weekend, despite such recent evidence to the contrary. In my view, iPhone blew that long-​​held tenet away comprehensively.

IDEO simply came at the issue of the inter­face design in com­pletely the wrong way. A visual screen needed soph­ist­ic­ated and con­tex­tual visual feedback, not tactile as Bill Moggridge and his ilk stead­fastly, and fail­ingly, main­tained. I believe iPhone proved that. People are ready for things that work in an obvious way, the actual hardware/​software ‘concepts’ are lost on them. Only the effects (i.e. prac­tical and usable) mean anything. The touch screen revolu­tion has effect­ively happened, now the results will begin to inundate us. This is akin to 1998 when the web sup­posedly broke into the main­stream and ceased to be new or inter­esting to the cognoscenti. That was wrong then — it was almost ten years more before it really could be described as mainstream.

As ever, we will need to be alive to exactly who are audience is, or should be, and target accordingly.

Ian:

“People are ready for things that work in an obvious way”

com­pletely agreed, but with the caveat “People are ready for things that are better”.

However, touch screens remain extremely niche despite being avail­able for years. The causes for this are:

(a) cost (this can some­times be offset by versatility/​throughput e.g. tube ticket machines).

(b) dur­ab­ility (increasing this increases the cost con­sid­er­ably, only suited for high-​​volume public terminal-​​type applic­a­tions; obvi­ously the dur­ab­ility problem increases expo­nen­tially with size of screen).

© user experience.

You believe that © isn’t a factor any more, or can be overcome by great inter­ac­tion design. You might be right — I disagree. Typing has been per­fectly possible on touch screens for a decade. Nobody does it. Why is that? Not just cost and dur­ab­ility. Similarly, voice input. No one does it. Typing at a keyboard isn’t just learned beha­viour — it’s incred­ibly effi­cient compared to the alternatives.

You think that the iPhone is a game-​​changer — yet, you struggled to give me Catherine’s contact details. Surely, that’s pretty basic func­tion­ality? And you are someone who has followed every innov­a­tion in the digital space for 15 years. What chance Joe Normal?

Malcolm:

Actually, I found Catherine’s details right away, much more easily than finding them by any other format I can think of. I struggled to show you the details on my screen as i recall, as i pointed and clicked sim­ul­tan­eously when i didn’t want to — a result of having big clumsy fingers, and being eager to please, and trying to do some­thing that it’s not really designed for, nor intended to be. the iPhone is a personal device not a sharing device.

I appre­ciate your typing argument. However, my argument is that in the real world most people don’t type. They do text, and lot more than they type, and without a keyboard. it’s the keyboard that has kept the computer firmly per­ceived as a business machine. My argument actually suggests that because of the success and ver­sat­ility of the iPhone touch screen many more activ­ities stray away from the need to function with a keyboard at all. I think that is very significant.

My view has always been that the keyboard has restricted broader accept­ance and use­ful­ness of com­puters rather than the other way around. I think this is just the begin­ning of a new rela­tion­ship between people and and their little computer pals.  Joe Normal has these little pals all around him as normal. It is we who are more likely out of step, not the young people nat­ur­ally occupying the digital space that even I’ve struggled with these last 15 years.

That said, I do now make more notes on the move, because it’s easy and con­venient to do it on iPhone, and it’s guar­an­teed to directly transfer into the (cur­rently) more ver­satile and per­manent envir­on­ment of my laptop. i think the effort­less con­nectivity of iPhone and MacBook is another key to success, and con­versely a reason for the failure of Newton, and every other phone I’ve possessed.

Voice activ­a­tion is not popular because it doesn’t work (still) and is vaguely embar­rassing. but so is Skype and that is slowly (quickly?) finding favour. The time may become right for a having a useful con­ver­sa­tion with your computer some time in the future. I’m not fully writing that one off just yet.

Don’t let all that poorly designed, poorly func­tioning, crap hardware of the past cloud your vision for the future. ‘Smartphone’ has always been a misnomer, until now.  yes, people are now ready for things that are better. And working in an obvious way is better.

Ian:

Before you had an iPhone, you had a notebook computer, I guess. And I am also guessing that you still carry that notebook around a lot of the time.

If you need to do serious data-​​entry, then you need a device that is designed for that – and that’s your laptop (or, to be totally honest, your desktop). Your phone is fine as the equi­valent for the back of an envelope, or a filofax. It’s not the same as being at your real computer. And if it can’t really replace your notebook computer, then isn’t it just bling?

The main­stream. Allow me a little diver­sion. Twitter, for all the chat, has not managed to engage teen­agers. Bluetooth has.

You’d kind of think it would be the other way round. Twitter is really easy, while Bluetooth is sort of techy. Why’s that? Because the take-​​up of a tech­no­logy is about what people want to do. File sharing is some­thing teens want to do – pictures, music, what-​​have-​​you. On the other hand, microb­log­ging to a com­munity of peers? Isn’t that the same as Facebook status messages? The main­stream doesn’t adopt tech­no­logy on the basis of trend­i­ness, I take from this, but on the basis of func­tion­ality and cost. Interestingly and counter-​​intuitively, con­veni­ence seems to be less of a factor.

The world does need personal, per­son­al­is­able, portable devices for work/​comms/​entertainment/​etc – no-​​one would be buying any of this stuff oth­er­wise. However, I am dubious about the touch-​​screen pro­pos­i­tion. What does a touch screen add that isn’t better served by keyboard and mouse?

One thing. It (the device, whatever it is, phone/​tablet) can be smaller. So it is less useful, less func­tional, less durable, less usable and more expensive.

But it – whatever *it* is — is smaller. Does this not smack of gadget fet­ishism rather than a real advantage?

[Malcolm’s response to be posted as received over at Dynamo as well]

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