To multi-touch or not to multi-touch (a non-techie point of view)
The iPhone put multi-touch screen displays in the spotlight, and with it a technological debate that is becoming cyclical even in YDreams’ own internal forums.
As Ivan recently reminded us, you should never leave home for a multi-touch debate without reading Bill Buxton’s excellent seminal paper on the topic. Bill Buxton, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft, basically presents a series of pros and cons about multi-touch, as well as contextualizing the history of its development (it goes as far back as 1982).
“Everything is best for something, but worst for something else“, is the recurring sentence on the document, and one that interface developers (like YDreams) work hard to always keep in mind.
Nonetheless, even if Bill Buxton’s paper allows you to throw off some misconceptions about the subject, there is also the “hype” dimension of multi-touch that has been recently witnessed and should not be written off easily. (continues)
Granted, multi-touch, as it is, may not make much sense for a kiosk at the local finance department, or using a word processor at work, but that’s not really the point. The iPhone (millions of sales) and Microsoft Surface (huge buzz) phenomenons have showed us that multi-touch technology is really striking a chord with people. Jeff Han’s multi-touch demonstration is one of the most viewed Ted Talks on YouTube. Can’t help to wonder how cool it would be to manipulate and simply edit pictures on my computer the way this technology seems to let you do it, even though I’m not a big fan of the way the iPhone makes you use both hands to “play” with it.
A fad? Maybe. But things may well get to a point where integrating multi-touch into interfaces may become the “norm” for certain technological experiences. The thing is, even if the technology still has a long way to go, all of this multi-touch hype may soon start making people feel “antiquated” when using a touch screen with just one finger. Almost as if you were made to play a console game with an old NES control pad, after getting used to the Playstation 3 or Wii controls.
Reading Buxton’s paper, you realize that it can be really easy to kill the thing altogether and irk people if it isn’t done right. But those who get it to work well, and in the right context, may have an extra edge over all the rest.
[I’ve had this post drafted for a few days now, and last (Super) Tuesday night I noticed that CNN presenters were using Multi-Touch (Jeff Han’s one) to show the election results and it looked really, well, cool.]
Tags: buxton, han, interfaces, multi, touch
