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).

(c) user experience.

You believe that (c) 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]