At last, the kind of touchscreen I’ve been waiting for – a full screen touch UI with haptic response and tactile finger targets. This is the kind of touchscreen device you could use with one hand. Look forward to seeing more developments in this direction.
Link: First Video of Moto ROKR E8’s 100% Buttonless Touch Interface [...]
iPhone input-related articles keep rolling on in – this one from CNET is an interesting discussion on one-handed vs two-handed operation.
“The smart phones that most people are familiar with—the Nokias, BlackBerrys and Treos—only require one hand for basic operation. Obviously, typing on the QWERTY keyboards used by most of those devices is a two-handed operation, [...]
Carlo Longino muses on touchscreens, and he’s not convinced they’re great. I agree with his complaints, but (like I’ve said before) I think that once touchscreens with haptic response are on the market it will all be over for hardkey-based phones.
“I think part of the problem here is that vendors and consumers are, to some [...]
“If there is a billion-dollar gamble underlying Apple’s iPhone, it lies in what this smart cellphone does not have: a mechanical keyboard. As the clearest expression yet of the Apple chief executive’s spartan design aesthetic, the iPhone sports only one mechanical button, to return a user to the home screen. It echoes Steven P. Jobs’s [...]
Research about the use of haptics in mobile devices.
“This degree project aims at exploring and testing new interaction techniques using the touch sense in particular. The skin is a very complex and refined organ. It offers extreme sensitivity and tremendous capabilities as a medium between the outside world and us. The experience of touching or [...]
“The new phone goes much further, using very precise actuations of its built-in motors to produce realistic, button-like clicks whenever an onscreen button is pressed. “Using a touch-screen, you normally lose the tactile confirmation you get from pressing a button,” says Mr Viegas. But with haptic feedback, on-screen buttons can be made to feel real [...]
Supporting one-handed interaction on touch screen devices is a challenge. Two of the biggest design challenges for touch screen devices are single-handed operation and haptic response. The Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland is researching the one-handed challenge.
“We are developing interfaces to support one-handed use of small devices. Most cell phones already support [...]
Design Sojourn talks about the advantages and disadvantages of non-mechanical buttons.
““Static” buttons on the other hand have issues with feedback. Nothing moves, so there is no action and thus no reaction. Therefore designers that use “static” buttons need to employ a host of other feedback elements, like beeping sounds or lights. This is a very [...]
Published by Gabriel White.