As I wrote earlier, I think the success of the iPhone had a lot to do with the ease and speed with which users could understand and use the mutli-touch screen. They didn’t have to learn any special new ways to interact like was necessary with other technologies. Think about how much effort was required to learn how to use a remote to program the VCR, or a keypad to set a microwave, or even the scroll wheel to navigate content on an iPod.
Touch screen didn’t require users to learn how to use the iPhone’s input device. We already possesses the only device we need to interact with it–our fingers. There was no need to push around a device that moved an icon on the screen that represented our touch–an abstraction 3 levels deep of our intentions. With multi-touch, users are no longer required to create an abstract mental link between their hand and the screen. They can just touch it, and make things happen. Additionally, users can now interact with the content itself, rather than interacting with an abstraction the content–like the file/folder structure of the computers. The multi-touch screen allowed us to touch, and move the content itself. To tap a movie, and just play it.
And I still wonder, what’s next for multi-touch? How can we make it easier to use? How can we make it more natural? More real? As I noted in my earlier post, haptic feedback is one way, another could be the system sensing more than just the fingertip on the screen, but also the shape of the hand.
And here’s another… what happens when you can interact directly with the screen itself by bending it, twisting it, and applying pressure?
What kinds of new interactions does this evolution of multi-touch enable? What will we interaction designers be able to do next? I can’t wait to find out.
All it takes is the one killer app to transition a new technology from the cutting edge to the public consciousness mainstream.
A large part of the iPhone’s success was because of the fact that it offered an elegant, intuitive new way for users to interact with their devices–the multi-touch screen. It felt almost revolutionary at the time. The ability to launch an app with a finger, or to navigate a map by pinching, and dragging. But touch interfaces had been around for a long time. ATM machines and kiosks introduced touch interaction to a mainstream audience years before the iPhone was launched. But they were always seen as novelties, or worse, shoddy, and frustrating.
Apple’s innovation–aside from a deep understanding of user expectations from everything to how fast a list would scroll based on how quickly a user flicked their finger, to how quickly an app needed to launch after it was tapped–was the user’s ability to utilize more than one finger to perform actions–a multi-touch screen. Sensing how many fingers were touching the screen, and changing the type of action a user performed based on this information, opened up whole new ways for users to navigate, and interact. They could scale, rotate, and move photos, rather than just opening them, tap and swipe their way through maps, and lists, and interact directly with content such as music or movie, by simply touching it.
It’s amazing to me how quickly these new ways of interacting have become old hat. This is partially due to the fact that Apple designed the interface so well, but I think, mostly due to the fact that multi-touch is inherently intuitive, like finger painting, and removes an artificial barrier in the form of a button or control that stands between a user and the content they interact with. Who needs a button when you can just touch something? The speed with which babies and toddlers learn how to use an iPad is testament to this.
So, what’s next for touch interfaces? What other real world behaviors can we interface designers leverage to continue to make our interfaces disappear, and let users continue to finger paint their way through the applications we design?
These new technologies give hints as to what may be next:
developed by disney research in collaboration with carnegie mellon university, ‘touché’ is an innovative system of touch recognition that can sense not only whether a user is touching an object but also in what way and with what body parts (s)he is doing so, using only a single wire and sensor.
- Designboom
Senseg turns touch screens into Feel Screens. With Senseg touch screens come alive with textures, contours and edges that users can feel. Using Senseg technology, makers of tablet computers, smart phones, and any touch interface device can deliver revolutionary user experiences with high fidelity tactile sensations.
What new kinds of interactions can we design when we have access to a user’s body and movements? How does an interface change when it has texture, or can touch you back?
I just put up a page of some of the many prototypes I’ve designed over the years. Prototypes have been an essential part of my design process for years. I started as a broadcast designer utilizing storyboards as a way to test out, and pitch design ideas to clients. In broadcast design, and filmmaking, storyboards and animatics are the prototypes.
In interactive design prototypes are a great way to test out ideas without having to spend the time and money to built a fully functional site or applications. Prototypes can tell the story of an application, explore different interactions models–the different ways users could navigate an application, and allow designers to test out their ideas with users.
There are many different types of prototypes. They can tell stories:
Show an example of an application being used:
Or let a user interact and play with an interaction design:
Routehappy will change how you book air travel. Like Yelp for airlines, airports, routes, and flights, Routehappy’s goal is to make air travel better by giving flyers a voice through reviews, and ratings.
Last year around this time I spent several weeks of intense consulting time with Routehappy’s CEO refining and clarifying their UX vision, and brand identity. I’m more than proud of the work. I’m a huge fan of the site. As someone who has always considered the black box of booking flights completely mysterious–there’s got to be something more to consider than just price when you book your flight–Routehappy is a breath of fresh air.
The School of Visual Arts just launched the beta version of their new website. I worked with a Funny Garbage dream team of hotshot UXers and designers to help define the experience strategy for SVA’s first redesign since the early 2000s. SVA’s programs and offerings had drastically expanded since FG’s last, award winning design, and it was clearly time for more than just a refresh. Working closely with a dedicated team at SVA, the design team defined a flexible experience that could expand to support SVA as they continued to grow. Oh, and it looks freakin’ hot too. I’m really proud of all of our hard work.
Here’s what Mr. Tappy has to say about their product:
Mr Tappy came from humble beginnings – in fact, he originally was made from plastic cut with a hacksaw and bent over a household toaster. This solution worked fine as a usability filming rig a few years back when ‘a phone was a phone’ …but when touch screens and tablet devices arrived, a more flexible and stable solution was required.
Through a series of prototypes and testing with some of Europe’s largest technology design and research agencies, Mr Tappy was born.
Mr Tappy was designed by Nick Bowmast, a UX researcher helping companies develop better products and services through customer insights. Often these products involve mobile devices and the insights come from watching them use products.
I’m giggling like a school girl… Prototyped? Specifically for UX research? Swoon. Now if I only had an excuse to rush out and buy one.
Or, just because something’s serious, doesn’t mean it can’t be freakin’ funny, yo.
Comedian Chris Bliss “explores the inherent challenge of communication, and how comedy opens paths to new perspectives” in this fantastic TED talk. As a writer of serious comedy, and funny serious stuff, and as a Venn diagram nerd, and a fan of over explaining things, I was excited to watch this. If you’re an over analyzer like me, you’ll probably enjoy it too.
What new considerations will we designers have to take into account when our users interact with devices that are plugged directly into their nervous systems, or installed in their bodies?
What if we could change our view of the world with the flick of a switch? The emerging field of optogenetics combines genetic engineering and electronics to manipulate individual nerve cells with light. With this technology, scientists are developing a new form of retinal prostheses. Using a virus to infect the degenerate eye with a light-sensitive protein, wearable optoelectronics can establish a direct optical link with the brain. Song of the Machine explores the possibilites of this new, modified – even enhanced – vision, where wearers adjust for a reduced resolution by tuning into streams of information and electromagnetic vistas, all inaccessible to the ‘normally’ sighted.
I’ve been fascinated with this concept–the idea of enhancing human experience through designed objects that integrate with our bodies–ever since I watched this TED talk by Aimee Mullins, who sees her prosthetic legs as a desirable enhancement rather than simply a replacement for her legs:
Aimee doesn’t want her old legs back. She considers herself better off being able to change her body to suit her mood, and her desires.
It got me thinking, how does the job of a UX designer change when we can help users meet their needs not just through designing easy to understand, learn, and use digital interfaces on their computers, and handheld devices, but by changing a user’s body? What new needs can we help people meet? What are the ethics that we should follow? What should we do for example when a perfectly sighted person wants to blind himself to take advantage of an enhanced visual system?
Military Families Near and Far is a social network for military families with kids that provides them with numerous tools for parents and kids to create art, make music, and write, to help guide through challenges, such as deployments, homecomings, and changes that occur when a parent comes home.
I’m proud to have been able to be a part of the project, working with the über creative folks at Funny Garbage.
It was such a treat to work for Sesame Workshop. And not just because I am part of the Sesame Street generation. Their work has inspired me since as long as I can remember. It’s not every day you get to work with your heroes.
We’re doing good. We’ve got 50 backers, and we are about 25% funded. But with two weeks left we really need your support.
Here’s a bit about The Ghost Club:
When a team of reality TV ghost-hunters makes contact with actual ghosts, the pseudo-scientists get a terrifyinglesson in – be careful what you wish for.
Here’s a bit about Kickstarter:
Kickstarter is the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. Artists (like us) in a variety of disciplines use Kickstarter to raise money from energized patrons all over the world. Rather than rely on a few investors to fund their projects with large investments, artists receive funds of varying levels from hundreds, even thousands of fans from all walks of life in any corner of the world, increasing the level of awareness for their projects. Kickstarter is ALL OR NOTHING. Artists set a fundraising goal and a fundraising deadline and if they don’t raise the entire amount by that deadline, they do not receive any of the funds!
And here are some photos of me as Jimmy, the lead Ghost Clubber:
