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by othermaciej 5550 days ago
No, doubting the magical usability of touch interfaces is still a very popular viewpoint, and until recently was conventional wisdom amongst almost anyone in the know.

Touch interfaces actually do work pretty well though. Direct manipulation is just more engaging.
1 comments
joebadmo 5550 days ago
I agree that direct manipulation is engaging and intuitive, but I think it has fundamental ergonomic issues when you're talking about doing any sort of long-term, serious work. When you get to screen sizes that we're all using now at work, a handheld device is no longer feasible, and a large touchscreen monitor is silly for the same reason that whizbang Minority Report/Kinect interfaces are silly: you arms get tired very quickly.

This fantastic video comes to mind: http://10gui.com/video/

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othermaciej 5549 days ago
The context here is devices that are small and light enough to be reasonably handheld - i.e. tablets and phones.

It's not yet clear to me if touchscreen will ever make sense for larger-screen devices, certainly you do not want to interact using touch with a vertical surface for any length of time.

However, using an iPad for "long-term, serious work" is just fine. So I don't think you should equate large screens with serious work.

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joebadmo 5549 days ago
Yeah, I suppose it depends. I tend to feel cramped and annoyed at having to manage windows whenever I'm on anything smaller than 2 monitors < 19" or something equivalent.

I think the 10GUI idea linked above is great because it's intuitive enough and still robust. The intuitiveness and engagement of the iPad is great, but I find it restrictive (the input bandwidth is limited by the direct manipulation paradigm). I think it's fantastic for people who have trouble understanding or don't particularly feel the need to spend time learning the intricacies of indirect manipulation, but I don't see that as a problem for my generation (cusp of X/Y) or subsequent ones.

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