We’re losing touch thanks to touch screens.
When one of my new team members (Johann) started 4 months ago I learnt an enormous amount about Albinism and the implications on the senses. I also discovered a lot about how the human sense system is used in day to day life and how tiny things like gutters on the street, face recognition and touch screens interfere and interact with us in unusual ways.
Johann explained how important computer accessibility is for people with vision impairments and how there are some amazing technologies being researched to help overcome these problems.
Touch screens are inherently flawed.
Touch screens and other input devices are taking over our lives, we’re ditching the keyboard, tap, steering wheel and other fundamental input devices for the sleek and simple.
While this is improving the way we interact with devices and technology in many ways, there’s a fundamental issue. Simple put current Touch Screens are inefficient.
For the touchscreen mobile phone users out there you’ll know what I’m talking about, when you’re typing a message to a friend, doing a search or playing a game you have to actually look to find the keys, taking your eyes away from whatever else you could be looking at.
Remember back in the good old Nokia 5110 days you could talk to your friends, send an SMS in class walk and see where you were going because you knew where all the keys were, you could feel them.
We’ve actually lost touch.
This means we’re using Sight, a very important sense, to do the simple function of finding the keys. And as a result it’s causing lots of errors, it takes much more focus/concentration and the accessibility issues are obvious.
Lots of people are trying to work around this issue.
Aden found this interesting new approach to touch screen keyboards called 8pen, although I’m not sure if it’s the best solution. (Hat tip @gavinheron)
And there are plenty of techniques being developed like…
- Auto-completion
- Error correction
- Prediction
Thankfully there’s a solution to the original problem.
The concept used is called Piezoelectricity which can send tiny highly targeted vibrations that actually emulate a raised surface. It doesn’t tickle, hurt or zap you, it just feels like the surface is actually raised.
In theory (and it’s being tested by research master minds in a few universities around the world) as you touch the emulated raised areas it actually feels exactly like a button and you can feel your way around the keyboard.
The Piezoelectic technology can raise an area quickly then just as quickly remove the raised area. This means software designers will be able to change the surface of the screen in whatever way they want to give you the best user experience.
Awesome. I reckon.
Practicality issues that come to mind.
- Can it made at a viable price point?
- What will it do to your battery life?
- Can it break?
- How accurate/sensitive will it be?
- Does it need extra processing power?
- How much bigger will it make my slim touch screen device?
I don’t know, it just seems like it’d make using touch devices a whole lot better.
I wonder if I’m just losing my mind or if it would actually help.
Disclaimer: I’m not a scientist, UX expert or design guru, all the opinions are based on some brief research and chats with my colleague Johann. If somethings wrong, comment to correct me just don’t judge me. Please. 
