02 May 2008
Multi-touch is useless, dead
I can almost see Apple enthusiasts rallying up with their pitchforks and torches, but let’s just continue bit further into this, before going all witch-hunt on me.
Well, ok. Multi-touch as a concept isn’t completely useless, I give you that. The simple idea of using multiple input points has so much potential but everyone has been just blindly following Jeff Han, whos initial concept was just that, a concept, not a polished product. The idea has depreciated so much that today, even though there are practically no products around, multi-touch is useless, just a buzzword to sell a product and nothing to do with usability. So far, I haven’t seen single useful commercial end user solution. Why has no-one stopped to rethink the whole idea?
Apple was the first one to spit out a commercially viable product with multi-touch, the iPhone. They had all the time and resources in the world to refine multi-touch for their product and still, what they came up with was carbon copy of Jeff Han’s work. (zooming with two fingers) To make things worse, they copied a work which was designed for big-ass panels, not for teeny-weeny handhelds.
To make things still even worse, I would go as far as claim that on the other side of the razorwire fence, Microsoft got Han’s concept and went for the big-ass panel, and came up with the Surface. Now, I’m not going to analyze it’s user interface since there isn’t enough material, nor have I personally got up close and personal with it. So, sorry Apple fans, no Microsoft bashing at this point. However, in the concept of Surface, the two-finger-zoom can be justified, since Surface, because of the size of it’s panel, can handle multiple users, each capable of handling multiple pictures, hence the zooming UI must be per picture basis. Though, I’m still not considering it as a end user solution, as it’s is not as commercially viable product as, say iPhone.
But, back to the multi-touch device benchmark, the iPhone. The only place that Apple came up with use of multi-touch technology is the zooming, and even there they just blindly copied the Jeff Han -way. However, how does it scale back to pocket size panel? I’d say poorly. For starters it’s not capable of handling multiple users, simply because of it’s screen size. For the same reason it is not capable of handling multiple pictures. And these are couple of the key factors of Jeff Han -way of doing things.
Nor is it intuitive.
“Intuition (knowledge) – understanding without apparent effort, quick and ready insight seemingly independent of previous experiences or empirical knowledge.”
Wikipedia – Intuition
You might be arguing right now that you could use the zooming without ever consulting the manual. But how did you know? Was it because Apple made such a big deal out of it and made sure that the media was saturated with videos how the zooming was operated, or was it because it was magically so intuitive that you just knew how to us it? Intuition in the context of technology and digital user interfaces is quite a dodgy subject since technology isn’t something we are aware of naturally, nor is it anything physical, so we base our understanding to things we have seen before, but lets not go down to that path since it would take ages to write the damn post. So, it is as intuitive as anything that needs a manual to operate it.
And to top that it is inconsistent; everything else you see on the iPhone has visible user interface, which in turn lets you reason the actions you may use or do on that stage, plus the fact that you practically need two hands to use it in any way, which isn’t that great for mobile device.
So, Apple copied the work of Jeff Han without analyzing it in the context of their device. (Or I guess they did but decided to go for it anyways, because of the Wow-factor) But was there anything they could have done differently? Well, at this point it is rather difficult to start telling everyone that you’re doing it wrong, since they have been telling to their friends how great it is and to say something against that would mean you have been wrong. However, against my better judgement, I’ll try anyways.
If we look at the problem of zooming, when you already have device full of visual user interfaces, why not use it as such and at the same time take advantage of the multi-touch?
Now, for example here’s one simple and quick solution. Two white dots representing two input points, the shape on the right of the image is a zoom widget.
Now with such solution user is able to use the UI with one hand while still being capable of using multi-touch; zooming with other hand (the zoom widget) and panning with other (dragging the picture), thus maintaining the advantage of multi-touch. In this case the widget would also give user visual clue of A) possible actions one might be able to do and B) the level of current zoom. Plus, while two-finger-zoom is quite accurate on big screens it loses the accuracy and speed on smaller screens, however when designed properly the UI can still offer speed and accuracy.
So, today, the multi-touch is in fact useless but perhaps tomorrow, when user interface designers come up with ways of using the multi-touch at their advantage, to speed users up, not to slow them down just to have that “multi-touch” buzzword at their brochures. Maybe tomorrow we wake up into a brave new world where we use well designed products with multi-input interfaces and live happily ever after. And then maybe not. One can only hope.
At least now, when I find myself in yet another pointless argue of iPhones great multi-touch feature, and how it actually brings nothing to the table, I can just point them at this post and save myself the trouble of making my point.
Post scriptum. I truely salute Apple’s marketing division. Again, they made just what marketing is supposed to do, created a need, need for new trendy way of zooming images. Though, at the same time I really don’t like the narsistic way of life they promote.
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