Before reading the post, my initial response to the video was being thrilled for the technological advancement to come and curious to see how it will change the everyday lives of people. However, reading the first few paragraphs reminded me of an opinion I have consistently held for a few years – I often times do not appreciate touch screens. Here are a few anecdotes that describe my past experience with touch screens: I got rid of my first touch-screen phone because I could not deal with not being able to text without looking at the keyboard on the screen; I got rid of my iPad because I lacked the patience it takes to type on the screen with the keyboard covering half of the screen; I got rid of my ebook reader because swiping to flip over the page just felt wrong. Remembering my history with touch screens made me wonder why my initial response was excitement for future interaction with a whole lot of touch screens.
The commonality of the touch screens that I disliked is the fact that I was unable to use my fingers to figure out where to place the finger movement to induce the intended reaction. To be more specific, a touch screen lacks the physical difference in the sense of touch of a key that a user wants to press, a key one does not wish to press and the gap between two different keys. In other words, the user will not know whether one was successful in entering an item until the item is printed on the screen. This means the user has to fix one’s eyes on the screen for at least two reasons: 1. To locate where the key the user wants to press is; 2. To make sure that the user has not made a typo. The problem of having to rely solely on vision could be a critical limitation for individuals with visual impairment using touch screen devices. It could be said that, a touch screen can, unnecessarily, eliminate the sensory information effortlessly collected by the fingers and increase the need for visual information, leading to an overall increase in the attention required for operation.
Despite everything I have said, I don’t mean to say that touch screens are bad – iPhone good.