Although we have had touchscreens around for decades, it took the iphone to truly bring this feature in to the mainstream. Why is this? To me this is because it was finally necessary to have a touchscreen to have access to real features. Features that people really wanted. People have the ability to manipulate programs on their phones that they never could have with a keypad. They already had the devices (cellphones) and wanted to use them more effectively.
Touchscreen technology has caught on fire in the cellphone market and is quickly coming to the PC. Windows newest operating system, "Windows 7", is touting multi-touch recognition as its crown jewel. Mac OS X Snow Leopard is also incorporating multi-touch. (Multi-touch being the ability to recognize multiple touches on the touchscreen at the same time.) With this in mind I am exited about the possibilities of what will come in our new devices.
Invention Idea:
I am dreaming of a keyboard sized device that has had the keys and touchpad replaced by a screen. This screen would be separate from the main screen and would normally operate in "keyboard mode". You would be able to easily change this into many other modes to do fun, touchscreeny things. Some possible modes would be, depending on the focused program, piano mode, picture editing mode, custom game mode, expression mode, free-draw mode, etc etc...
On a side note: I think it is very important to look at how touchscreens became mainstream and use that as a guide to introducing new human/machine interactions in the future. I'm not sure what this means at the moment, but I at least wanted to get it down as a point to remember.
Monday, August 18, 2008
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