Touch the Future

Without a doubt, the recent commercial availability of touch-enabled products has taken the experience of communicating with devices to new dimensions. While the average consumer can be forgiven for thinking that touch technology only arrived with the launch of Apple’s iPhone in the summer of 2007, the technology has been around for a great deal longer.

In the context of PCs, for example, HP’s heritage in touch technology goes back twenty-five years. Since that time, the company has invested heavily in R&D to develop touch technology, with a fundamental objective of driving overall simplicity for consumers.

Fast-forward to the present and it’s clear to see that developments in touch technology have taken a giant leap also recently unveiled its new watch-shaped mobile video phone, which uses a touch-screen dialling system.
, such that multi-touch technology is now conceivably accessible to the masses. Leading technology vendors have already incorporated touch technology into handheld pocket PC devices, as well as tablet notebook PCs, printers and business monitors.

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’s LG Electronics

While its arrival undoubtedly caused a stir, the expectation is that the use of multi-touch technology is set to rapidly become commonplace. Indeed, if predictions for where the technology is headed hold true, we can expect its acceptance and uptake to go through the roof over the next few years. Taking touch screen telephones as an example, shipments are forecasted to increase from 200,000 in 2006 to a whopping 21 million in 2012, according to a forecast by iSuppli Corp., a market research company.

On the PC front, the sustained development programme and pioneering expertise of HP Labs heralded a new dawn with the introduction of the intuitive HP TouchSmart IQ700 – the first all-in-one consumer desktop PC to offer touch-technology to consumers. This new touch/ all-in-one concept ushered in a new era of computing by enabling unprecedented simplicity for consumers; not only by easy and direct interaction with the device, but also by its wireless, plug and play capability that allowed instant out-of-the-box entertainment.

Since the arrival of the IQ700 (19-inch screen), HP pushed the boundaries of touch-enabled simplicity once more with the launch of the IQ500 and the HP IQ800 TouchSmart PCs (22- and 25.5-inch screens respectively). Introduced only last year, HP’s latest all-in-one TouchSmart PCs open up a whole new world of interactivity, thanks to its use of multi-touch applications, which allow for more than one finger to be used at the same time. Using innovative optical touch screen technology, this means the HP TouchSmart quite literally changes the way people interact with their computers, by making the fun and enjoyment of working with photos, music and videos as easy as a few flicks of the finger. Using dedicated TouchSmart Software, users can organise and edit their latest holiday pictures, drag their favourite songs into their playlists, use the built-in webcam and microphone to record and share videos for friends and family at the tap of a finger, or leave handwritten notes directly on the screen.

Reflecting its leadership in this area, HP today uses touch technology in a variety of products, including the HP TouchSmart tx2 Notebook PC, the first multi-touch enabled consumer notebook; as well as the HP iPAQ Data Messenger, the HP iPAQ Voice Messenger and select HP Photosmart printers and HP business monitors.

Such products deliver to consumers fun and exciting ways to use touch as never before. Indeed, this is a prime objective for vendors and an overriding goal behind fully utilising touch technology. This is partly because research has shown that people who are not technologically aware, still view a basic PC keyboard as having a huge intimidation factor. It goes without saying that a computer has its own unique language, so to the unacquainted and non-tech savvy among us, the function of a control key, for example, will mean very little.

Taking this into account, touch technology is seen as a mechanism of breaking down this intimidation barrier. According to Phil McKinney, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for HP’s Personal Systems Group, this is a fundamental differentiator of touch technology. “Basically, our whole ethos around touch is to drive the delivery of an insanely simplistic computer experience,” he says.

This philosophy is reflected in the ease of use of PCs that incorporate touch technology, such as HP’s TouchSmart. “The thinking is, that if you know how to use a cash dispenser, you’ll be comfortable using this product,” adds McKinney.

The need to ensure a level of simplicity, so logical, that the consumer instantly knows how to interact with the device, is the basis of other touch studies around the world. In

India

, touchscreen PCs have been introduced to the homes of both the literate and illiterate, to determine how people interact with the technology. This allows vendors to observe how a user, who while unfamiliar with a PC, might select and scale an image, for example.

Given that the results of such studies are constantly being fed back into product development programmes, we can undoubtedly expect future incarnations of touchscreen PCs to be even more simplistic and intuitive.

With the objective for a touch device to be simple and breakdown the need for a ‘secret language’, vendors are also appreciative of the need to consider cultural differences according to a consumer’s geographic location. In most Western countries, for example, pointing with one’s forefinger is not only a perfectly acceptable gesture, but is the crux to interacting with optical touchscreen technology. Conversely, in

South Korea

, where such a gesture would be frowned upon, consumers are more inclined to use two fingers or a thumb to achieve the same result.

Based on this, a future likelihood is for touchscreen’s to determine where a person is from, simply by the way in which they have touched the screen. Once this is known, the device would then be capable of recognising how that person would scale an image – be it using the simple ‘pitch’ move with thumb and forefinger, or in the case of some non-Western users, by using two fingers on each hand.

Much aligned to McKinney’s concept of driving that ‘insanely simplistic computer experience’, this would allow a device to adapt the interpretation of touch for each user, rather than the user having to learn a new touch language.

With the development programmes of one or to key vendors increasingly focussing on gestures, this is a likely evolution of current touch technology. This would conceivably allow one’s PC to understand hand movements and motions, enabling us, at the wave of a finger, to flick through photos in much the same way as Tom Cruise’s character in Minority Report.

Despite its ability to push the boundaries and enhance interactivity, even leading advocates of touch technology concede that it should not be sweepingly applied to all devices, unless completely appropriate to solving a particular challenge or need. This is primarily because we, as consumers, would object to paying a premium for such a feature, if we won’t actually use it. In most cases, it’s simply a case of ergonomics and comfort that makes touch technology inappropriate to certain products.

Moving forward, for McKinney and his counterparts at other leading vendors, the objective of touch technology continues to be about driving simplicity.

“We are continually aiming to make our touch technology smarter and more cognitive”, explains McKinney. “We ultimately want our devices to recognise you and establish your intent, as opposed to you as the user being required to understand a finite language and constantly change to a new version.

“For HP, the most valuable asset a customer gives us, as a vendor, is their time,” he adds. “If we misuse that time, then setting-up or learning how to operate a new device becomes a frustrating, confusing and lengthy exercise that sees us ‘rob’ a customer of their time.

“However, if we can reduce the complexities and options and allow the system to ‘reveal’ how a user should operate it, we are making it faster and more simple than anticipated. If we can achieve this, then we are effectively giving time back to the customer, and that in itself is a wonderful thing,” he concludes.