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Making Fingers Work With Touch Screens 111
An anonymous reader writes "A paper was recently published about Shift at the Computer Human Interaction Conference earlier this month. The authors (Daniel Vogel, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto and Patrick Baudisch, a research scientist at Microsoft Research) developed the technology to solve several problems with mobile-phone touch screens. Most such screens are designed to be operated with a stylus; when touched with a finger the UI doesn't work so well. They also created a short video with a demonstration of how Shift works. Shift builds on an existing technology known as Offset Cursor, which displays a cursor just above the spot a user touches on the screen. That allows a user to place their finger below the item they wish to choose so that they can see the item, rather than hiding it with their finger."
Just Hire A Manicurist... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Touchscreen technology was proved faulty for continuous use many years ago
"An ergonomic problem of touchscreens is their stress on human fingers when used for more than a few minutes at a time, since significant pressure is required and the screen is non-flexible. The resulting condition is labeled "gorilla arm" because it makes the user feel clumsy. This can be alleviated with the use of a pen or other device to add leverage"
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Programmers should study anatomy (Score:2)
The most glaring example of this is ever-present and manifestly stupid Windows message box that appears right in the center of the screen at the wrong time and demands that you reposition the mouse pointer on it and click before continuing with your work. Inevitably the movem
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As such, they are designed correctly since the object to AVOID a reflex click.
FingLonger (Score:4, Funny)
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The FingLonger just lets you hit the "Cancel or Allow" from another room.
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Counterintuitive (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not exactly. You use your finger to browse on the screen. Just above your finger you will see the cursor. The article says that lifting your finger from the screen selects the item (even more counter-intuitive in my opinion). At least, it says that the cursor will be displayed only when necessary, i.e. if the item is big enough this function will not be activated.
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Yeah, I agree - this implies a dragging type motion is taking place. When I want to push a single button, I don't want to have to touch the screen, locate this little cursor with my eye, drag it into place, and then lift. I just want to push the button :P
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I think if I was going to do it, I'd make the buttons larger and align the label along the top. Your thumb wouldn't obscure the label, and you'd still be pressing the button instead of someplace vaguely in the vicinity of the button.
For widgets that are more information-dense--say a list of contacts in your address book--split the list into two columns and make the list items twice as tall.
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Thats not counter-intuitive, thats exactly how basically *every* GUI today works. When you press a button the action takes place not on mouse-button-down event, but on mouse-button-up. Shift uses the time in between down and up to present the user with a little zoomed view of what is under his finger so that he can fine tune his selection. Looks pretty intuitive and easy to understand for
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I only notice it when I rotate my tablet round and have to adjust the offsets slightly.
I can imagine overly tall/short people with a badly placed touchscreen ending up stooping or on tippytoes to balance out the effect.
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I've noticed that with some ATMs that still use CRT displays and place the touchscreen on a glass/plastic pane some distance from the screen. But these are new ticket machines with LCD touchscreens, and very little parallax effect normally. The machine was out of order the following day, so I think the touchscreen had slipped down half an inch or so.
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FTFS:
Am I the only one who read this and thought -- with a sigh -- that there was surely already an odious patent application filed for it?
"Method and Apparatus for Displaying a Cursor Below the Designated Location" -- with th
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Re:Counterintuitive (Score:4, Informative)
Now if only they could solve the problem of screens getting smudged by fingers.
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Anti-Smudging LTWS has already been patented (Score:1)
I read a paper on LTWS (Lick Tongue Wipe Shirt)
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How do you lick your tongue? And why would you wipe your shirt?
It's obviously a machine translation from some asian language, probably Chinese. This arrangement of the four characters, Lick Tongue Wipe Shirt, actually means "screen clearing by licking your shirt then wiping the screen with the wet area". Not to be confused with Lick Tongue Wipe Shorts... which means something entirely different.
This is why these languages make zero sense to many Westerners, and why they often end up five dollah poorer when they visit.
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This is BS! When oh when are they going to fix the system!
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When you press a big button, the button is pressed, letting go confirms it, this is true of existing interfaces. When you press a small button a copy of what is under your finger is displayed in a circular window above or to the left or right (if your on an edge above won't always work) You can see what your finger is pressing exactly in this window, and then you can let go to confirm.
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Oblig. Simpsons (Score:5, Funny)
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"If you know the name of the felony being committed, press one. To choose from a list of felonies, press two. If you are being murdered or calling from a non-finger enabled phone, please stay on the line."
...fumbles with newfangled phone UI...
"You have selected regicide. If you know the name of the king or queen being murdered, press one."
Makes me wonder about the iPhone (Score:3, Interesting)
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I know because I used to sell those systems to them. They work just fine.
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I know because I created the first such system.
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Building touchscreen systems was not easy or cheap in those days. Today we don't even need computers to put touchscreens in front of users - just a display with a wireless network connection.
offsets? (Score:2)
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That's intuitive (Score:5, Funny)
Just like when I use a telephone, I hit the buttons next to the number I am looking to dial and when I park my car, I park next to the spot I want.
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Notice he talks about small points. Not large areas like big buttons.
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What's wrong with that? This way you don't have to lift your car up to see what(or who) you smashed.
Fingernails to the rescue! (Score:2, Interesting)
Users can change too (Score:2)
1. Use my fingernails. No fancy glue on stylus or anything, but finger nails don't leave oily traces unless I've just finished gutting a whale by hand or something.
2. I do it palm facing towards me, pointed up. This keeps the contact area visible the whole time. If the computer were british, it might look like I was flipping it off, sure, but it works well.
When you have limi
Not how it works (Score:4, Informative)
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The much smarter "SHIFT" technology shows a circle near (presumably normally above) showing a view of exactly what is being targeted. The view may optionally be magnified (depends on implementation and possibly user options). That is the tech TFA is describing.
Both are correct, but as usual, TFS is misleading.
It'll throw me off (Score:4, Insightful)
Not that we can't learn. Just as spear fishers learned to take into account the refractive index of water when fishing. I'm sure it took a while, but after the learning period I'm sure it's second nature to aim X below what I want to kill.
I'm interested in seeing how Apple solved this problem with the iPhone
Re:It'll throw me off (Score:5, Funny)
It's amazing how much simpler everything is with only one button...
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It's simple, really, which is why Apple is of course the only company that gets it. Make the buttons fit the finger.
http://www.apple.com/iphone [apple.com]
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I'm interested in seeing how Apple solved this problem with the iPhone
This might not be used on the iPhone, but I'm sure we'll see this eventually... Apple's invisible interface [core77.com].
I thought the trick to spear fishing is... (Score:1)
But then what do I know? I've only watched a few seasons of survivor.
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Yet we have learned to deal with a mouse, with a mousepad 10 inches away from the cursor that it is controlling (admittedly not an easy task for children to learn).
Fine grained control of a cursor using a finger on a screen is more to do with consistency (precision) than with the absolute relationship (accuracy) between the cursor and the finger.
or you could... (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this 'Offset Cursor' patented? (Score:1)
GUI / Hardware design (Score:5, Interesting)
The touchscreen for many devices is physically designed for use with a stylus. They require quite a bit of force to register, and it is difficult to apply that much pressure with a finger because of the amount of surface area contacted. The DELL Axim touchscreens work particularly well with finger touch, while others, like the Asus a716, do not.
GUI Design is critical. Microsoft's history with mobile devices has been to make them as much like Windows 95 (and up) as possible. Windows CE 1.0 was exactly like Windows 95. Although with Pocket PC (CE 3.0) they tried to follow Palm's dominant (at that time) lead, and simplify the GUI, it is still most conducive to mouse / stylus input. The iPhone is a perfect example of how to design a GUI for finger based input. The multi-touch hardware capability is not even an issue at this point - pure software design is responsible for the bulk of the usability.
Along those lines, Microsoft prefers static dialogs that show as much information at once as possible, requiring small, desktop-like controls that demand precision stylus input. The iPhone is dynamic, scrolling in new options as the user make selections. Thus they have room for large, finger-sized buttons, because the display changes constantly. Many controls, like scrollbars, are unnecessary because entire display areas (like lists) can simply be dragged and tossed, which is the most natural behavior in the first place. The scrollbar then becomes only a visual indicator, which can even be hidden when the user is not interacting with the screen.
I've put together some code that behaves like the iPhone's drag interface, both in 2D for rectangular regions, and 1D for lists. It works really well on the Axim, again, because its touchscreen is nice and sensitive, even when retrofitted to existing Windows List controls. So it obviously is not a matter of hardware, but GUI design, that Windows Mobile isn't conducive to touch input.
So basically, this article is not stating the real problem, which is that MS is completely missing the mark with the fundamentals of their mobile GUI. But instead it offers a clumsy hack to work around an improperly designed UI. The ironic thing is Shift's Offset Cursor doesn't work at the bottom of the screen. That area is the most important for user interaction, because controls are strategically placed their so the user's fingers (hand / stylus) conceal as little extraneous area of the display as possible. That is why onscreen keyboards are always at the bottom, which makes them inaccessible to this Shift hack. The article fails to mention that little detail too.
Dan East
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If your fingers are too fat to dial the phone... (Score:1)
I am a tech writer and deal with GUIs every day.
I agree on your points about not working at the bottom of the screen being a big issue. Not only are controls placed so you can see the screen when using them, on a cell phone your thumbs/fingers are easier to use with controls placed closer to the keypad as your hand is holding the center or center-bottom of the phone. I'm surprised that the target can't (at least not yet) flip its targeted zone based on the area of
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Now you may say that this just solves a problem caused by bad UI, but there will always be a need for precision actions, like highlighting text.
Start (Score:1)
New Smart Phone... (Score:1)
User: (Touches 4 key)
Phone: You have touched the 4 key. Allow?
User: (presses yes button)
Phone: You have touched the yes button. Allow?
User: (presses yes button)
Phone: You originally pressed the 4 key. Were you pressing the 4 key, or using our new counter-intuitive software that would allow you to really be pressing the 1 key?
User: (touches the 4 key in response)
Phone: You have touched the 4 key again. Allow?
User: (presses yes button)
Phone: Please stop picking on the 4
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Thankfully WM6 ("Crossbow") is mostly a set of graphical improvements on WM5, with a few programs redesigned for nicer interface etc. Overall, the difference between WM5 AKU 3.5 and WM 6 is AFAICT much smaller than the difference between WM5 AKU 1.0 and WM5 AKU 3.5.
I mean the big changes are:
Impoved Outlook Mobile allowing HTML formated mail, and in the caledar section, an new "calandar ribbon" interface
Replacing the integrated "MSN" suite with a "Windows Live" suite. (Noticeably improv
The Headline is Backwards (Score:2)
The headline makes it sound like they've figured out how to make those pesky humans more compatible with the touch screen technology. Granted, most handheld operating systems involve the computer and the user meeting each other halfway, but this headline made me envision plastic surgery to make fingers more pointy...
Making Fingers Work With Microsoft Touch Screens (Score:1)
Microsoft's generic approach is to leave no options to customers other than to do it the Microsoft
way with Microsoft proprietary solutions without regard for the
relative quality of the Microsoft solution
The fully expanded version of the title would be Making Fingers Work With Microsft-Touch-Screen (TM).
Since the likely presumption is that all are most touch screens will be driven by Microsoft
software the original title works well.
The word combinatio
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Poor thought process... (Score:1)
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I created a lot of other such effects to make graphical touchscreen guis work
An existing technology known as "Offset Cursor" (Score:2)
mousePos.setY(mousePos.y()-20);
If you are planning to use this technology in your own software, please contact the Microsoft Research to purchase the appropriate licenses.
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I was actually hoping (Score:1)
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Surface acoustic wave touchscreens would not have this failing. The latest capacitive touchscreen controllers would probably not have this problem. Resistive touchscr
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Where exactly are you grabbing this "wet naked woman"?
For that matter, where do you expect a slashdotter to find one?
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This is just silly. (Score:1)
awww.... (Score:1)
Free tip for Windows Mobile (2003) devices (Score:1)
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After using touch screens for over 10 years now, (Score:2)
Ironic that the most common biological factor that could aid in an electronic interface is the one most people cut t
After using touch screens for over 25 years now (Score:2)
Re:After using touch screens for over 10 years now (Score:2)
Plus, if you do anything useful with your hands, you're gonna get gunk under there. Which you have to clean out unless you're a gross slob. And the longer the nails are, the harder that is.
Shouldn't this be... (Score:1)
I'd hate to think what kinds of surgery our digits would require to make them as effective as a regular stylus...
Make the UI work with fingers, not the other way (Score:2)
Once you've designed with that requirement in mind, the need for this software becomes rather moot.
Now maybe for something like an on-screen keyboard you have an issue, because you can't fit many finger-pressable keys in that. Apple's iPhone however enlarges the key as you press it, and this solution would slow you
This is sad. (Score:4, Insightful)
I had many conversations over the years dealing with this specific issue, of using the magnifying glass effect on the GUI to display the area occluded by the finger. I didn't implement this effect because I have not been doing much work on displays with a diagonal measurement of 2 to 3 inches, but it is an effect that was often the subject of conversations I've had with many people and even in some lectures I've given.
I'm sad to see that somebody has now decided to patent something that has been a common topic of touchscreen GUI conversations for many years. The patent can hardly be considered non-obvious. It could well be that the two people involved here, one a student, one a microsoft employee, are simply ignorant of the basic design issues of graphical touchscreen GUI's.
I would go so far as to say that this patent application is morally reprehensible, right up there in league with patents on seeds that have been around since the dawn of time.
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You must be new here.
And, yes, it is pretty stupid - unless the inventor is (a) young and (b) has had no contact with other experts in the field, in which case he may think it quite novel. He'd be wrong, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything in the patent process, apparently.
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The US Patent system... now there is a problem that needs to be solved, the sooner the better.
There are far more horror stories at USP&TO than Hollywood ever produced.
Oh, and by the way, the Apple computer on the shelf here has a 3 digit serial number; it's from the first batch shipped to the east coast in mid '77.
After watching the video... (Score:2)
Sure maybe you might miss a small target the first time with a standard touch screen, but it's not rocket science to try again.
I can see this being useful where targets are very small, and very densely packed on the screen.
Home Depot's Horibble Self-Checkout (Score:2)
The classic card-readers need thei
Another Option (Score:2)
LG Prada phone does this! (Score:2)