Making Fingers Work With Touch Screens

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."

FingLonger

[Timesprout]

The prof already has this one sorted.

Oblig. Simpsons

[spocksbrain]

"The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now."

That's intuitive

[shadow349]

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 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.

Re:It'll throw me off

[gEvil (beta)]

I'm interested in seeing how Apple solved this problem with the iPhone

It's amazing how much simpler everything is with only one button...