Reed.SoftArts%MIT-MULTICS@sri-unix.UUCP (01/05/84)
On the issue of which is more user-friendly, a couple of comments. 1) I recently had the opportunity to watch a group of "pointing-naive" users learn to use mice and touch screens. What was most interesting was the amount of trouble required to learn to use either. Most of my computing acquaintances who use mice (on Altos, 3600s, IBM PCs) have conveniently forgotten how difficult that manual task is to learn at first attempt. Coupled with the human interface, either seems to take 10-15 minutes to get the hang of, if not more. 2) Certain people have difficulty learning the relationship between mouse motion and screen motion. They expect screen motion to mirror the motion of the mouse in table coordinates, and suffer the same kind of disorientation as someone wearing inverting eyeglasses. 3) Learning the mouse buttons and their meaning (select, drag...) doesn't become an automatic skill for many minutes. One major problem with the Lisa is internalizing the idea that RELEASING the button makes it all happen, not pressing. This is counterintuitive, but learnable. 4) The HP touch screen suffers from a few learning problems too. Parallax error in hitting your target results from trying it out with the screen too low or too high (the leds are a fair distance from the phosphor). 5) Guess what: pulling away, not hitting the screen, is the action-causing command. Again counterintuitive, but learnable. 6) It is hard for some people to learn to put their finger in straight. 7) The HP's resolution is too low. Summary: users' first reaction to the mouse is "I can't use this thing". If encouraged (by showing how wonderful life can be) this hurdle is easier to overcome than learning to touch-type. Similarly, HP's touchscreen is frustrating to use at first, but learnable. In either case, a forgiving command environment that doesn't penalize mistakes is needed by a beginner. Given the user feeling that a touch screen SHOULD be easier to use, perhaps all we need is work on the screens themselves, and the design of new interface approaches to match their expectations. MicroTouch Systems of Woburn MA has a nice 1000x1000 pressure sensitive touch screen that is accurate enough for drawing when used with a stylus, and has minimal parallax error. With a command interface designed around touching rather than mousing, maybe it could be real win.