Taxonomy+of+Touch



=A Taxonomy of Touch=

Buckleitner, W., (2010). A Taxonomy of Multi-Touch Interaction Styles, by Stage. Children's Technology Review, November 2011, Vol 18 No. 11, pp 10-11. Online at http://ecetech.wikispaces.com /Taxonomy+of+Touch

//"Nothing lowers the age bar or makes interface invisible like touch capability. Hopefully the iPad will represent the best from both our old Touch Window and the Koala Pad, and go forward from there. Remember what was new and amazing about both of those?) Donna Stanger, Former CEO, Edmark, Corp.; March 2010, two months before the release of the iPad.//

A perfectly flat, glassy surface is magical all by itself. It doesn’t exist in nature… and when it's covered with fog or a slippery oleophobic coating, it gets even more interesting to your fingers. If you have an iPad nearby, lay your palm over it and pretend to be a baby. Now, layer 786,432 responsive pixels just a few millimeters below the surface, and you have a puddle of control unequaled in any previous computing experience. As a result, all of the thousands of ways you could fail with a mouse and qwerty keyboard have dissolved into just a few dozen with the iPad, and a new pipeline of interactivity has arrived.

The Minimum User Competency (MUC) has dropped from around 2 1/2 years (for the mouse) to around 12 months (for the iPad). Don’t take my word for it. Simply go to YouTube (www.youtube.com) and search on “baby” and “iPad.” You’ll find the work of hundreds of proud parents who understand that their baby is doing something rather remarkable. Back in the good ‘ol days, you videotaped your child’s first steps. Today it seems it’s your child’s first app.

I’ve sorted through hundreds of videos and tried to put them all in a single playlist at http://bit.ly/9vM6Ui. They were captured in October of 2010. This presents new opportunities for children's interactive media developers; nothing short of a new era in computing, as the user interface becomes increasingly invisible.

The implications for design are profound, however it requires some understanding of how it works. One way to do this is to watch the app-happy kids play, through Piaget’s developmental filter. Using this method, I created a draft taxonomy (Table 1) of touch-related behaviors. Besides watching the videos (Table 2), I also tested approximately 200 children’s iPad apps, noting the required interactive behaviors.

MONOTOUCH VS. MULTI-TOUCH. Touch screens have been around for many years and have been implemented well in the Leapster and Nintendo DS. Multi-touch is a very different psychology, however. While both require fine-motor dexterity of the variety that has been well-documented by penmanship researchers, there is a different set of rules at play with the iPad screen. The iPad’s uncanny ability to tell the difference between a child’s palm, mouth or each finger, working in concert with the microphone and the motion detection accelerometer make it well suited for a detecting a range of otherwise undetectable behaviors.

UNDERSTANDING THE IPAD’S LIMITATIONS While the iPad is amazing, it isn’t the perfect children’s computer. Here are some problems we’ve noted: • Young children move— a lot— and can become confused by features like automatic screen rotation. It helps to turn the lock button on. • If you have more than a dozen apps, finding a specific one can be frustrating for a child because the icons look similar. The anticipated folder feature (in the next iOS) can help. It would also be nice if the default size of the thumbnail could be changed in size. • It is possible for children to get into complex apps or features such as the keyboard (when searching). There’s also your email, the app store, YouTube or your browser. You can hide and lock these features in the Settings. Go to Settings/General/Restrictions and make a pin. • The iPad can be heavy and slippery. It helps to use a silicon shell (reviews at http://bit.ly/bNcqGt) that fit snuggly around the iPad, increasing the grip and serving as a cushion, just in case. • Plugging in the cable for charging could be much easier. It has to be facing up, and finding the port (“which end?”) is confusing. • The volume is hard for children (and adults) to find and understand.

WHAT’S IT ALL MEAN? The key to unlocking the power of the iPad for children is to watch how they use it. Stay tuned for some pretty amazing children’s apps in the upcoming year as more children’s developers figure out how to better tame the full potential of multi-touch screens. These will undoubtedly expand beyond the iPad to the iPod Touch, Microsoft Surface and Android-based devices. Besides being good for children’s interactivity, the iPad effect is important for adults and busy teachers who don’t have time to fuss around with a mouse and keyboard. All they have to do is reach out and touch.