multitouch is spectacularly great when the device is in your hands. Trying to adapt the model of "I'm sitting in a chair, in front of a desk, working, and I have plenty of room for my interface devices" to multitouch is unlikely to lead to good things.
The issue was the reverse, really: Handheld devices were attempting to co-opt the interface paradigm established by the chair+desk+working model, and this wasn't working out very well. The iPhone set the scene for a new user interface design that no longer attempts to emulate this but instead works with its own strengths and does away with many of its weaknesses. As programming is typically something that fits the chair+desk+working model, multitouch isn't going to be a good option. The Microsoft Surface concept (the *concept*. The actual device isn't that great, but the idea behind it) isn't a chair+desk model either. As sitting in front of it doesn't feel right I'm not sure how well it'll stand up to a full working day but, let's paint a picture here: You're in a team of 20 programmers. About 12 of you are in the office today, 4 are working from home, 1 is at a client, and the rest is on vacation. Everyone is working on their own part of the plane, both the office folks and the guys working from home. The guy at the client calls; he's been debugging an issue on-site and he thinks he may have tracked the problem down. He's logged via the VPN into the plane and has set up a little area gathering relevant bubbles and put up some notes with the problems. Some of the office folks walk on over to a Surface device, pan it over to this area, and start brainstorming. One of experts in this area is working from home but he's watching along, seeing everything live. He's not quite getting the full vibe of the crowd at the table but he can see enough to give useful input. Soon an approach to solve the problem is decided on, a few tasks are created at the Surface device, and the team disperses back to their own systems. They pan over to the space they just saw on the Surface, and start working in 2 pairs of 2 (pair programming!) to fix the problem. Cool and realistic, or unrealistic scenario? On Mar 16, 12:21 am, Peter Becker <[email protected]> wrote: > I can see this work on something like MS Surface, but also on a > wall-mounted large multi-touch screen if we are talking the code review > or mentoring scenarios. > > But I agree though touch interfaces are often overrated, in particular > the multi-touch variation. They have their place, but they are not all > that useful in most scenarios I can think of. > > I just had a discussion last week about the idea of using multi-touch > for a 3D viewer component and I just don't see much advantage that the > pinch control has over an icon that you drag single-touched. In > particular since the availability of multi-touch gestures is not visible > -- as long as most of the audience will not expect to be able to use > these gestures they are useless unless you accept some (minor) training > effort. > > Peter > > On 16/03/10 01:30, Reinier Zwitserloot wrote: > > > > > With multitouch? Craptastic, of course. > > > Multitouch requires one of two things: > > > - the touch surface is NOT the display surface (e.g. it's a keyboard- > > wide trackpad that's below the keyboard and uses absolute coordinates > > instead of the relative coordinates that trackpads use, and somehow > > knows the difference between you just resting your wrists and actually > > using it) > > - the screen is below you. > > > Go ahead. Try it. Point at stuff on your screen for 40 seconds. Notice > > how tired your arms are? Now do that for 8 hours. It boggles the mind > > that so many people are excited about, and so many companies investing > > in, the notion that you touch a monitor that's in front of you. > > > On an iPad this would be fun, but you really run into the cramped > > screen real estate problem. Presumable with the pinch-zoom gesture you > > could 'zoom' into a bubble and zoom right out again very quickly, but > > part of the charm would be lost (that charm being: That relevant info > > is around the periphery even when you're typing). > > > On a gigantic all-touch-screen table this might be really interesting > > though :) > > > On Mar 14, 7:00 pm, "[email protected]"<[email protected]> > > wrote: > > >> Hmmm...what would this be like with multi-touch? That might get > >> interesting. > > >> I remember JG talking about visual bandwidth in IDEs. I think that > >> this may require an upgrade in my bandwidth. :) > > >> LES -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
