On 26 Mar 2011, at 06:13, Ashley Aitken wrote: > I'm no ergonomic expert but I think of the many people who've worked as > technical drawers on a slanted desk, looking down, for many years. > > And what about reading a book at a desk, we don't usually lift it up to > eye-level. > > As long as you can rest your elbows on the multi-touch screen, and even your > hands, and they get appropriately ignored, then I think it may be very > similar to the technical drawing set-up. > > I wonder if that was ergonomically good or bad.
I for one think that would be great. Now sorry if I'm repeating what people have already said... As long as one can keep the spine fairly straight and change positions occasionally it might be secondary to the nature of the work. If you're drawing a life model you sit with the paper in front of you almost vertical, and you're holding you arm out all the time, but it is so you can step back more easily from your drawing and glance between your drawing and the model, with both on the same "plane." And don't artists pin their iPads to the easel in a similar way? Technical drawing boards can go from horizontal to vertical and I think most opt for somewhere in the middle, perhaps so that all parts of the large sheet can be reached more easily with your hands and drawing instruments. I find book reading a real chore on big vertical screens and will opt for the iPad Kindle app instead of the desktop app even when it is already open on the desktop. I think that has something to do with reducing the visual background of other distracting objects -- holding the iPad close to my face, like leaning over a slanted book, hides from view most other objects, which allows me to "enter the book's world" better. The iA Writer app for iPad tries to do something similar, by removing distractions. Maybe this is why physical keyboards work better for writing -- when writing the focus is really on the stream of thoughts in the brain, and perhaps images, and a physical keyboard allows the body and fingers to do the task of finding the keys, like writing with a pen, or like walking while talking, whereas the iPad requires much more accurate visual focus to find the keys, and I suspect that the extra visual effort detracts from the thinking process. Anyway I'm not expert this is just my own introspections. The mouse is also good for being able to cover a large area of screen very quickly with acceleration. But if I'm going to stay consistent with my own argument, when I reach for the mouse, say to reposition the cursor back a few paragraphs, there's a frantic grab, swing, oops too far... back...oops too far.. back.. er.. ok slowly, ok, click -- and although we're used to it, it is a rather intensive visual hand eye coordination task, and I'm not aware of thinking anything else whilst doing it. So it really interrupts everything, albeit briefly, but regularly. So imagining a 30" tablet, I think it would be like a drawing board, with adjustable stool height, and adjustable angle, so that you can reach all parts of it to suit your own body frame, and how tired or alert you are, and where you happen to be aching. Like drawing boards, they can sit propped up on desks, or they can be "VESA" mounted to a stand. It would know what fingers look like, just like multi-touch does now, and ignore your arm leaning on it, as you say. It would ignore your coffee cup sitting on it. And yes it would ignore your camera too, because Microsoft got that wrong. Sitting on something is just an inert activity. It's not supposed to mean anything, unless you're sitting on someone's lap. You don't want to accidentally download all your garget's contents to the large 40" screen in the room, just because you happened to leave it sitting on a dull-gray but active surface. On the 30" tablet imagine every app is multi-touch. Now let's try to think of an app where a mouse would still be faster... ok, now imagine that the mouse itself is a multi-touch widget on the 30" screen. A virtual mouse. Does that satisfy the remaining need for speed? How about a whole collection of different kinds of widgets for say, entering co-rodinates (often on CAD you have to type co-ordinates -- it is just faster than using a mouse) or for picking colours, etc. So, mouse is dead. Typing seems to be the main problem. Assume that voice input will stay weak... or just antisocial in a crowded office. Well ok you can have a physical keyboard sitting on your 30" tablet, along with your coffee cup. Why not? Or maybe handwriting recognition will improve and you can write on your 30" tablet with a stylus. Or some combination of all of these. As long as you can adjust the angle between say, 0º and 90º, and lean on the tablet itself, without confusing the poor thing, and lean your other items on it too, then I'd be quite happy with an iDesk. Ergonomically I think vertical screens are a disaster -- at least for me. If the screen is at eye height, the keyboard is out of sight. If the screen is lower and close to the keyboard, like an iMac on its aluminium stand, then I'm hunched over and head tilted back. If the screen is on a high desk with the keyboard high, then your hands are tilted back and pinching those RSI nerves badly. Just awful. But on a 30" tablet at 30º that's rigid enough for me to lean on, and where I can rest my heavy head on my knuckles, just occasionally... then the document and the keyboard are well inside the same visual field, and you can move the keyboard on the screen to be just exactly next to the document. Very much like you move your instruments on a drawing board to be over the drawing itself. So we're talking about a very thin, physical and maybe translucent keyboard, where only the letters are black, and the plastics are transparent, but sculpted enough that your fingers can feel them distinctly. Just like drawing board rulers are transparent. Any other widgets that would benefit from very fine textural feedback to the fingers could also be "plasticated," texturised with useful markers, and transparent. Er... when can I buy one??? Stefano _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
