Your Observations of Multi-Touch Usability

Overview

This paper will provide an overview and comparison of MS Surface and 3M Capacitive System.

Ease of Use

Each system has a different user interface. The MS Surface appears to be easier to use and more intuitive than the 3M Capacitive system. It seemed like navigating in the MS Surface was much easier than with the 3M. This may be biased because I spent more time observing the MS Surface.

Interaction Method

The main difference between the two systems is that MS Surface uses a projector to test what & where a finger/hand/object is placed and the 3M Capacitive system uses an electrical conductor to measure the touch with the electricity of the user. This allows for different uses for the two. The 3M Capacitive system can’t detect non-human objects touching the screen; MS Surface can. The interaction method for the MS Surface seemed to be superior than that of the 3M system. The MS Surface appeared to be able to interact with static, non-human objects where the 3M system was limited to human objects. I noticed that some objects were not being detected on the MS Surface but that was obviously an application level bug.

System Feedback

The response from the system caused by a touch seemed to be application specific and varied from app to app rather than system to system. There does not appear to be a noticeable difference between which one is better.

Orientation

The orientation for the 3M was much more apparent & limited than that of the MS Surface. The top/bottom/left/right on the MS Surface could be ambiguous and depend on the user’s perspective. The 3M system has a very clear top/bottom/left/right and these would not change based on the user’s perspective.

System Implications

The technology behind 3M system could be much more powerful than that of the MS Surface. The 3M system could better detect signals from a human body, such as temperature, pressure and potentially generate stress levels that the user is experiencing. This could be used in games or other applications. The MS Surface only measures shadows and this could limit it in some ways.

Discussion

• Capabilities of Capacitive technology
• Future of 3M & Surface multi-touch systems

Your Observations of Multi-Touch Usability

Overview

This paper will provide an overview and comparison of MS Surface and 3M Capacitive System.

Ease of Use

Each system has a different user interface. The MS Surface appears to be easier to use and more intuitive than the 3M Capacitive system. It seemed like navigating in the MS Surface was much easier than with the 3M. This may be biased because I spent more time observing the MS Surface.

Interaction Method

The main difference between the two systems is that MS Surface uses a projector to test what & where a finger/hand/object is placed and the 3M Capacitive system uses an electrical conductor to measure the touch with the electricity of the user. This allows for different uses for the two. The 3M Capacitive system can’t detect non-human objects touching the screen; MS Surface can. The interaction method for the MS Surface seemed to be superior than that of the 3M system. The MS Surface appeared to be able to interact with static, non-human objects where the 3M system was limited to human objects. I noticed that some objects were not being detected on the MS Surface but that was obviously an application level bug.

System Feedback

The response from the system caused by a touch seemed to be application specific and varied from app to app rather than system to system. There does not appear to be a noticeable difference between which one is better.

Orientation

The orientation for the 3M was much more apparent & limited than that of the MS Surface. The top/bottom/left/right on the MS Surface could be ambiguous and depend on the user’s perspective. The 3M system has a very clear top/bottom/left/right and these would not change based on the user’s perspective.

System Implications

The technology behind 3M system could be much more powerful than that of the MS Surface. The 3M system could better detect signals from a human body, such as temperature, pressure and potentially generate stress levels that the user is experiencing. This could be used in games or other applications. The MS Surface only measures shadows and this could limit it in some ways.

Discussion

• Capabilities of Capacitive technology
• Future of 3M & Surface multi-touch systems

Iterative User Interface Design

Overview

This paper is about general iterative user interface design and it shows the successes of using this process. The improvement in overall usability was shown to be 165% from the first to last iteration, and the median improvement was 38%. They found that there should be 3 iterations since more iterations could actually decrease the usability if the usability engineering process was focused on improving other parameters.

The Benefits of Iteration

Nielsen presents a graph that shows that usability increases directly after each iteration until it eventually hits a plateau. A con is that sometimes after an iteration, usability decreases since new usability problems maybe introduced. The pro is that they can usually be ironed out shortly after. He suggests that interface reconceptualizations have not been studied on projects that were completed by an individual.

An example from later in the paper (Table 5) saw a dramatic decrease Time on Task, Subjective Satisfaction and increase in Errors Made and Help Requests from version 2 to 3 and 3 to 4. However, by version 5 they were all improved by the final version. A big con could be if a project can’t be updated before the final version and it would be better to have version 1 versus having version 3.

From my perspective, iterative design is natural, and projects will follow this without even the designers trying to. Building several different designs and comparing them side by side and then choosing the best will also work, but the chosen version would be improved through an iterative process. Choosing between multiple designs then using iterative improvements on the chosen design, using features from the different versions is the best method for design.

Conclusions

The number of iterations cannot be chosen in advance since the version from iteration 3 might be worse than the first but with two more iteration could be much better than the first. It would be a big con to try to chose the exact number of iterations before hand and a large pro to allow this number of iterations to be dynamic.

Discussion

• Iterative usability design for individuals instead of teams
• Alternative to iterative design: iteration is natural
• Nielsen writes about iPad & touches upon multi-touch in the paper:
• http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ipad.html