Will multi-touch technology find its way in the workplace?
Eric Worrall at 18:23 GMT on 13 January 2010
As my followers on Twitter (ericworrall) will know, I am passionate about developments in multi-touch technology. Multi-touch refers to input devices that can simultaneously identify multiple touch points on a control surface (e.g. touch screen monitor or touchpad). By tracking these multiple touch points we can start to use what are termed as “gestures” to control software.
For instance, by placing two fingers on the control surface and moving them together (pinch gesture) the application can be made to zoom out. By rotating the two fingers on the control surface (rotate gesture) the application can be made to rotate objects (e.g. images, pages etc.)
Apple’s iPhone comes with a beautifully designed multi-touch interface that supports very natural gestures which are a really powerful way to interact with software on a mobile device. They also extended the multi-touch experience to the track pads on the MacBook range of laptops and many more mobile devices now supply multi-touch/gesture-based user experiences.
At the end of last year Microsoft released the Windows 7 operating system which included native multi-touch and gesture support. This has led to major PC manufactures releasing multi-touch enabled laptops, desktops and netbooks. There are multi-touch enabled monitors and touchpads released almost every week now.
The success of the iPhone proves the advantage of the multi-touch technology for mobile devices but you may think that it’s unlikely to replace the mouse or keyboard in a workplace, and I agree. The thought of aching arms after a day of using a vertical touch screen monitor might not appeal either (although it might burn a few calories). In a work environment I think it’s safe to say that it’s unlikely that you will see touch screens appearing on every desk any time soon. However, I firmly believe we will see the majority of new laptops being equipped with multi-touch touchpads.
I remember getting my first mouse with a scroll wheel. I have to admit I didn’t really use the scroll wheel at first. I would simply drag the scroll bars up and down as I had always done. I am now used to using the scroll wheel and my productivity suffers when I come across a mouse without one. Assuming software is designed with touch in mind I can see great chances for productivity gains in the work place especially when using touchpad based input devices.
Microsoft classifies the touch experience offered by applications into three categories. They call them the “Good”, “Better” and “Best”. The “Good” level consists of an application that simply inherits the native support given it by Windows 7. For instance if your application supports CTRL and the mouse scroll wheel for zooming then the multi-touch zoom gesture should just work on multi-touch devices. Applications that fall into the “Better”category have been enhanced to support specific touch gestures to make the application more touch friendly. The “Best” applications are designed from the ground up to support a great multi-touch experience.
The interesting thing is that our HCI designer (Riccardo Taffarello) had touch support in mind when he designed gDoc Fusion. This can be seen very strongly in its drag and drop interface, the Flick view and Document view. The support for a multi-touch/gesture based interface is in gDoc Fusion’s DNA. The gDoc Fusion ‘Document View’ allows users to rapidly assemble documents, easily dragging pages between the documents. With gesture support we could allow a user to place a finger on the first page in a range and another finger on the last page, and then drag the range of pages over. In the ‘Flick View’ we could allow the user to flick through the document and mark pages for printing or rotate pages using the rotate gesture on the touchpad. We are looking for feedback. Should we evolve gDoc Fusion firmly into Microsoft’s “Best” category?
Download gDoc Fusion (Download) and have a play with it and see what you think. You’ll quickly see what I mean about touch-based interaction being in its DNA. Let us know if you think we should evolve our product into the multi-touch world? If you think multi-touch is just a gimmick then tell us.
As a thank you for the feedback we will send the first 100 people contacting us a free copy of the full commercial version of gDoc Fusion worth £200.
19 January 2010 05:02 GMT
No doubt multi-touch is here to stay and companies that have User Experience in their DNA are sure to exploit the best out of multi-touch.
It is going to be a big challenge to ‘get-it-right’ the first time.
While QuickOffice / Microsoft Office are still evolving on touch interfaces like the iPhone and the Pocket PC, you could get it right if you put more thought, more scenarios and more usability tests before you actually release. This should not stop you from experimenting.
I have the following suggestions :
1. Setting up Usability labs and hire some touch /iPhone addicts for inputs
2. (Re) Introduce Voice Commands. I know this is an old technology and needs loads and loads of refinement. But I bet this will be a successful marriage (Multi-Touch + Voice) ala, the mouse and the keyboard.
Do let me know. I am all excited with the multi-touch idea.
- Amit
19 January 2010 21:39 GMT
Hi Amit, Thanks for the feedback and sound advice. I think the multi-touch/voice technology marriage could catch on in mobile devices but I’m not yet convinced about it on a desktop or laptop. I’ll send you a license key so you can have a play with a full version of gDoc Fusion. Let me know your view on multi-touch gestures that could make gDoc Fusion more productive.
- Eric
20 January 2010 10:09 GMT
I had good experience with gDoc Fusion…though I used the beta version which is available on Global Graphics site. It is really an useful tool to have PDF file from any kind of word file (means .doc or .docx), generally it was an problem with me for transferring data from my side to client side in word format as by default I am having word file extension as .docx which generally not opened @ client side so many time I have to again save the copy as word file in word format of compatible with old windows office (.doc format).
But with this tool it save lots of time. As whenever I create an report i saved them in default format and with the help f gDoc I used to create an PDF file and send it across, with this kind of reporting format counter part also impressed .
Though I had problem while I was using the gDoc first time, also reported the issues with the tool to global graphics team.
25 January 2010 06:22 GMT
Thanks Eric,
Here is my take on touch gestures. The most widely used touch gestures (for now) are the pinch (zoom in and zoom out), flip next and previous, double tap to zoom into a specific region of a page / picture.
Assuming that we want to target a customer who is using a multi-touch tablet, you may want to ‘definitely’ have the ones I have listed above.
I used the application gDoc Fusion and there is a lot of scope to add touch gestures; for e.g.
- changing different Views of the document (Full Page, Fit Width, Print Preview),
- dock / undock toolbars,
- drag and drop text / pictures (for copy paste) and pinch – drag – drop text / pictures (for cut paste);
- make drawing / picture touch enabled (rotate, erase, crop); a few short-cut menus would help.
- adding touch enabled commenting / sticky notes would be fun too.
Let me know if you find this useful… I am continuing to use the gDoc for my PDF needs.
- Amit
25 January 2010 18:42 GMT
Hi Amit, Thanks for the ideas. The technology behind multi-touch/gesture interaction has great potential but only if it gives customers real productivity gains; so it’s great to hear input from real customers. Adding functionality to the product for the sake of it is against the gDoc vision, we want add features that really enhance our customer ability to work with documents. Thanks again for the feedback.
9 March 2010 19:16 GMT
I would be more than happy to give ideas for artistic clients that use .PDFs for things like sheet music chord charts etc. If you want to send me a liscense or what not. If not just send email address and I’ll tell you what I learned with the trial.
Just some background. I am a user of 3 generations of iPhone who uses .pdfs in live music situations on laptops. I also use .pdfs in a database on iphone so I have access to all songs no matter where I am. As my needs are such I will be buying the iPad for this. I have used most if not all .pdf programs on the iphone and ipod touch. Jailbroken software included. I also have some experience testing open source software and pushing them to the limits etc.
Good luck, and thanks for the article its really great.
Ps. Microsoft certified Mac and PC user