While mobile devices with touchscreens have been around for a long time, the launch of the iPhone has brought renewed focus on the debate about whether touchscreen-based user interfaces are an optimal solution for the mobile space. Of course, this isn’t an either/or debate: even the most ardent fan of touchscreens should realize that they’re wholly impractical on smaller screens, while personal preference plays a large role as well. Personally, I’m not a fan of touchscreens in most instances. I feel like they’re often poorly used as a shortcut by UI designers who see them as an excuse not to think things like menu structures through very well. But, I can still understand the attraction of a touchscreen for some people, as well as its value when implemented well.
Peter over at the S60 Browser Blog is firmly anti-touchscreen, saying they’re in most cases inferior to other input systems for computing devices.” He cites the lack of tactile feedback for text entry as the most significant disadvantage, and labels the iPhone’s attempts to overcome this as “hacks”. This is certainly an issue — another story today says that a study found the iPhone’s half as fast for text entry as devices with QWERTY keypads (though the study sounds a bit dubious). In addition to lack of tactile feedback, there are other physical limitations of touchscreen devices — such as how hard it is to use many of them with a single hand, whether because of form factor and size, or the need for a stylus.
I think the solution here for a platform provider like S60 is to support both touchscreens and non-touchscreens, but from a UI design perspective, that’s obviously difficult. It’s not impossible, though. The Sony Ericsson P900 I used a few years back did a somewhat decent job of combining a one-handed hardkey UI when its flip was closed with a touchscreen UI on a much bigger screen when the flip was open or removed; Nokia’s recent E90 Communicator, like its predecessors, has two fairly different interfaces (both S60 based)on its internal and external screens.
But can both interfaces be successfully supported on the same device? On the P900 (running UIQ), the closed flip mode could only access a limited set of features and applications. On the E90, the dual-interface structure has come under fire from a number of longtime users. I think part of the problem here is that vendors and consumers are, to some extent, still focused on finding the perfect all-in-one device, whose form factor and interface support all manner of applications in the best possible way. This drives “big screen” thinking — the idea that the screen’s got to be a big as possible for web browsing or email composing or video playback. And if you’re going to have a big screen, it “has” to be a touchscreen.
But that’s not a realistic approach, and in reality, few consumers actually want such a device, for a wide range of reasons, whether form factor, price, or anything else. So, just as there will continue to be a diversity of devices with different form factors, feature sets and price tags, there should be a diversity of UIs as well.
Or will/should it be all touchscreens all the time?
Man walking in the street.
His mobile phone sings his favorite song and he smiles to people who look at him.
He’s talking, trying to overpower the trafficsounds.
It takes afew minutes, then he takes another thing out if his pocket and puts the cellphone away.
A penlike thing appears in his finger.
He’s now standing still, trying to type something…
His face gets red… he starts to get irritated.
When a bag touches his leg, he looks up, angry.
He doesn’t seem to be able to see what he wants to see, turning his back against the stream of walking people.
Maybe..maybe he had been a happier man with agenda and pen.
One word: Treo
You can use it very well without a touch screen and it can only make you faster in some cases with a stylus.
I have a Dopod 838Pro (aka HTC Hermes, Orange SPV M3100, Cingular 8500 & 8525, MDA Vario II, i-mate JASJAM, O2 XDA Trion or the Docomo Htc Z) which has touchscreen and slide out QWERTY keyboard.
How I use this phone has changed since I bought it. Now most of my use including web browsing, is done with one hand, the touch screen and scroll wheel. The only time the keyboard is used is for texting, email, entering URLs, usernames and passwords into the web browser. And the stylus is only ever used to soft reset.
If I had to choose between QWERTY keyboard and a touch screen, now it would be a touchscreen. It is far more usable for how I use my phone.
Great article. It should not be an either or, but the OS has to be designed from the gound up for both suitable options. Touchscreens are best when menus are short and simple, text and buttons are finger-large, and physically are very durable. Things such as screen transisitions and schemes that make it known when somethying is touched also help the user experience there. Even as a ardent Treo user, I don’t see that touchscreen really capitalise on all of that. Thugh the iPhone and Prada has let people know, again, that its possible to make experience without buttons possible.
On the other side, the arugment for buttons is a good one. If designed right, off the top of my head I am thinking of the TMobile Dash/HTC S620 that has multiple functions for buttons on short and long presses. If these functions are easy to understand and nearly intuitive, then buttons can weok a lot better than touchscreens. THe problem there is teaching those extra features, and most want simple, not extra.
All in all, I prefer my Treo because of its tousccreen, but have no problem flipping to the N95 when I just need simple and no extra UI fluff.
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