Suddenly I’m Surrounded by Touch Screens!

Everywhere I turn I’m suddenly surrounded by touch screens. Sure, the technology has been around for years, but up until recently I hadn’t seen the public embrace it. It’s time for all of us to stop focusing solely on computers with keyboards and handhelds with keypads and start thinking about how our customers can use touch pads.

Everyone is Upgrading to Tappable Handheld Devices

When I glance around to see what mobile devices people are carrying, I can’t help but think the first iPhone made a relatively small splash in the market compared to the latest model. Last year, just cool designer types had them. Now many of the developers I work with carry them. That’s quite a demographic shift. And it’s not just hip Apple folks. You can’t watch a tv show these days without seeing (or at least fast forwarding your DVR though) commercials for touch screen phones like Sprint’s Instinct or Verizon’s LG Dare. Now people who didn’t want to switch to AT&T with the iPhone can easily swap devices and join the new finger-tapping crowd.

UX Community is Buzzing About Touch

Yesterday I was looking through slide decks from the recent UX (User Experience) Week in San Francsico, and I noticed an interesting trend. Several presentations focused around touch screens:

• Designing Natural Interfaces: Creating Multi-Touch, Multi-User Interactions
• Tap is the New Click

Even My After-Dinner Wine Bar Had Touch!

Last week after seeing The Dark Knight on IMAX, a few friends and I wanted to enjoy the gorgeous city night before heading home, so we wandered into a new wine bar called Clo in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle shopping center. In the center was a long table that was actually a huge touch screen. You virtually thumb through their catalog to pick what you want. The interface allowed you to browse by color, type, taste, etc.

You simply tap on the wine selection to see its number with a map to show you were it’s located on the perimeter of the room. They give you a card that’s like a credit card, which you take over to that number, swipe, and hold your glass under the spout. The machine dispenses only a tasting (less than a half glass), so it encourages people to interact with the screen more than once.

Users Are Demanding More Accessible Devices

Companies have come out with higher-end touchscreen tablets, like the Dell Latitude XT, but people are looking for a tablet for everyday use. A revolutionary blog post on TechCrunch is calling for people to help build a dead simple web tablet for $200. At the time I’m writing this, there are almost 1000 comments of people piping up to help brainstorm ways to make this happen.

Related posts:

1. Information Overload: Are You Up for the Interface Challenge?
2. Test Your Site on Mobile Device Simulators
3. Google gPhone
4. The Web’s Future: Peering into the Crystal Ball
5. Accessing Accessibility Tools