Whoever said technology was dehumanizing was wrong. On screens
everywhere — cellphones, e-readers, A.T.M.'s — as Diana Ross sang, we
just want to reach out and touch.
Scientists and academics who study how we interact with technology say
people often try to import those behaviors into their lives, as anyone
who has ever wished they could lower the volume on a loud conversation
or Google their brain for an answer knows well. But they say touching
screens has seeped into people's day-to-day existence more quickly and
completely than other technological behaviors because it is so
natural, intimate and intuitive.
And so device makers in a post-iPhone world are focused on fingertips,
with touch at the core of the newest wave of computer design, known as
natural user interface. Unlike past interfaces centered on the
keyboard and mouse, natural user interface uses ingrained human
movements that do not have to be learned.
"It's part of the general trajectory we're on in the computing
industry — this whole notion of making computers more open to natural
human gestures and intentions," said Eric Horvitz, distinguished
scientist at Microsoft Research.
The latest is a new line of Sony e-readers that the company will
introduce Wednesday. For the first time, all have touch screens; Sony
decided on the technology after watching person after person in focus
groups automatically swipe the screen of its older, nontouch
e-readers.
Research in Motion now makes touch-screen BlackBerrys, Amazon.com is
expected to make a Kindle with a nonglare touch screen, and Garmin has
introduced touch-screen GPS devices for biking, hiking and driving.
New Canon and Panasonic digital cameras have touch screens and
Diebold, which makes A.T.M.'s, says that more than half the machines
that banks order today have touch screens.
Brides-to-be can scroll through bridesmaid dresses on a
Hewlett-Packard touch-screen computer at Priscilla of Boston bridal
boutiques, and a liquor store in Houston uses the H.P. screen as a
virtual bartender, giving customers instructions for mixing drinks.
The screens also show up on exercise machines, in hospitals, at
airport check-in terminals and on Virgin America airplanes.
"Everyone who touches or takes a reader in their hand, they touch the
screen," said Steve Haber, president of Sony's digital reading
division. "It's what we do."
Some people even try to use touch screens when their devices have none.
"I had to use my sister's BlackBerry to make a call, and I just kept
swiping and touching," said Susannah Wijsen, 40, who works in
advertising in San Francisco and had grown used to tapping out phone
numbers on her iPhone screen. "It didn't even occur to me to use the
keyboard."
Though scientists have been working on natural user interface, Apple
made touching, swiping and flicking at screens mainstream, said Harsha
Prahlad, a research engineer who works with robots and sensors at SRI
International, the research institute. "All of the technologies
existed, but by bringing it together in a seamless fashion, the iPhone
had a lot to do with it," he said.
Virginia Campbell, 99, learned to type on a typewriter and had never
used an A.T.M. or other touch screen. But when her children gave her
an iPad two days after it came out, she found touching the screen to
be instinctual.
"It was no problem," said Ms. Campbell, who lives in Lake Oswego,
Ore., and uses her iPad daily to write limericks and reread classic
novels. "It was a light tap and I have had no trouble at all."
Shumin Zhai, a research scientist who studies human-computer
interaction at the I.B.M. Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif.,
noticed the phenomenon among participants in a study he performed.
"People inevitably point at the screen, thinking something would
happen — it's such a natural behavior," he said. "My own 2-year-old
daughter amazingly could use the iPad and somehow it was intuitive."
For readers used to turning paper pages, e-books invite touch perhaps
more than anything else. Many a Kindle screen has been sullied by
errant fingers before their frustrated owners realized that readers
turn the pages of an e-book using buttons on the side of the device.
Amazon bought a touch-screen start-up, Touchco, but the current
touch-screen technology added too much glare, Jeffrey P. Bezos,
Amazon's chief executive, said in an interview when Amazon introduced
the newest Kindle. "It has to be done in a different way," he said.
"It can't be a me-too touch screen."
Two of Sony's previous readers, the Touch and Daily Editions, had
touch screens, but they produced a glare and required a hard, forceful
touch. In the new versions, Sony removed the top layer of glass from
the screen to reduce the glare and effort.
Sony's new e-readers, ranging from $179 to $299, are not the cheapest
out there, but Mr. Haber said people were willing to pay for the
features they wanted and touch was at the top of the list. He noted
that when Sony's last line of e-readers was introduced, many people
paid $100 more for the touch-screen version.
The next generation of screens might not even need a touch. Instead,
they will understand the gestures of people standing in front of them
and pick up on eye movement and speech.
"The future's going to be in fusing together several different natural
human behaviors — how people point, gesture and coordinate with each
other," Mr. Horvitz of Microsoft said. "Touch is a beautiful tip of
the iceberg for talking about where things are really headed."