Making Fingers Work With Touch Screens

An anonymous reader writes "A paper was recently published about Shift at the Computer Human Interaction Conference earlier this month. The authors (Daniel Vogel, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto and Patrick Baudisch, a research scientist at Microsoft Research) developed the technology to solve several problems with mobile-phone touch screens. Most such screens are designed to be operated with a stylus; when touched with a finger the UI doesn't work so well. They also created a short video with a demonstration of how Shift works. Shift builds on an existing technology known as Offset Cursor, which displays a cursor just above the spot a user touches on the screen. That allows a user to place their finger below the item they wish to choose so that they can see the item, rather than hiding it with their finger."

Comments

Just Hire A Manicurist...

[morari]

Then you'll be able to use your stylus-like fingernails, thus solving any such problems! :)

Re:Just Hire A Manicurist...

[nostriluu]

You laugh, but I used a fingernail with my Fujitsu B series notebook and SE P800.. just curve your pointing finger and use the nail.. it works quite well - accurate, and no finger grease. So I don't see what the big deal is.

FingLonger

[Timesprout]

The prof already has this one sorted.

Re:FingLonger

[andphi]

But he never actually invented it. He merely wondered what might happen if he invented it.

Counterintuitive

[MankyD]

So if I see a button the screen, I don't press the button; I press below the button. That seems rather counterintuitive, no? And how do I push stuff at the bottom of the screen?

Re:Counterintuitive

[excelsior_gr]

Not exactly. You use your finger to browse on the screen. Just above your finger you will see the cursor. The article says that lifting your finger from the screen selects the item (even more counter-intuitive in my opinion). At least, it says that the cursor will be displayed only when necessary, i.e. if the item is big enough this function will not be activated.

Re:Counterintuitive

[jrumney]

Its how the ticket machines at my local train station were working the other day. I almost bought a First Class single instead of Standard return, luckily I noticed that the price was slightly out before I put my card in, then figured out that there was a vertical offset on the touchscreen. A cursor might have helped alert me earlier, but its still counter intuitive.

Re:Counterintuitive

[inviolet]

FTFS:

Shift builds on an existing technology known as Offset Cursor, which displays a cursor just above the spot a user touches on the screen. That allows a user to place their finger below the item they wish to choose so that they can see the item, rather than hiding it with their finger.

Am I the only one who read this and thought -- with a sigh -- that there was surely already an odious patent application filed for it?

"Method and Apparatus for Displaying a Cursor Below the Designated Location" -- with the following attached C++ code:

if (cursorY > 50) { cursorY -= 50; } . . .

Re:Counterintuitive

[pruss]

That is how Offset Cursor works. If you read the article, Shift is much better--it targets the area under the finger, but shows a circular callout of that area above the finger so it is not occluded. A variant even magnifies the area for higher precision. It actually looks really nice from the paper. I'd be tempted to make a PalmOS implementation, but I suspect it's being patented.

Now if only they could solve the problem of screens getting smudged by fingers. :-)

Re:Counterintuitive

[kat_skan]

I think if I was going to do it, I'd make the buttons larger and align the label along the top. Your thumb wouldn't obscure the label, and you'd still be pressing the button instead of someplace vaguely in the vicinity of the button.

For widgets that are more information-dense--say a list of contacts in your address book--split the list into two columns and make the list items twice as tall.

Re:Counterintuitive

[pruss]

I emailed one of the researchers. Yes, the technology is being patented, unsurprisingly.

Re:Counterintuitive

[grumbel]

You can do exactly that with Shift, watching the video (linked in the article) helps to understand how it actually works.

Re:Counterintuitive

[grumbel]

The article says that lifting your finger from the screen selects the item (even more counter-intuitive in my opinion).

Thats not counter-intuitive, thats exactly how basically *every* GUI today works. When you press a button the action takes place not on mouse-button-down event, but on mouse-button-up. Shift uses the time in between down and up to present the user with a little zoomed view of what is under his finger so that he can fine tune his selection. Looks pretty intuitive and easy to understand for me. See the video.

My only problem with this is that it seems to be designed to fix issues that you might not have in the first place when the GUI would be properly designed to fit the device.

Oblig. Simpsons

[spocksbrain]

"The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now."

Makes me wonder about the iPhone

[u-bend]

Ever since it was announced, I've been wondering how well its touch screen is actually going to perform in everyday use? Anyone had an opportunity to play with one of the demos for an extended period of time?

Re:Makes me wonder about the iPhone

[viewtouch]

Wait staff at restaurants, bars and clubs have been using graphical touch screen systems since 1985.

I know because I created the first such system.

Re:Makes me wonder about the iPhone

[viewtouch]

I began experimenting with Infrared in 81-82, then resistive in 82-83 and capacitance in 84-85 before settling on that. In 86 I did the Comdex show and received two shoe boxes filled with business cards from people who wanted more information.

Building touchscreen systems was not easy or cheap in those days. Today we don't even need computers to put touchscreens in front of users - just a display with a wireless network connection.

That's intuitive

[shadow349]

That allows a user to place their finger below the item they wish to choose so that they can see the item, rather than hiding it with their finger

Just like when I use a telephone, I hit the buttons next to the number I am looking to dial and when I park my car, I park next to the spot I want.

Fingernails to the rescue!

[jollyreaper]

Yeah, yeah, grooming experts tell you to trim your fingernails but why is it I always run into a problem where I need them right after I trim them? Yeah, yeah, that's what pocket knives are for. Anyways, with a small touchscreen like a Palm pilot, if you have just a wee bit of fingernail, you can poke the screen with that rather than pull out the stylus. The trick is to have just enough nail that you can do this but not so much that you look like Freddy Krueger. I suppose another way around it is to put a poking device on your pointer finger but that might get mistaken for a gom jabbar. Try getting THAT past the TSA at the airport!

Not how it works

[Fnord666]

From TFS:

Shift builds on an existing technology known as Offset Cursor, which displays a cursor just above the spot a user touches on the screen. That allows a user to place their finger below the item they wish to choose so that they can see the item, rather than hiding it with their finger."

from TFA:

The Microsoft Research project, called Shift, automatically displays an image on the screen above where users place their finger showing the area under the users' finger. The image is circular and includes a small X. By toggling the tip of the finger, users can move the X to place it on top of the item they want to choose. Lifting the finger from the screen selects the item.

You still click where you point with your finger. The system just shows you a small "virtual" image of what is under your finger at the moment and also a virtual cursor for where your click will be registered. The virtual cursor allows for more fine grained control.

It'll throw me off

[0100010001010011]

Humans didn't grow up pressing below what they want. When I go to dial my desk phone I don't press just below the buttons. It's assumed in my brain that I will be covering up what I want. The problem I see is the size of a stylus vs size of a finger. If you cram buttons close together my finger won't be able to resolve which one I'm actually trying to press. But the same is true of real buttons (Simpsons and the dialing wand).

Not that we can't learn. Just as spear fishers learned to take into account the refractive index of water when fishing. I'm sure it took a while, but after the learning period I'm sure it's second nature to aim X below what I want to kill.

I'm interested in seeing how Apple solved this problem with the iPhone

Re:It'll throw me off

[gEvil (beta)]

I'm interested in seeing how Apple solved this problem with the iPhone

It's amazing how much simpler everything is with only one button...

or you could...

[brunascle]

tip the screen around all willy-nilly like. it'd be fun for emulating those old tilt-the-thingy-and-get-the-ball-in-the-whole games.

GUI / Hardware design

[Dan East]

This is interesting, because I've been working on finger touch based UIs of late. I've come to a few conclusions:

The touchscreen for many devices is physically designed for use with a stylus. They require quite a bit of force to register, and it is difficult to apply that much pressure with a finger because of the amount of surface area contacted. The DELL Axim touchscreens work particularly well with finger touch, while others, like the Asus a716, do not.

GUI Design is critical. Microsoft's history with mobile devices has been to make them as much like Windows 95 (and up) as possible. Windows CE 1.0 was exactly like Windows 95. Although with Pocket PC (CE 3.0) they tried to follow Palm's dominant (at that time) lead, and simplify the GUI, it is still most conducive to mouse / stylus input. The iPhone is a perfect example of how to design a GUI for finger based input. The multi-touch hardware capability is not even an issue at this point - pure software design is responsible for the bulk of the usability.

Along those lines, Microsoft prefers static dialogs that show as much information at once as possible, requiring small, desktop-like controls that demand precision stylus input. The iPhone is dynamic, scrolling in new options as the user make selections. Thus they have room for large, finger-sized buttons, because the display changes constantly. Many controls, like scrollbars, are unnecessary because entire display areas (like lists) can simply be dragged and tossed, which is the most natural behavior in the first place. The scrollbar then becomes only a visual indicator, which can even be hidden when the user is not interacting with the screen.

I've put together some code that behaves like the iPhone's drag interface, both in 2D for rectangular regions, and 1D for lists. It works really well on the Axim, again, because its touchscreen is nice and sensitive, even when retrofitted to existing Windows List controls. So it obviously is not a matter of hardware, but GUI design, that Windows Mobile isn't conducive to touch input.

So basically, this article is not stating the real problem, which is that MS is completely missing the mark with the fundamentals of their mobile GUI. But instead it offers a clumsy hack to work around an improperly designed UI. The ironic thing is Shift's Offset Cursor doesn't work at the bottom of the screen. That area is the most important for user interaction, because controls are strategically placed their so the user's fingers (hand / stylus) conceal as little extraneous area of the display as possible. That is why onscreen keyboards are always at the bottom, which makes them inaccessible to this Shift hack. The article fails to mention that little detail too.

Dan East

This is sad.

[viewtouch]

The application for a patent on this saddens me. I have had thousands of conversations in the past 25 years during which I have freely discussed all kinds of touchscreen GUI issues. Some of the conversations were about touchscreen GUI effects that I had created and some of them were about effects that would obviously make the operation of the touchscreen easier.

I had many conversations over the years dealing with this specific issue, of using the magnifying glass effect on the GUI to display the area occluded by the finger. I didn't implement this effect because I have not been doing much work on displays with a diagonal measurement of 2 to 3 inches, but it is an effect that was often the subject of conversations I've had with many people and even in some lectures I've given.

I'm sad to see that somebody has now decided to patent something that has been a common topic of touchscreen GUI conversations for many years. The patent can hardly be considered non-obvious. It could well be that the two people involved here, one a student, one a microsoft employee, are simply ignorant of the basic design issues of graphical touchscreen GUI's.

I would go so far as to say that this patent application is morally reprehensible, right up there in league with patents on seeds that have been around since the dawn of time.