Future of touchscreens

When Apple brought the iPad to the market the people around me made jokes like “iPhone – iPad - iBoard - iMat ...”. But what is really the future of touch screens? Will they become larger or smaller?

I visited the “Mensch und Computer 2009” conference last year in Berlin and one of the keynotes was about hardware design. The person who presented the keynote was Dr Patrick Baudisch. He worked as a research scientist in the Adaptive System and Interaction Research Group at Microsoft Research and at Xeroc PARC. Now he works as a Professor in Computer Science at Hasso Plattner Institute in Berlin/Potsdam. During his presentation he showed us the nanotouch. The nanotouch is a device which has the same size as the iPod nano and it looks like one. The main difference to current touch screens devices is that the touch screen is on the back side of the device. The following picture (see Herschelmann 2010) shows Dr Patrick Baudisch with the nanotouch:

The main problem with current touch screens is the problem of the “fat finger”. Fingers are not really good for interaction, because the finger pressure is soft and it is necessary to offer big buttons for the interaction. This problem called Baudisch (see 2009) “fat finger”:

Another problem with current touch screens is that the hand covers the half of the screen especially during interaction with a smartphone device. This fact combined with the  “fat finger” problem might mean that the products are limited by the size of  hands and the fingers. However the interaction for the nanotouch is on the back. So no hand can cover the screen. But the  “fat finger” issue does not disappear simply by suggesting a interaction through the back side of a device. For this problem Baudisch (see 2009) presented the idea of a pointer:

As you can see in the pictures above when you move your finger a pointer follows this movement. However, this does not affect touch and drag actions. With two buttons on the side, actions like left and right computer mouse clicks are possible. The following picture shows the buttons on the side of the nanotouch (see Baudisch 2009):

This lead to the conclusion that the size of one’s hands or fingers is not an actual limitation. That limitation is the ability to see. This means a mobile touchscreen device can be the size of a necklace pendant. See following picture (see Baudisch 2009):

Baudisch, P., 2009. How to crate very small touch devices?. Patrick Baudisch (online). Available at: http://www.patrickbaudisch.com/publications/index.html [Accessed 26 October 2010].

Herschelmann, K., 2010: Nanotouch, Prof. Dr. Patrick Baudisch. Hasso Plattner Institut (online). Available at: http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/presse/download.html  [Accessed 26 October 2010].