In our main meeting room I noticed this panel on the wall:
This is the interface panel that controls the microphone and speakers that are hardwired into the room. I thought it was interesting that the interface had a custom label on it reading: "Touch Screen Gently". I assumed it was there because the resort had problems in the past with guests pushing too hard on the screen and breaking it.
When I have used a touchscreen similar to this one in the past I can remember trying to push hard on the screen if at first it did not react. I think I was blending my mental model of pushing an actual physical button that doesn't work with my model of a touchscreen that doesn't work. When I push harder on a physical button that doesn't seem to work, sometimes the button loosens up or it just needed a firmer push. This process obviously does not work for touchscreens. Even if I push harder to get a "button" to work on the touchscreen nothing will happen if that function is not working correctly or not mapped to perform the function I think it should.
Even though most of the users know pushing harder will not produce any different result, we still try to because we are applying our mental model of physical button pushing. I think the label on this interface is addressing this mental model mix-up and trying to prevent damage to the touchscreen. I wonder how this insight could be incorporated into the design of touchscreens similar to this one?
This posts reminds me of times when you see a pull handle on a door and there is an extra sign that says push. Or vice versa. Many times signs seem to be a bandaid for poor design rather than being necessary and helpful.
ReplyDeleteI think the touch screen switch you saw is using traditional "Resistive" technology. This technology is old, composed of several layers of conductor materials. You need press it to make to activate the touch sense, and does not work correctly all the time. The "Capacitive" technology, used on recent smart phone, using the human body as a condotor, does not need to be pressed to activate the sensor. This allows the touch screen to be used as a sensor rather than a button. I think the technology will get better and will become more natural for us to use in the near futute.
ReplyDeleteWhen the Miller employees were walking around after the presentations and messing around with the prototypes we had made, they were being gentle with team Arc's touchscreen prototype and it wasn't responding well. I had to go in and push the buttons harder (or for a longer period of time, never figured out which) to make it work. It's funny because this is the opposite of what was happening at the water park- they were being too careful and it wasn't working when they needed to put more umph into it to get a response.
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