Can't Touch This!

Imagine this. It's 2010 - three long years after Apple iPhone took the world by a storm. The only cell phone carrier left worldwide is Cingular and they still charge you 0.99$ for missed calls while roaming. RIM is out of business and Nokia is once again a pulp mill. Steve Jobs decides it's time to create an open standard for the touchscreen interface (as well as the advanced sensors) and introduces an SDK+hardware for a variety of platforms, in all shapes and sizes.

Would it change the way we used our mobile devices? Or rather, would it be a step forward from a usability standpoint?

Probably. A brilliant presentation from the recent TED shows how a multi-touch interface with a clever gesture design can redefine certain tasks like navigation in a 3d environment or managing a set of 2d objects (such as photos). The desktop metaphor of modern computers seems crippled in a fundamental way - in real world, one does not use a mouse to move objects around. That's what hands are for!

For example, right now having two laptops side by side (two "desktops", as the designers want us to think) does not mean it is easy to transfer files between them. Bluetooth, email or LAN - everything requires a certain degree of technical prowess and a lot of clicking. Touchscreen and a smart proximity sensor could provide a much better way - tapping the object on your screen and "launching" it towards the other laptop, initiating the best transfer method available (from the system's perspective). This would greatly simplify exchange of data between all sorts of digital devices. Much more similar to moving physical objects around as well.

Photo management is a popular example when it comes to using a multi-touch interface for data management, but another great one is Mind Maps. Creating and navigating those can be a difficult experience due to their hierarchical structure and size. Mind Maps on mobile devices are out of the question due to primitive controls. But a touchscreen could allow one to create entries simply by touching a screen and uttering a word (or typing one in). Those entries could then be linked together with a few simple gestures. The benefits of such application would be immense, as Mind Maps are currently used for everything from note-taking to project management.

Since multi-touch does not have a steep learning curve (if only for the advanced gestures) it can be introduced to children at a very young age. Imagine a drawing application for 3 year olds. Touch the colour, then draw a line... Touch another one!... This would bring about a new revolution, empowering kids to use the computers more effectively.

In the long run, multi-touch has the potential to revolutionize the way the applications are designed - but only if developers worldwide are given the right tools. Let's wish best luck to Apple and see what happens...