It’s got the touch!

This is not a premier at all so maybe the concepts around what you are about to read hear sound familiar already.

Maybe the most complex, but less perceived feature of computers is the way we interact with them. For years, a lot of people (developers, designers, and others) have spent a lot of time thinking about ways to make it easier to “communicate” with computers.

The basics are, of course (and that is why we normally don’t see it complex) the keyboard and mouse interaction. We got all so used to work with a keyboard and mouse that it looks almost “natural” for us.

But there are many people who can not use a keyboard or a mouse for different reasons, so many companies have started to create new ways to interact through the voice, the eyesight and even the finger touch. You can see it even in Windows, which allows you to “train” your computer so it obeys to your voice commands.

I remember, like 20 years ago, that I was thrilled to see the first touch screens… it was just amazing how you could “press” the screen and actually get the computer to do what the icon was meaning.

Somehow, this technology just didn’t show up enough and user interfaces never really evolved towards using it (too much easier, and cheaper to use a mouse than to implement touch screens).

Well, we are watching a new revolution: The multi-touch screen. The ability to “click” several things at the same time escapes the capabilities of the traditional mouse, and it doesn’t seem to be any practical device that enables that capability in the way multi-touch screens does it.

Multi-touch is getting increasingly interesting for people. The first real commercial multi-touch screens were brought in by Apple, with their iPod Touch and were quickly followed on by many cell phone manufacturers (including the same Apple, which basically reinvented their business around their multi-touch devices).

It is so big the excitement that multi-touch brings to the party that the race is coming now to get it into PCs. Windows 7, which is about to be launched this October 22nd will support multi-touch monitors not just from the device driver perspective, but also from the applications perspective, and even most importantly, from a developer approach.

Windows 7 brings in the box applications such as a new version of Paint and browser and document general windows support for multi-touch so you can apply gestures to the screen and those be interpreted by the operating system and translated into actions in the application.

The basic gestures will allow the user to pan, rotate, zoom and move items around the screen but web applications such as Windows Live Maps (maps.bing.com) and others benefit also from these gestures, making it way easier to get more productivity out of this technology.

I am wondering about the real productivity impact of this in our daily computer operations, so I will be watching closely and of course, sharing in this blog my findings, some ideas, and maybe even you can help by commenting my posts.

So, be prepared, there is a lot of chances that you’ll get a multi-touch computer in your short to medium term future. Watch this video (quite old already, but very illustrative) and let me know what you think about multi-touch.