Reference Information
Manual Deskterity: An Exploration of Simultaneous Pen + Touch Direct Input
- Ken Hinckley, Koji Yatani, Michel Pahud, Nicole Coddington, Jenny Rodenhouse, Andy Wilson, Hrvoje Benko, and Bill Buxton
- CHI 2010, Atlanta, Georgia
Manual Deskterity: An Exploration of Simultaneous Pen + Touch Direct Input
- Ken Hinckley, Koji Yatani, Michel Pahud, Nicole Coddington, Jenny Rodenhouse, Andy Wilson, Hrvoje Benko, and Bill Buxton
- CHI 2010, Atlanta, Georgia
Summary
Manual Deskterity is an application designed to explore the use of pen and touch interaction with a touch screen interface. The creators note many designs today feature either pen-only functions, touch-only functions, or pen and touch interactions being viewed as the same input. They venture to explore the possibilities of adding pen and touch together in forming new tools.
Manual Deskterity is an application designed to explore the use of pen and touch interaction with a touch screen interface. The creators note many designs today feature either pen-only functions, touch-only functions, or pen and touch interactions being viewed as the same input. They venture to explore the possibilities of adding pen and touch together in forming new tools.
Their project is a sort of scrapbooking interface that allows writing or drawing on the surface and the manipulation of objects. The system runs on the Microsoft Surface and has many unique features to it. First of all, they differentiate between hand and pen by using infrared and having the pen appear as the brightest object at all times. This allows users to naturally write on the surface while also resting their hand on it. As a general rule, the pen writes, touch manipulates, and pen combined with touch forms new tools. Naturally they had to falter on this in a few instances, but the user studies allowed them to find out where.
 |
| The X-Acto knife feature. |
One of the first compromises they had to make was interacting with the object context menu. Selecting an object pops up the context menu, and they originally wanted the menu selection to be a pen action. Users wanted to make a selection using touch as well, so they decided to make pen and touch work here. The other two main instances of interchangeability were tearing and finger painting. They employed an X-Acto knife function where the pen acts as the knife. By using a finger for cutting, this represents a tear as someone would by tearing paper with two hands. The finger painting is just as it sounds and was added due to a natural tendency of user interaction with the system. For more specifics on the capabilities of the Manual Deskterity, I highly suggest watching the video demonstration below.
The user evaluation received positive feedback as being a very natural tool to use. The designers note this as more of a toy than an invention. Its main purpose was to research the possibilities of pen+touch interaction and how to improve these interactions in future designs. They hope what they have found will aid other researchers and designers, and they also plan on refining the systems limitations to further improve on pen+touch techniques.
Discussion
I honestly wasn’t planning to write so much about this paper, but there really is a lot of information they present. It’s always fun to use touch screen devices, mainly because I don’t own one myself, and this idea of adding pen+touch capabilities to devices is a fantastic idea. What I love most about what they did was replicating the natural tendencies of users. They studied how users interacted with real materials, and then reflected these into their design. This is the key in creating a natural design, and they pulled it off quite nicely. I also liked how they started with a staunch “pen writes, touch manipulates” rule, but were willing to make exceptions where needed. They clearly cared about making a natural design for the users, and it really showed in their work.
I honestly wasn’t planning to write so much about this paper, but there really is a lot of information they present. It’s always fun to use touch screen devices, mainly because I don’t own one myself, and this idea of adding pen+touch capabilities to devices is a fantastic idea. What I love most about what they did was replicating the natural tendencies of users. They studied how users interacted with real materials, and then reflected these into their design. This is the key in creating a natural design, and they pulled it off quite nicely. I also liked how they started with a staunch “pen writes, touch manipulates” rule, but were willing to make exceptions where needed. They clearly cared about making a natural design for the users, and it really showed in their work.
In case you didn’t read the lengthy summary, the video above is their demo. It’s really entertaining to watch, and I highly suggest checking it out.
That's cool how they made is so natural from people said. It looks like they really studied user-base well. That video was fun to watch, I like how you can move things around easily and still be able to write, even with your wrist resting on the display.
ReplyDeleteI think the feature that seems most closely related to natural use, well all of them are, but my favorite is the X-Acto Knife and tearing the paper! I think those two would be fun to use...
ReplyDeleteI'm interested in how the combination of pen and touch input was used to create a more natural experience. I wonder what other technologies might benefit from combination.
ReplyDelete