True Sense of Touch

To preface reading this paper, think to yourself what aspect of your life has not been encroached or influenced by the touch screen. They are absolutely everywhere, implemented in every possible way, and just when you thought you have seen it everywhere, it pops up somewhere else. While this technology is not super old, especially on the consumer side, there is not an aspect of technology or life it has not reached. What I geared this study towards is, what parts of a touch screen is your preference. This helped me to get to the core of touchscreens, and what parts may be necessary or unnecessary.

I am guessing when touchscreen was brought up your phone came to mind, this was also common when I began asking questions. I tried to gear the questions away from getting an answer about a phone, but it came up so often and I was able to get some good information, so I decided to break it up and analyze both. Since all aspects of our life has been moved to our phones, there is a lot of good information around the preference of what has been moved to your phone. I opted to ask random students in my grade across different disciplines. I asked this population because we have seen a lot of what has moved to either a touchscreen, our phones or both. I also asked this population because the gen z generation is the biggest consumer population so the trends of where product interfaces go will be led by them. From the answers collected from those who geared their answers towards phones there were two commonalities. Facets such as banking, communication, school work came up in many examples. With this it was common that the population asked was happy and sad these aspects have moved heavily towards mobile phones. They were happy because of the convenience factor but sad because they were missing out on the in person aspect to it. These were the two commonalities, this also proved true for the non-phone parts that have moved to touch screen as well. The convenience factor came up a lot when talking about our phones, and the repetition made me think back to the reading. A touch screen phone that can do almost everything for us, and is only becoming more true, this is happening because this interface has the least amount of obstacles for the user. This is true for touchscreens in general. It has become so easy and preferable for us because of the lack of obstacles. No matter the system with a touchscreen, you know what to do. Every possible option is displayed in front of you, there is no confusion as to what to enter. Even buttons can change their input depending on the system, but a touch screen conforms to the current system. This was shown from the answers collected, since the population is at the age of independence, aspects of our life that they have never done on their own, a touch screen gives us all the direction we would need. However, the other commonality brings up the bad side of all the touchscreens aspects in our phone and other life. This was very prevalent when the person being questioned related it back to communication and social life. From the population, in their answers, the biggest facet of communication happens through our phones touch screen. When the person went the phone communication route I asked them of the preference of texting over calling. Much like myself, the vast majority went with texting, again because of the least amount of obstacles. With texting the other person does not need to be ready, and frankly is much quicker than having a conversation. While this proved true for my questioned population, this is where the other commonality of non preference came in. A lot of those asked mentioned the downside of less human to human interaction, especially in social life. This was an interesting point to hear often even though I feel myself. While the entire world is racing to create countless perfect human to computer interfaces, in some facets of life the computer interaction is not wanted even if we find ourselves utilizing it. As many know and feel our digital social life has become quite overbearing for a lot and this came up often in the discussions. This had the highest majority of the convenience and intuitiveness of touchscreens are great, but it is encroaching on the past way that was more preferable. This was the root cause of the questioning, to find out if we have gone too far in any aspect. This is all I will mention on the phone aspect side of questioning. As this was not my primary route, it just pivoted that way through the majority of the answers.

Now I will talk on the group of people that were able to talk on touchscreens in our lives outside of the phone. This was mainly to try and compare what is completed in your life now through touchscreens and what it used to be like. What came up in my first instance of questioning a lot was banking. This shared the same commonalities as the phone touchscreen. The convenience and low obstacles are excellent, but the in person aspect is very valued as well and is now missing. For banking, a lot of people in my questioning population had to think back to what it used to be. Since for a lot of us this is the first time we are doing all our baking ourselves. When it comes to banking for us, it is either depositing a check on our phones, or going to a touchscreen ATM getting our money then leaving. Again they said this is all great, but an important piece is missing. They then thought back to a time when they used to go to the bank with their parents, and they used to go inside to talk to everyone to get what they needed done. The population asked wished this was more routine again. A lot of the people asked were not taught too much in this area, and they thought going into the bank and utilizing the education would be a more beneficial common practice then just doing what you think is right on a screen. This portion of answers stood out the most to me, again while the world moves everything to technology, some aspects a lot of people do not think need to be moved in this way. There was also a small portion of people questioned who geared towards products. I am adding this in because a lot of the smart home or new everyday products people are getting are incorporating touchscreens. The attitude towards that has not been super accepting. I just wanted to add a thought that came up a bit. While touchscreens are the easiest user interface, adding them to products that serve simple functions are becoming overly complicated and not preferred. This is important because it adds an interesting dynamic to the convenience of touchscreens, this is how I wanted to gear the paper, I just got the least amount of answers pertaining.

After all of this and considering again where touch screens pop up in your life, how do you feel about them? Are there any thoughts you share or disagree with, it is interesting to contemplate on as our thoughts will dictate where the progression grows. It is an interesting idea as we have come across the best interface, but in a lot of ways it has transcended what is actually favorable. While it went all over the place a good bit, it offered a lot of good insight into our world in tangent to touchscreens. This insight has also given me a lot more to think about and questions which I will carry on in the future.