Touchscreen Laptops and Unexpected Use Cases
I’ve had a touchscreen laptop for my entire college career. My dad rushed me to the Microsoft store, wearing clothes meant for karate class more than the mall, because there was a massive deal on the model we agreed on. I will admit that I do not use the touchscreen feature much myself — I don’t like the smudged fingerprints that accumulate over time and don’t want to bother cleaning it. On the other end, I have a friend who constantly uses her screen to manipulate the interface. My habit is to hover over the screen when I need to point to something. Close enough to accurately locate the object, but far away enough to avoid activating the screen. However, I’ve noticed a trend in office hour sessions. The person will be trying to make a point by touching what they think is an inactive screen, only for it to jump to life, open and close windows, and generally cause chaos. After the first time, I tried warning them beforehand, but the habits were so ingrained that there would usually be an “Ah! Sorry” once per session.
It’s interesting because so much of our current technology is touch oriented. Smartphones, tablets, many cash registers, etc. are made for touching. I haven’t seen the same issue with tablets, even if there is a person demonstrating on it. The first of the touchscreen laptops, the Microsoft Surface line of products, debuted in 2008. More than ten years on, people assume that a computer screen is static and not interactable.
Which way is better? Having a touchscreen (and paying more for it), or not? I’ve noticed that over time, more digital displays are becoming touch-sensitive. If I walk through the hallways of a lab building, I can find touchscreen displays that used to be static. Smartboards replaced digital projectors which replaced analog projectors when I was in high school. I can’t say whether my education was significantly improved with the transition to Smart technology, but I know I had fun playing with the weird new boards in the few classrooms they were in. I also can’t say whether my overall quality of life has been improved by having a touchscreen laptop compared to a static screen. Rather than habits shaping technology, it seems that in this case, it is technology shaping our habits. This could have implications for new types of technology that are used in unexpected ways. Perhaps these cases should be expected and planned for in designing a prototype.
