Touch Screens and the Death of Buttons

You see it everywhere. You see it in everything. You are probably using one as I am typing this blog. Touch screens are slowly, but surely killing the old ways of button operation. From Ipods to thermostats, the touch screen is the preferred input system for more and more devices emerging in the market. What I would like to accomplish with this post is to go over the benefits of touch screen technology as well as acknowledge some problems.

There are many obvious benefits to having a device with a touch screen (besides feeling like you are using a really cool alien device.) Navigating menus, zooming in and out of web pages using multi-touch, tapping icons to open applications, and just opening so many more doors for simple and effective UI's are definitely benefits to using touch screens. This allows companies to come up with many simple, creative ways for you to operate your device since the whole entire screen can be touched to perform tasks. This makes gaming on devices interesting, it makes swapping through programs fast and effective.

Although there are many benefits to implementing touch screen technology, there are also some problems that will have to be addressed before I completely give up on using buttons. Personally, my main problem is using a touch screen for typing. Cell phones keep getting smaller and smaller and are able to do more and more like text, post things on facebook, write e-mails, play games, and so much more. But, when a phone becomes smaller, so do the buttons. I don't know how many times I have mistyped words on my phone because of how close the letters are to each other and how small they are on the phone. Also, since there are no physical boundaries for each letter, I often find myself hitting things I didn't mean to hit. There is definitely a lot of polish that needs to go into touch screen technology before I am completely sold.

Touch Screens

The type of technology we have these days amazes me, especially the technology that we as average individuals can afford to own. One of these types of technologies that really fascinates me is the touch screen. From iPhones to iPads to the Microsoft Surface, the fact that mouses are becoming more and more out of the picture and technology is becoming more and more personal is awesome.

Touch screens make complicated processes easier for people to complete, as these monitors simply display just as much information as needed to complete the task. Touch screen devices are input devices. There are three basic types of touch-screen monitors: resistive, capactive, and surface acoustic wave.

Resistive systems are made up of two layers one that is a conductive layer and another that is a resistive metallic layer. An electrical current runs through these layers and the two layers make contact when you touch the screen. The computer then figures out the coordinates of the area where the layers make contact, and then a special driver translates this information to the operating system. Capactive systems are made up of a layer that is full of electrical charge that is transferred to the user when they touch the screen, thus lessening the electrical charge on the spot of touch on the capactive layer. A surface acoustic wave system uses sound waves within the surface of the screen that are interrupted when you touch the screen.

According to HowStuffWorks.com, that while the resistive system is the cheapest, its picture clarity is the lowest of the three. The capactive system has better clarity than the resistive, but the surface acoustic wave has the best and is also the most expensive.