I have a Vita, but the only game I've played that uses it is Tearaway. This game doesn't use it for precision navigation or selection, so it's hard to say how well a rear touchpad would work for that. Tearaway employs the rear touchpad for tapping to jump and pushing objects around. For that, it's surprisingly effective and adds a fun--if gimmicky--element to the gameplay. The Vita is quite a bit larger than most smartphones, and I could see problems with differing hand sizes requiring people to adjust their grips to use its entire surface--probably not as much of a problem on a phone. The Vita is played two-handed. I think a one-handed grip while using the rear touchpad on a smartphone would be more difficult as your finger's range of motion is limited. The OP article seems to anticipate this by focusing on small gestures rather than ones that would take your finger across a large surface.
On a tangent [Tearaway Spoiler Alert]...when beginning the game, Tearaway asks you to select your skin tone from a few presets. Knowing nothing about the game at that point, I thought that was really strange. I recall thinking, "I don't really care whether my character has my skin tone...and it's really odd that they'd presume that I would." But it turns out, that's not what the skin tone selection was for. In Tearaway, you use the rear touchpad to punch your fingers through the paper backdrops of the game to manipulate things. The first time I did this and they showed "my" fingers in the game, I was startled for a split second and then laughed out loud. Screenshot of the effect:
http://media.officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk/files/2013/11...
It's more magical live as your virtual in-game fingers track the position and angle (angle presumably by extrapolating based upon the current finger position and average hand size/grip) of your actual fingers surprisingly well.
Ok, try picking up your phone and trying out the movement on the back of the phone that this would require. It doesn't work. If the majority of the phone is touch sensitive how are you supposed to hold it? It makes for really awkward movement of your hand and let's say you figured out how to get the scrolling down, you still have A HUGE issue of UI. The iOS experience nor its apps were made for any kind of cursor or mouse interface.
If you need to reach across the screen without taking up screen real estate, use your other hand. Or use a stylus. Problem solved.
Edit: Also not to mention that for the most part iOS does a pretty good job of letting me be pretty accurate with my bulky fingers. It's not perfect, but it's certainly not terrible.
Same although it causes me problems frequently because I also use a mouse. In fact sometimes when typing I'll every so gently brush the pad and jump somewhere else and start overwriting things.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Your laptop is several times bigger than your phone so it's not as big as an issue. We are talking about a device that's smaller than your hand.
hes getting at the fact that laptops are trained to ignore input from your palm and only only respond to your fingers... a smartphone could also ignore certain inputs that are obviously not meant to be used.
I had to turn off touch to click on my MacBook Air because I often brush the pad with the heel of my hand while typing, causing the OS to refocus on wherever the cursor happened to be.
I actually find the scroll motion to be very easy to perform using my index finger. However, I do agree there are issues to consider when it comes to usability. You definitely want to prevent unintended gestures and clicks/taps. So for one thing, the back touch doesn't necessarily have to be "on" all the time. It may be a mode that you enter under certain circumstances. And perhaps more advanced gesturing algorithms are needed to filter out intended from undintended gestures - maybe giving more weight to the size of the touch area, so that you palm resting on the back doesn't register as an event.
I don't pretend to have the answers to all these issues, but something tells me that smartphones can do much better than the current state of the art when it comes to game controls, to pointing at precise location, etc. And it goes without saying that this won't work with the existing mobile OSs as-is.
I suspect that Apple, Samsung, etc. have thought of this, so why aren't they doing it? (After all, the PS Vita has had a back touchpad for a while.) The first thing that comes to mind is that people hold their phones with the back. Accidental clicks would be very difficult to avoid. In contrast, the PS Vita is larger, held with both hands and has non-touchpad areas of the back where you can grip it, as I understand.
Sony put this into the Playstation Vita and it's awful. Few games use it, and it's clumsy in the games that do. It's possible that a company like Apple could make it good somehow, through sheer will and hardware/software expertise, but I suspect it's just not a good idea in practice even if it's good on paper.
Based on my limited experience, some potential issues:
Not having the user's fingers obscuring the view of the screen may in fact increase the perceived latency, since they're focused on the screen and don't have the motion of their fingers to distract them.
The latency issue would be twice as bad if you want to render a 'ghost' of your hands on the screen as described in this design concept.
Interacting with onscreen elements is more difficult when using your hands on the rear of a device, even with a 1-1 mapping. I don't really know why this is, but even with a cursor onscreen, I have found it to be true.
Accidental interaction is 5 times worse with a rear touch panel. Apps on the Vita that use it extensively are a huge pain in terms of accidental swipes and touches, especially if you try to lay the device down on a surface for a moment, or set it on your knee to use the front touch panel.
The core problem with virtual buttons/joysticks/gamepads is that you have no physical feedback about where your fingers are, and as a result you lose your 'centering' and your inputs end up being misinterpreted or not landing. Moving your fingers to the rear of the device makes this worse, because you can no longer look at your fingers to figure out where they are.
The Notion Ink tablet originally had this back in 2010. It was disabled and eventually removed entirely. There were rumors that it was squashed by an apple patient, but I cannot find anything more substantial.
The whole NI tablet debacle made me quite jaded towards miracle tech. I'm lucky it predated kickstarter, because I would have most likely backed it up to 50% over retail. It's probably why I don't own a 1st gen pebble.
it is one of those things that seem perfect on paper. and may even be good for the power user. but everyone knows that power user and consumer hardware are not a good match.
you are right about the apple patent. Apple bought fingerWorks in 2005 and killed ALL the loved product lines (of note, one keyboard that was in its entire area, a touchpad). apple sit on top of the company's IP assets and used it for nothing but suing people. ...and people still wonder why i avoid any apple product..
anyway, eventually the touch screen tech made it to the iphones. or so they say. but if you compare the fingerworks tech on the few shipped keyboards and the iphone resistive touchscreen, they have little in common. apple was just trolling everyone with the patents and killing innovation all around.
but since fingerworks was dead since 2005 thanks to apple, several other companies with employees that probably never even heard of finger works developed this idea... nokia as you mention. sony with psp. motorola with the backflip (which being one of the first AT&T exclusive android phones suffered of having the worst crap of custom android ROM that ever saw the light of day). And more recently the Oppo N1 already have the very same implementation idea mentioned in the article, and is in production. but you don't see anyone rushing to the stores.
Exactly that. You cannot invent (patent) something that has already been invented. Now you could go ahead and invent (patent) something that builds on his ideas, as long as those ideas are a novel addition (not an obvious next step).
as others have mentioned it's not a new idea. i think the reason you don't see it in Apple products at least is because it is a step backwards in terms of metaphor. the iPhone's core metaphor is direct manipulation. this requires that your brain visually connects the motion of your finger with the objects on screen. if you manipulated things via the back touchpad, this illusion would be broken and it would feel more like interfacing with a traditional computer and less like direct manipulation.
That sounds like the reason Apple refused to use a hardware button to trigger the camera shutter, but thankfully they caved on that one and I can take a photo without having to guess where I'm tapping the screen.
I'd rather see companies trying out ideas that might work instead of just sticking to their metaphorical guns.
Well every design change is a trade off. Breaking metaphors, all other things being equal, is bad. The fact that the author here identifies an on screen cursor as a use case probably is enough to strike fear in any apple designer that this would lead to a regression in ux.
The only game as far as I'm aware that properly makes use of it is Tearaway, but even then it only appears in a few places and was kind of awkward to control properly.
The Little Big Planet games use it too, in a more limited manner.
It is in fact awkward to use, IMO, and not just because of the software or Sony's implementation.
There are at least two big problems with it:
One is that it is really difficult to do Wacom-pen style hovering of a "cursor" on a capacitive surface with finger input in a way that works well universally for everyone without a lengthy and awkward calibration. And because of the non-direct method of interaction using your fingers on the back gives you, you really need some sort of non-action hovering indicator for this setup to work well.
The other is this: Put your hands in the positions shown in the original article. Now try moving your your index and middle fingers around as if touching the back surface of a device and try not to move your thumbs (and wrists) all over the place involuntarily. For most people this is difficult. When you are tightly gripping a device this becomes less of a problem but still contributes to the whole thing feeling very uncomfortable and unstable.
I'm nearly positive that various companies like Apple must have tested something like this out (either before/after the PS Vita) for a phone and just found it to be a poor solution when implemented in a real-world prototype.
That's a good idea and all, but you know what would be better than two touch panels? A button to turn them off!
With screens bigger than your hands and accidental touch detection being as bad as ever, a simple button to turn off the digitizer would make a lot of people happy...
60 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadOn a tangent [Tearaway Spoiler Alert]...when beginning the game, Tearaway asks you to select your skin tone from a few presets. Knowing nothing about the game at that point, I thought that was really strange. I recall thinking, "I don't really care whether my character has my skin tone...and it's really odd that they'd presume that I would." But it turns out, that's not what the skin tone selection was for. In Tearaway, you use the rear touchpad to punch your fingers through the paper backdrops of the game to manipulate things. The first time I did this and they showed "my" fingers in the game, I was startled for a split second and then laughed out loud. Screenshot of the effect: http://media.officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk/files/2013/11...
It's more magical live as your virtual in-game fingers track the position and angle (angle presumably by extrapolating based upon the current finger position and average hand size/grip) of your actual fingers surprisingly well.
If you need to reach across the screen without taking up screen real estate, use your other hand. Or use a stylus. Problem solved.
Edit: Also not to mention that for the most part iOS does a pretty good job of letting me be pretty accurate with my bulky fingers. It's not perfect, but it's certainly not terrible.
I like the physical click way better, in any case.
I don't pretend to have the answers to all these issues, but something tells me that smartphones can do much better than the current state of the art when it comes to game controls, to pointing at precise location, etc. And it goes without saying that this won't work with the existing mobile OSs as-is.
paper: http://www.cliftonforlines.com/papers/2007_wigdor_lucidtouch...
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbMQ7urAvuc
http://patrickbaudisch.com/projects/nanotouch/
I'd still like to see someone try it.
for gaming, most likely uncomfortable users are used to using thumbs to play rather than using their index fingers
i rather be waiting for those kind of panel-less screen
http://www.slashgear.com/google-patents-rear-touch-controls-...
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=...
Based on my limited experience, some potential issues:
Not having the user's fingers obscuring the view of the screen may in fact increase the perceived latency, since they're focused on the screen and don't have the motion of their fingers to distract them.
The latency issue would be twice as bad if you want to render a 'ghost' of your hands on the screen as described in this design concept.
Interacting with onscreen elements is more difficult when using your hands on the rear of a device, even with a 1-1 mapping. I don't really know why this is, but even with a cursor onscreen, I have found it to be true.
Accidental interaction is 5 times worse with a rear touch panel. Apps on the Vita that use it extensively are a huge pain in terms of accidental swipes and touches, especially if you try to lay the device down on a surface for a moment, or set it on your knee to use the front touch panel.
The core problem with virtual buttons/joysticks/gamepads is that you have no physical feedback about where your fingers are, and as a result you lose your 'centering' and your inputs end up being misinterpreted or not landing. Moving your fingers to the rear of the device makes this worse, because you can no longer look at your fingers to figure out where they are.
http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2013/10/apple-fi...
The whole NI tablet debacle made me quite jaded towards miracle tech. I'm lucky it predated kickstarter, because I would have most likely backed it up to 50% over retail. It's probably why I don't own a 1st gen pebble.
Here is a good overview of the concept's rise and fall: http://www.engadget.com/tag/NotionInk/
you are right about the apple patent. Apple bought fingerWorks in 2005 and killed ALL the loved product lines (of note, one keyboard that was in its entire area, a touchpad). apple sit on top of the company's IP assets and used it for nothing but suing people. ...and people still wonder why i avoid any apple product..
anyway, eventually the touch screen tech made it to the iphones. or so they say. but if you compare the fingerworks tech on the few shipped keyboards and the iphone resistive touchscreen, they have little in common. apple was just trolling everyone with the patents and killing innovation all around.
but since fingerworks was dead since 2005 thanks to apple, several other companies with employees that probably never even heard of finger works developed this idea... nokia as you mention. sony with psp. motorola with the backflip (which being one of the first AT&T exclusive android phones suffered of having the worst crap of custom android ROM that ever saw the light of day). And more recently the Oppo N1 already have the very same implementation idea mentioned in the article, and is in production. but you don't see anyone rushing to the stores.
http://conversations.nokia.com/2011/11/10/nokia-gem-what-sor...
The whole thing was a touch screen.
Here's an Engadget article on the Nokia concept with a fair amount of comments:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/11/nokia-gem-concept-dazzles...
I'd rather see companies trying out ideas that might work instead of just sticking to their metaphorical guns.
The only game as far as I'm aware that properly makes use of it is Tearaway, but even then it only appears in a few places and was kind of awkward to control properly.
It is in fact awkward to use, IMO, and not just because of the software or Sony's implementation.
There are at least two big problems with it:
One is that it is really difficult to do Wacom-pen style hovering of a "cursor" on a capacitive surface with finger input in a way that works well universally for everyone without a lengthy and awkward calibration. And because of the non-direct method of interaction using your fingers on the back gives you, you really need some sort of non-action hovering indicator for this setup to work well.
The other is this: Put your hands in the positions shown in the original article. Now try moving your your index and middle fingers around as if touching the back surface of a device and try not to move your thumbs (and wrists) all over the place involuntarily. For most people this is difficult. When you are tightly gripping a device this becomes less of a problem but still contributes to the whole thing feeling very uncomfortable and unstable.
I'm nearly positive that various companies like Apple must have tested something like this out (either before/after the PS Vita) for a phone and just found it to be a poor solution when implemented in a real-world prototype.
With screens bigger than your hands and accidental touch detection being as bad as ever, a simple button to turn off the digitizer would make a lot of people happy...
Perhaps a smart watch could even have its screen on one side of your wrist, and a "touchpad" on the other.