Tactile Feedback
One of the main gripes with the iPhone has always been the lack of tactile feedback when typing. In an effort to simulate that, we’re seeing some new phones and the like where the touch screen has some springiness to it. This is coming out both in a new BlackBerry model, and in the touchpad for the new Macbook Pro.
I think both designers are missing the point. The most important tactile feedback of a button is not the spring of depression but rather the shape of the button itself. It allows you to constantly reset your bearings. When you’re typing on a keypad, for example, you feel whether your finger is hitting the button square in the middle, or slightly to the left or right and adjust accordingly. Your brain is able to check its position and modify it on the mental map in your head multiple times per second, like an ICBM homing in on an Iranian nuclear facility.
You can look at the screen and type because of that, in fact, you’re supposed to. Hell, you can probably type whole paragraphs with your eyes shut without erring. It might take a little Zen mastery, since as soon as you think about it consciously you’ll start making mistakes, but when you look at the screen and don’t think about it, you do it nearly flawlessly.
Without the feel of physical buttons, you’ll inevitably drift in one direction or the other. That’s why BlackBerry typing is really so much better than the iPhone. When you have both in broad daylight and are staring at the buttons as you type, the difference isn’t as noticeable, so when defenders say “I can type just as well on my iPhone” they’re telling the truth, or at least close. But on a Berry, you can text one-handed while driving (though I don’t recommend it) while on an iPhone you’d slip up pretty fast. Or, more importantly, you can look at the screen exclusively as you type, as you would on a computer.
That’s what makes some keyboards and keypads so much better than others. The buttons are designed in such a way as to let you know exactly where you are upon contact. Don’t get me wrong, the resistance when pushing a button is useful too, as it allows you to adjust along the third axis. The other two are simply more important though.
I’m not sure if it’s very relevant in the case of the Macbook Pro, since it’s a one mouse button we’re talking about. It might be fine, especially since you can presumably feel the bottom edge of the pad, and the whole thing isn’t large enough for even one finger to get very lost on. But on the BlackBerry, I think it will not make typing much better than on the iPhone, if at all.
I remember once reading about such a pad that sends tiny electric shocks as you pass over the virtual buttons that simulate the feel. That would go much further toward matching the BlackBerry experience on a perfectly flat touchpad than a spring.
October 15, 2008 at 6:46 am
Nokia was demoing a device a year or so ago that used tiny vibrations to simulate the feeling of keys on a smooth touchpad. I don't know where that research went but it was some of the most innovative thinking I had seen in a long time on the problem of text input without physical keyboards (I worked for a year and a half on tabletop displays and one of my persistent gripes was on how nobody was seriously focusing on the text input problem).