Poll: Touchscreens as an interface

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Touchscreens. It likely has to do with the fact they went mainstream at the end of my highschool years and thus I never grew up with it but I've never enjoyed it as the primary interface. I found it irritating on my DS when it came out and I hate texting and writing with it on my new phone.[footnote]Disclosure, I wrote this post off my phone to kill time before a gig, hence the inspiration for the thread.[/footnote]

But that's just me. Touchscreens are ubiquitous now so how do you lot feel about them?

 

[Queen Michael]

I like them for video games, but not for anything else.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I'd reply to this thread on my tablet, but I can't actually read it through all the finger-smudges.

 

[Evil Moo]

I hate touchscreens. They always feel imprecise and I strongly dislike not being able to see what I'm interacting with because of my finger being in the way. I have fairly slender fingers as well, so I can only imagine it is worse for anyone with larger appendages. Having a stylus improves things, but not enough to be worthwhile (not to mention the added disadvantage of potentially losing the pokey stick).

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

I didn't have a touchscreen phone until I was 23, and they were shiiiiiiiiiit back then.

Anyways, I have a touchscreen phone and I like it. I was firmly against touchscreens and I loved my phone to have buttons, but now I'm the opposite. The less buttons my phone has the more I like it, and mine has three and it's perfect.

I text a lot for work since most of the time I can't talk on the phone, and I give quick and fast responses. I only email on my phone if it's a short response because I'm not typing out a long ass email on my phone. I don't have the patience to use my phone for that, and some times the touchscreen irritates me, especially when auto-correct strikes.

For work, they are becoming more of thing since menu hoping with buttons and scroll wheels suck, and touchscreens are much faster.

Besides, I like touchscreens because I can play card games, and that makes me happy.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Oh what, we're just going to ignore ghost gamers who can't physically interact with interfaces? What do you have against the incorporeal?! Stop being so ghostist!

 

[Elvis Starburst]

I'm mixed. I like them for phone navigation, they can add a few buttons in a Vita title in the corners and that's nice, and I don't mind them in most DS/3DS titles. On the other side though, I HATE them for typing. The only reason I caved and got a touchscreen based phone instead of getting one off contract with a keyboard is due to swipe-typing. It's at least good enough for me to have the speed I used to have with a physical keyboard, but christ it's frustrating with the auto corrections. I wish QWERTY keyboards would come back

 

[Pyrian]

Inferior to a mouse and keyboard for most applications; most notably "buttons", and dense arrays of buttons such as keyboards being worst of all. Touchscreen+stylus is superior to mouse for most artistic pursuits, however. Portability is also an obvious big plus, and the major reason why they're ubiquitous now.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Touchscreens are fine as an interface in any device where you need to save room and make it as small as possible, like say a phone. They're absolute dogshit on anything else were you could just as easily fit some buttons.

 

[skywolfblue]

Other then smudging, touchscreens aren't bad. Keyboard and Mouse are better, but why not have all 3? There are times when a touchscreen comes in handy.

I use touchscreens all the time in education. It's much easier to pull up a presentation or something quick with a touchscreen then it is to dig out a KB and mouse (or to use the trackpad, it's hard to use a trackpad while standing, touchscreens are easy to use while standing up).

 

[Pyrian]

Keyboard and Mouse are better, but why not have all 3? There are times when a touchscreen comes in handy.

My wife has a laptop like that, it is handy sometimes.

 

[barbzilla]

I voted other, but I should explain that a bit more. I really prefer buttons for traditional gaming (and KB/Mouse for PC games requiring accuracy), but their are certain games, genres, apps, features, and etc that are either marginally or majorly better when they use other forms of interfaces (I.E. Cell Phone Apps for video and pictures are crap tons easier with touch screen, a few games actually utilize my Steam Controller's touch-pad better than they handle a XBox One remote, and I have played a couple of games now that are crap-tons better because of how they implemented the voice controls like In Verbis Virtus on PC). What I really loath is when the console market or even download apps like Steam try to force a developer to utilize (or even support) a form of control that the game is just not suited for.

Their are probably endless examples, and I'm sure everyone has their own preferred form of control for certain games (like with Flight Sims, some players have to have a full cockpit set up, some just want a HOTAS Joystick, others like KB/Mouse, and yet still more prefer a traditional controller). That doesn't mean they are wrong about how the game plays best for them when it goes against the commonly agreed control format, but it should ultimately be up to the developer. Currently Cell Phone games actually have the best options open to them. They can support controllers (and even set up controller only games on Android, not sure about iPhone), touch controls, voice controls, motion controls, VR, AR, and even biometric (think the Kinect). Though consoles like the Wii-U, Xbox 360, and Xbox one had the potential to be close, the manufacturers tried to force these controls down the developer's throats and they all ended up flopping in their own way.

Really, I say let the Developers use whatever control format they want as the "Standard" for the game, and then give them the option to add support for other play styles as they see fit. Some games just don't work the same without certain controls (as anyone who's ever played a RTS on a console (like Starcraft for the PS1... *Shivers*, I apologize for anyone with PTSD over this issue), and that would allow the best of both worlds. Then just label the game's accordingly and ensure that player's know when they see the Advertising about the control options available. This would also allow the manufacturers of the consoles to add more accessories and sell more game publishing licenses.

 

[Kyrian007]

I've pretty much always hated touchscreens. My e-reader is a e-ink display so I can a: read outside during the day, and b: because I hate touchscreens. A touchscreen defeats its own purpose. It is output... display. It can't do that if its input literally requires a person to cover up screen real estate with their own hands. And oils. Small enough projectors plus small enough Kinect like technology is going to ruin the touchscreen as an interface.

 

[Cowabungaa]

I like them for video games, but not for anything else.

Funny that, I like them for anything but video games.

Well okay that's not 100% true. I was pretty fond of my DSi before I lost it and that did funky touchscreen things sometimes. Otherwise I use a typical touchscreen phone and a touchscreen e-ink reader.

I've pretty much always hated touchscreens. My e-reader is a e-ink display so I can a: read outside during the day, and b: because I hate touchscreens. A touchscreen defeats its own purpose. It is output... display. It can't do that if its input literally requires a person to cover up screen real estate with their own hands. And oils. Small enough projectors plus small enough Kinect like technology is going to ruin the touchscreen as an interface.

But e-ink displays are touchscreens?

Regardless, the advantage is that often your hands won't cover it up all the time, at least for phones for instance. Like, if my phone had a physical keyboard instead of a touchscreen it'd either be a huge/thick phone or have a tiny screen. Now I just see a keyboard when I type for a few seconds, and I only boop the screen when I have to. It's not like my hand gets in the way when I read something.

 

[Kyrian007]

I've pretty much always hated touchscreens. My e-reader is a e-ink display so I can a: read outside during the day, and b: because I hate touchscreens. A touchscreen defeats its own purpose. It is output... display. It can't do that if its input literally requires a person to cover up screen real estate with their own hands. And oils. Small enough projectors plus small enough Kinect like technology is going to ruin the touchscreen as an interface.

But e-ink displays are touchscreens?

Regardless, the advantage is that often your hands won't cover it up all the time, at least for phones for instance. Like, if my phone had a physical keyboard instead of a touchscreen it'd either be a huge/thick phone or have a tiny screen. Now I just see a keyboard when I type for a few seconds, and I only boop the screen when I have to. It's not like my hand gets in the way when I read something.

E-ink displays can be touchscreens. They, like the one in my e-reader, don't have to be. Much like a phone's screen doesn't have to be a touchscreen. Ironically when phones were primarily just phones, touchscreens would have been fairly ideal. Now that they are mobile viewing screens for youtube and Netflix, and mobile gaming platforms... the touchscreen suffers. It saves space, but you trade that for... hands being in the way and finger oil. When a mini projector and a Kinect like device get small enough to project a trackpad, numberpad, and keyboard onto any convenient surface... touchscreens will become as popular on mobile as they are in desktop computing.

Like what happened when the company I work for moved offices. The engineer and middle manager and my regional boss were telling us all about the "awesome" new facilities, and my boss the middle manager mentioned that all the studios had touch screen computers. I asked a question, "will we still have a mouse?" I noticed the engineer smirking behind the manager's back. The middle manager said "well, yes." And I followed up with "why do we need touchscreens then?" Literally the best answer he could come up with was "well, it looks cool." The regional boss was also staring daggers at me by this time, but I powered on. "So that justifies the ongoing added expense when they break and fail and have to be replaced, looking dirty and smudged all the time, constant recalibration problems and phantom presses inadvertently starting or stopping critical processes?" The engineer was trying so hard not to laugh at this point he had his eyes closed, I found out later because he had voiced all these concerns in the design process, only to be overruled. Sure enough, now almost a year later we have had to replace most of them already. They have terrible refresh rates that chug and bog down at high use times (like during system updates) and static during particularly dry times of year (and gnats in the summer) randomly hit buttons. It has actually cost the company tens of thousands of dollars that traditional screens would not have.

 

[bluegate]

I've pretty much always hated touchscreens. My e-reader is a e-ink display so I can a: read outside during the day, and b: because I hate touchscreens. A touchscreen defeats its own purpose. It is output... display. It can't do that if its input literally requires a person to cover up screen real estate with their own hands. And oils. Small enough projectors plus small enough Kinect like technology is going to ruin the touchscreen as an interface.

But e-ink displays are touchscreens?

Regardless, the advantage is that often your hands won't cover it up all the time, at least for phones for instance. Like, if my phone had a physical keyboard instead of a touchscreen it'd either be a huge/thick phone or have a tiny screen. Now I just see a keyboard when I type for a few seconds, and I only boop the screen when I have to. It's not like my hand gets in the way when I read something.

E-ink displays can be touchscreens. They, like the one in my e-reader, don't have to be. Much like a phone's screen doesn't have to be a touchscreen. Ironically when phones were primarily just phones, touchscreens would have been fairly ideal. Now that they are mobile viewing screens for youtube and Netflix, and mobile gaming platforms... the touchscreen suffers. It saves space, but you trade that for... hands being in the way and finger oil. When a mini projector and a Kinect like device get small enough to project a trackpad, numberpad, and keyboard onto any convenient surface... touchscreens will become as popular on mobile as they are in desktop computing.

That sounds fine and dandy if you have a surface to put your phone down on, freeing up both hands to type, but when standing and holding your phone in your hands, that sounds mighty uncomfortable to me.

For the topic on hand, I enjoy touch screens in certain devices for certain use cases. I don't care for having a touch screen in my computer monitor or laptop, and I also don't care for touch screens for traditional game input on phones, but I do like them for low accuracy input on phones or tablets.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Unless they come a better way for the buttons/ keyboard on the touchscreen (hate the autocorrect and trying to move the editing on a past words) the buttons all the way!

 

[votemarvel]

I can tolerate them on my phone and tablet but would hate to have one for my PC.

I shudder now when they touch the monitor to show me where something is they want me to see, I'd be killing them if they were dragging their greasy fingers all over it as well.

 

[Souplex]

Touchscreens actively make things worse.
Steve Jobs is ruining the world even in death.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

Touchscreens are, at best, ok and, at worst, the most frustrating fucking things to deal with.

The few games I play on my phone with it are made lesser for having had to make use of them.

Just say no.