HP Researching 'Touch Dialects'

Computer firm HP is currently researching ‘touch dialects’ – the different ways that people around the world like to interact with touch screen PCs.

HP Vice President Phil McKinney told Computeractive that although most users in the US and Europe seem happy to use touch screens by prodding with one finger, this was not a universal gesture.

In some cultures pointing this way is considered socially unacceptable, so people used several fingers at once to poke the screen. Similarly, US and European users are used to resizing images by using two fingers and a “pinching” gesture, but in other areas people like to drag the corners of the image apart or pull the straight edges.

Mr McKinney said that some test subjects had even tried to lift and drop one corner of the image, and when this failed had attempted to shake the picture free.

He added that PC makers would ideally need to “embed more intelligence” into a touch screen device so it can discern which dialect a user prefers and read their commands accordingly.

This kind of system is some way off, but HP has “begun the process of collecting the touch dialects”.

Mr McKinney said the problem is “not limited to touch, but also gestures and so on … hand gestures people use are very local.” The company “has an entire lab that’s just focused on touch, gesture and voice controls … and testing them around the world”.

He said that the company has recently been testing its touch screen computers in India in an effort to work out how suitable they are for families with mixed literacy levels, as “keyboards assume literacy”.

“The response from these tests was very positive”, he added. “Touch, as an interface, can help you get over that digital divide”.