Back-seat driving helps small-screen control

Microsoft has found a new angle on the design of touchscreens – by putting the control surface on the underside of the device.

The design stems from a project called nanoTouch which aims to improve touch control on screens. By putting the control surface on the back you get round the problem of fingers blocking the very display they are trying to control, according to Patrick Baudisch of Microsoft Research, who is also a professor of computer science and human-computer interaction at Postdam University in Germany.

The interface makes it possible to play video games on a screen the size of a credit card, he told MIT Technology Review. It reports that the team found people completed tasks using the system at roughly the same speed whatever the size of the display, but at the smallest size rear control was more accurate.