The Mouse and The Touchscreen . . . Revisited

Seth Brown — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 05:28:20 GMT

I recently read an interview with Doug Engelbart where he described the initial testing of the mouse vs other computer interface devices, the lightpen among them. He was steadfast in his defense of the mouse in relation to the touchscreen. The initial testing was based on certain tasks such as a dot and the cursor appearing in a random location on the screen and they would then time how long it took for someone to align the cursor.

Engelbart and his colleagues concluded the mouse was the best device for navigating the 2-dimensional display interface they had. Besting the lightpen and other interfaces in speed and accuracy.

I’d like to write an article for your site about why efficiency and accuracy aren’t the only concerns in computer interaction and how the future will prove Engelbart wrong. The essence of computing is tactile and an examination of the pluses and minuses of the mouse vs the touchscreen will reveal a haptic touchscreen interface as perhaps the best available computing interface for current processing power.

seth@ogcompdoc.com

Ideas at physical interface

The Mouse and The Touchscreen . . . Revisited