Those of you who’ve read my previous columns may have spotted a penchant to proselytize the combination of multi-touch and a stylus. The motivation behind this crusade is to pave the way to a new, natural user-interface paradigm that is both bi-manual and multi-modal. Bi-manual means that the interface leverages our natural ability to use our two hands to facilitate the execution of complex tasks.
If we are born with two hands, there must be a good reason. Multi-modal interfaces allow us to choose the input technique that looks the most appropriate for a given task or context, e.g., the tip of our finger to flip the pages of an e-book, a stylus for drawing or annotating it. Though YouTube already hosts dozens of popular videos showcasing the art of finger-painting on an iPad, we can safely assert that, in their everyday life, homo sapiens won’t move back anytime soon to a practice that Neanderthals gave up about 45,000 years ago.
Rhoda Alexander, director of monitor research for IHS iSuppli Market Research, puts it this way: “In the mad vendor rush to cash in on the iPad phenomenon with similarly configured tablet devices, hardware designers are overlooking an opportunity to leapfrog over what Apple is currently offering by moving the mobile platform beyond a simple consumption tablet to include true creation offerings. Today’s mobile media tablets offer a fresh doorway into an increasingly rich content environment, including Web sites, e-books, movies, gaming, and a wealth of new applications.”
Tablets In The Classroom
Ambidexterity and multi-modality are the twin pillars that will move “the mobile platform beyond a simple consumption tablet” and make the use of touch-enabled devices more creative and productive. Among others, there is one field of application where we truly see a soaring need for ambidexterity and multi-modality: augmented textbooks.
Unlike their printed predecessors, electronic textbooks can empower traditional educational materials with embedded annotation tools, advanced bookmarks and search features, didactical videos and animation, interactive assessments, and exercises that can be completed directly on the book, then stored instantaneously in the cloud.
You might think that such applications have no chance to replace printed textbooks in the near future. Actually, this revolution is already on track in various countries around the globe. In South Korea, the government recently confirmed its plan to replace all printed textbooks nationwide by electronic counterparts by 2015, a move that will benefit from now available multi-touch technologies with precision and stylus input that enable handwriting recognition, making them especially suitable for products sold into Asian markets.