Interaction Devices
Introduction
The remarkable progress since 1960 in computer-processor speeds and storage
capabilities was matched by improvements in many inputp;output devices.
Ten-character-per-second teletypes have been replaced by high-speed mega-pixel
graphical displays for output, and the 100-year-old keyboard is giving way
to rapid and high-precision pointing devices for input. Breaking away from
previous strategies has proved to be more difficult than anticipated, but
the advances appear daily. Although the common Sholes keyboard layout is
likely to remain the primary device for text input, pointing devices increasingly
free users from keyboards for many tasks. The future of computing is likely
to include gestural input, two-handed input, three-dimensional pointing,
more voice inputp;output, and whole-body involvement for some input
and output tasks.
The increased concern for human factors has led to hundreds of new devices
and variants on the old devices: novel keyboards; pointing devices such
as the mouse, touchscreen, stylus, and trackball; speech recognizers, recorders,
and generators; eyetrackers, DataGloves, and force feedback. Color displays
for desktop and most laptops are standard, but monochrome displays (especially
flat-plate liquid-crystal panels) continue to proliferate in small and large
formats. Low-cost printers, even with color, are widely available. Innovative
input devices, sensors, effectors, and integration of computers into the
environment open the door to new applications (Brown, 1988; Sherr, 1988;
Greenstein and Arnaut, 1988; Foley et al., 1990; Card et al., 1991; Jacob
et al., 1993).
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Last Updated:
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