Thursday, July 24, 2008
The Endangered Mouse
byIn a recent article from BBC News, an analyst from the tech firm Gartner predicted the death of the computer mouse within the next five years. He bases his prediction on current advances in interaction with electronics, such as the motion-sensitive Nintendo Wii and touch-screen iPhone. Reference is also made to technology from Panasonic which senses hand movement and facial features. But can these technologies really take the place of a mouse?
The modern personal computer’s user interface is largely designed around the mouse. Almost every operating system is based on objects (such as windows, icons, and buttons) being manipulated by a little arrow (the pointer) on a two-dimensional screen. The mouse was designed to allow a human to easily move the pointer with precision. Moving the pointer from one side of a twenty-four inch monitor only requires moving the mouse a few inches, which is very helpful for ergonomics.
Nintendo designed the Wii controller for games. It’s perfect for mimic-ing swinging a bat or throwing a bowling ball. It’s also useful for navigating the simple menus in the Wii’s interface. And for some computer related tasks, such as browsing the internet, it may work fine. But one of the reasons it won’t replace the mouse is it requires a certain distance and position from the screen. It’s made to be used on a TV across the room, not on a monitor eighteen inches from your face. A lot of people (including myself) make a living by sitting in front of a computer for eight hours or more a day. Imagine holding up and waving a device in front of you all day. Think about all the precise targeting you do to get your work done, such as opening folders, moving icons, clicking on menus, or clicking the ‘bold’ button in Word. We don’t think about how often we do it (which is probably thousands of times a day), because the mouse makes it easy to do.
Touch screen popularity is also on the rise, thanks in part to Apple’s iPhone. And there’s no doubt that for a small mobile device, a touch screen is the perfect way to interact. One of the reasons it works so well on the iPhone is because the interface was designed around the finger. Many of the metaphors that exist in a personal computer, such as hovering over items, click-and-drag to select, or overlapping windows, don’t exist on the iPhone. It’s a different kind of interface. Having a touch screen desktop computer might sound neat at first, but it will quickly turn into a burden.
Try this little exercise: if you’re on a desktop or notebook computer, tap the actual screen (be gentle!). Tap your icons, act like you’re dragging them around, or moving or closing windows, or selecting text. Try to do it as quickly as you can with your mouse. Doing that for a minute or two isn’t bad. But imagine doing that for ten minutes, or eight hours! It would be enough to put an orthopedic surgeon on speed dial.
The mouse is very well suited for the problem it solves: interacting with a personal computer. There will be many more specialized interfaces in the very near future like the Wii and iPhone that don’t require a mouse. Small internet devices, like a sort of simplified tablet PC, would work just fine with a touch screen. But the personal computer is too generalized for the mouse to go away. So five, ten, fifteen, or more years in the future, the mouse will survive and remain in good health.
