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ALA TechSource

Touch and User Experience

I just posted over at ALA TechSource on some of my thoughts after using the iPad for most of a week…I’m convinced that we’re about to hit a period where we will have to start thinking about reworking our user interfaces for Touch interaction. From the post:

We are used to mediated interactions with digital objects, using a tool as an intermediary or proxy. We’ve been interacting by metaphor, instead of directly. The mouse pushes a cursor around the screen, and the cursor interacts with the object (window, file, text) that we’re interested in. On a touchscreen, especially the modern touchscreen, you are interacting with the digital world directly. For those who haven’t had this experience, I can’t emphasize how much this changes the relationship between the information and the user.

Let me know what you think…do you think that libraries will move towards Touch-based technologies in the next year?

By griffey

Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.

2 replies on “Touch and User Experience”

Depends on the target audience. 🙂 Most of the users @MPOW are seeking to access our electronic resources. Even so, this is a tricky decision because no matter how awesome we make the digital experience for our users through the touch tablet, its wonderfulness would be greatly diminished if the e-resources we subscribe to don't perform well on the same device. I dig @willkurt's presentation, so I suppose libraries with digital collections could probably start looking into this. Come to think of it, I believe this is where linked-data and semantic web could be utilized to create awesome user experience.My 2 cents.

Depends on the target audience. 🙂 Most of the users @MPOW are seeking to access our electronic resources. Even so, this is a tricky decision because no matter how awesome we make the digital experience for our users through the touch tablet, its wonderfulness would be greatly diminished if the e-resources we subscribe to don't perform well on the same device.

I dig @willkurt's presentation, so I suppose libraries with digital collections could probably start looking into this. Come to think of it, I believe this is where linked-data and semantic web could be utilized to create awesome user experience.

My 2 cents.

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