Comment by MrMetlHed
2 hours ago
This is how my 8-year-old works on her school Chromebook. And all of the kids at her school that I've seen using laptops are similar. Touch the screen to interact, type on the keyboard. I think they're just wired to believe every screen should be touchable and go with whatever is easiest for them in the moment.
A touchscreen is a way more natural and intuitive interface than a mouse cursor driven by a trackpad.
If I'd never used a laptop before I'd probably do the exact same thing as the kids!
For interacting with a UX that's designed around keyboard and mouse? I get how it's intuitive to reach out and touch something you can see, but in terms of much of the UX it doesn't make any sense.
Exactly. Why on Earth would they default to touching something away from the screen that's an imperfect map to it when they can just touch the thing they want directly? I've seen so many people saying they don't understand and would never use a touchscreen on a laptop, and I just have to think they've not really been around non-technical adults or children.
You lose control without a desktop and mouse. I can't even begin to count the number of times I got hit with a dark pattern where an app steers me in a direction that I can't click out of because on touch interfaces, you have less control.
" you have less control."
Keyboard and mouse don't give you any more autonomy over the application developers state machine.
I'm not sure I understand the claim of "being in control". The UX is different, sure, often. But that's not "control" over the design of the application.
3 replies →
Huh that's really interesting because my 12 year old has been using a school-provided chromebook for 3 years now and she and all her peers almost NEVER use the touchscreen, they use the trackpad almost exclusively. And I've watched her using her ipad too, and she uses the touchscreen when she's in (her words) "that kind of app" but if she's in Google Docs she's 100% trackpad.
I wonder if by the time she's 12 she'll switch over more and more. I suspect that the trackpad is just a little too disconnected in her brain for now, especially since we don't really do a lot of screens / laptops. I don't think pinching to zoom and scrolling quickly and tapping things far away from where the cursor is will go away easily though.