Augmenting Interactive Tables with Mice & Keyboards

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Brett Hlavinka
Chris Aikens


This paper was written by Björn Hartmann from the Stanford University HCI Group and Meredith Ringel Morris, Hrvoje Benko, and Andrew D. Wilson from Microsoft Research.  This paper explores the idea of having not only touch as input on multi-touch tables but keeping the standard mouse and keyboard  as well.  It is common for multi-touch technology to attempt to "do away with" the standardized mouse and keyboard, but it is shown that despite the oddity of the two, they are crucial for direct input to a computer.  The keyboard is almost irreplaceable as a form of text input because on-screen keyboards have such a slow response time associated with them.  Mice are equally important because it brings not only precision, but a form of "hand extension" to reach far away widgets.  In this paper a scenario of a group of students working on a research paper is presented to help introduce how this technology could be effectively used.

I enjoyed this paper more than I thought I would at first glance.  I originally thought that there was no need for mice and keyboards with multi-touch systems because the ability to provide multiple inputs should take care of the need for this norm.  When I thought of this, I neglected to realize the fact that current multi-touch technology has a "lag" when things are inputted.  This immediately corrected my thinking about having keyboards as a needed peripheral but I will still wary of the mouse.  Currently, most multi-touch devices are fairly small so the thought of a mouse as a natural "arm extension" seems plausible.  Also after looking at FTIR readings from hand input, I realize that the input is actually a "blob" not the "perfect point" that a mouse delivers.  This definitely raises some support from me for the mouse.  While I am altogether not sold on the mouse being absolutely necessary (a stylus is a much more natural method of precision and could replace the mouse easily), I find that the keyboard being a temporarily necessary device intriguing.  Once technology advances to where multi-touch keyboards are just as fast as the peripheral, I think it will begin to fade out of our daily lives.