RE: Interacting with a touch screen

["Sharon Burton" <sharon -at- anthrobytes -dot- com>]

I've documented several touch screens and the accepted ways to interact
seems to be "touch" (fingers) and "tap" (stylus or other device).

I looked at the various touch screen vendors documentation like Palm, MS and
others and this seems to be the way they talk about interacting with the
screens. Since this is the way my users were probably familiar with, I went
with that so they didn't have to learn a new vocabulary.

We (as an industry) really need to stop with the idea that some words are
creepy or weird. Our users are not that picky. They just want clear
instructions so they can move on with their lives.

(I remember the QA reviewer who had a thing about the word "must". She
wouldn't certify a document accurate until every "must" was removed. She
didn't like ordering people, she said. So we couldn't tell the users that
they must type their username and password to login to the system. She
wanted us to say they "should". As tho there were options here. sigh)

sharon

Sharon Burton
951-369-8590


-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+sharon=anthrobytes -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+sharon=anthrobytes -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com]On Behalf
Of Downing, David
Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 6:42 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Interacting with a touchscreen


From: "Boudreaux, Madelyn (GE Healthcare,	consultant)"
	<MadelynBoudreaux -at- ge -dot- com>
Subject: Interacting with a touchscreen

I'm trying to institute using unique and appropriate verbs for
interacting with different input devices in documents: press a key,
click an on-screen button, etc., so that a user never has to wonder
which device is being referenced when she sees a given verb.

Unfortunately, we have some devices that have certain buttons on a
touchscreen,

[snip]

"Touch," is, in the words of one person, "creepy." There are no more
good touches, only bad ones, I guess. To be fair, I hate it in this
usage; it's so very passive sounding, even in conjunction with
"touchscreen."

[snip]


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 2009 is your all-in-one authoring and publishing 
solution. Author in Doc-To-Help's XML-based editor,  Microsoft Word or 
HTML and publish to the Web, Help systems or printed manuals. 
http://www.doctohelp.com

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to 
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40web.techwr-l.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/ for more resources and info. 

Please move off-topic discussions to the Chat list, at:
http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/listinfo/techwr-l-chat