天美影视传媒

The many
definitions of 鈥渢ouch鈥�

鈥淚鈥檓 pretty sure if you went around and asked, 鈥楬ey, what do you think a touch is?鈥�, you might get different answers, but it would probably converge around something that looks like this,鈥� says Martez Mott, raising his pointer finger before tapping it on the table in front of him. 鈥淔or the participants in my studies, that was not the case at all.鈥�

Mott is a Ph.D. candidate in the UW鈥檚 and an active member of the philanthropy-funded (Mobile + Accessible Design) Lab and the (Design. Use. Build.) Group, where his research centers on making touch screens accessible for people who live with motor impairments, from cerebral palsy to muscular dystrophy to Parkinson鈥檚 disease.

鈥淭ouch screens were developed for a certain type of use,鈥� says Mott, who received financial support through the 天美影视传媒 Graduate Opportunity Award. It鈥檚 simple: If you want to interact with something on your device, you have to be able to extend a finger and touch it cleanly and accurately. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 it,鈥� he says. 鈥淓verything else is relegated to some other type of functionality 鈥� if you touch your phone with two fingers, it thinks you鈥檙e trying to zoom.鈥�

For those who live with cerebral palsy, however, touch might look like patting the screen with the back of the hand, or dragging a palm or a fist. 鈥淲hen that happens, the screen picks up a big blobby area,鈥� says Mott, 鈥渁nd the system has no idea what to do with it.鈥�

Yet.

For those who live with cerebral palsy, touch might look like patting the screen with the back of the hand, or dragging a palm or a fist.

The device asks you to touch a couple targets 鈥� a balloon or a bull鈥檚-eye, for example 鈥� so it can pick up on your unique touch patterns and adjust how it responds.

Making smart touch a reality

With real-life users

Two years ago, at the start of the project, Mott lugged a huge, table-sized Microsoft Surface into Provail: a local center that helps people with disabilities pursue the lives they want to live. Among the nonprofit鈥檚 many offerings? Computer classes 鈥� and lots of motivated learners willing to participate in his study.

There, Mott worked with eight volunteers to make Smart Touch a reality, beginning by asking them to hit targets on the screen. 鈥淚 had a wide range of participants, so I saw a wide range of strategies used to complete the tasks,鈥� he says. The first person would prop one hand on the tablet for support while dragging the other hand across the screen. The next person would interact with the device in an entirely different way. This, says Mott, is why inclusive innovation 鈥� actually looping the software鈥檚 target population into the design process 鈥� is so important.

鈥淲hen people are motivated to use a technology, they鈥檒l employ a lot of different strategies in order for that to become possible. It was difficult to get an understanding of what 鈥榯ouch鈥� looks like,鈥� he says. 鈥淧eople used the software in ways I couldn鈥檛 have predicted, which resulted in a lot of failure 鈥斅燼nd fixing 鈥� for me.鈥�

Martez Mott works on Smart Touch with Provail participant Ken Frye