Gorilla Arm, CAD and Large Touchscreens

I've often thought that a 24"x36" touch-sensitive screen -even though likely horrendously expensive- would be useful as a replacement for mouses, digitizer tablets (does anyone even use those any more?) and the various multi-button puck-type input devices. Think one of those fancy plasma screens attached to a drafting board instead of Borco (sort of like a light table). Then I stumbled across this:

<<gorilla arm n. The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens as a mainstream input technology despite a promising start in the early 1980s. It seems the designers of all those spiffy touch-menu systems failed to notice that humans aren't designed to hold their arms in front of their faces making small motions. After more than a very few selections, the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and oversized -- the operator looks like a gorilla while using the touch screen and feels like one afterwards. This is now considered a classic cautionary tale to human-factors designers; "Remember the gorilla arm!" is shorthand for "How is this going to fly in real use?".>>

<a href="http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/g/gorilla_arm.html">http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/g/gorilla_arm.html</a>

Since the big touchscreen would be fixed to a tiltable table, the Gorilla Arm effect would be minimized and a lot less zooming would be required. Just an off-the-wall idea.

Paul Received on Fri Apr 16 22:25:00 2004