Re: Interacting with a touchscreen

[Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

I suggest using the word "touch" and telling your colleague to grow up.


--- On Mon, 12/29/08, Boudreaux, Madelyn (GE Healthcare, consultant) <MadelynBoudreaux -at- ge -dot- com> wrote:

> From: Boudreaux, Madelyn (GE Healthcare, consultant) <MadelynBoudreaux -at- ge -dot- com>
> Subject: Interacting with a touchscreen
> To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> Date: Monday, December 29, 2008, 6:45 PM
> 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, and we can't come to a consensus of the
> best word. (Of
> course, this is complicated by some -- but not all --
> buttons/keys being
> in more than one location...)
> 
> My first choice, "tap" can't be used because
> it refers (somewhat
> colloquially but in an ingrained manner) to a procedure
> using a foot
> switch, so it can't be used.  
> 
> "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."
> 
> I had wanted to preserve "click" for onscreen
> buttons and "press" for
> keys on a keyboard or other external keypad (of which we
> have both, of
> course, the latter being something like those pads you see
> attached to
> hospital beds by a long curly cord), but after 30 minutes
> of
> brainstorming, we were right back to click and press, with
> nothing else
> seeming right. "Select" and "choose"
> were both floated, but those both
> strike me as useful only in the case of an actual choice
> among equal
> options, although not everyone agreed. 
> 
> Does anyone have a magic word for me? 
> 
> Please, and thank you (my other magic words for the
> day...)!
> 
> Sincerely,
> Madelyn Boudreaux
> 
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