Teaching Touch

Touch is leading us to a future with less and less chrome, possibly even none at all, as gestures replace familiar buttons, menus, and tabs. But if there are no visible controls, how do users figure out how to use the damn thing? The talk will show how to teach users new interfaces and gesture vocabularies by creating discoverable gestures even without visible controls. The talk will show the power of animation, reveal the influence of game design, show how toddlers are better at this stuff than we are, and discuss the new ways we have to start thinking about the visual and functional design of our interfaces.