New Year Gesture

Iain recently reminded me of a website I think I’d seen before, but not recorded: www.dontclick.it. It’s an experiment in not clicking. The website is built in Flash and, after an introduction, actually chastises the user in the event of an accidental click (I suppose it’s some form of operant conditioning). And yes, I did accidentally click a few times (I guess it was because this goes against the training I’ve received through most of my years of computing).

So, this got me thinking about the whole concept of the click. What is a click? How central is it really to our experience on the web? Can we do without it? And if it was taken away, what would that web look and feel like? Read on for my research and opinion.

Background, FYI

(For the uninitiated, which included me to some degree). Computer mice and clicking have been with us for a while. The first commercial computer to include a mouse was the Xerox 8010 Star introduced in 1981 (according to Wikipedia, I was only just on the planet at this point so can’t vouch for it). Since then the concept behind clicking has been adapted to other input devices including trackballs, touchpads (generally used on laptops), touchscreens, graphics tablets etc.

Clicking is bound up in the WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing device) approach to GUI’s (Graphical User Interfaces) and relates to the user clicking and selecting a part of the screen to activate a command on the computer. Before the GUI and the mouse, text based interfaces were dominant and the return key would be the usual part of the keyboard that did the activating.

Since its development, clicking has been so fundamental in the WIMP world that input devices such as touchscreens have extended the concept to variants such as ‘tapping’ etc. The terms may change based on the user experience but the general interaction remains the same, again due mostly to the unchanging fundamentals of the 2D GUI.

How does this relate to the web?

Clicking helps to define the overall experience of the web. For example, it’s the last action before making a payment to make a purchase. It’s in the modern psyche as an expression of intention. Amazon patented ‘1-Click’ in 1999 as it ‘refers to the technique of allowing customers to make online purchases with a single click’. A lot is happening behind the scenes, but for the user this is reduced to a single action/concept. Other examples would include the proliferation of hyperlinks with explanatory text like ‘click to proceed’, ‘click to pay’ and the dreaded ‘click here’.

It’s always interesting to me how the popular perception of a thing shapes its explanation. This is because, of course, for some ‘1-Click’ is actually ‘1-Press-Return-Key’ or ‘1-Tap’. Clicking doesn’t naturally enter into the experience of a command line user or someone using certain types of assistive technology. What is universal in these examples is the activating of the command to progress to another web page or buy a product. This is a fabulous example of why the link text ‘click here’ is so nonsensical (and on its own so non-descriptive and just lame).

Of course the web is built on the hyperlink and for most clicking has become central to this interaction. Which brings me back to dontclick.it. What happens if the click is taken away? Well, it’s disconcerting at first. However, even though the website is initially a strange experience, I found myself getting used to it quite quickly. This made me wonder why I’d been such a blind follower of the click for so long. I’d never questioned.

Click-less future?

Now onto a general theme for this blog; Apple. They’ve just released the MacBook Air to predominantly positive reviews and despite its other boundary-pushing features, the one they’re most keen to promote on their website is the ‘multi-touch’ gesture support.

For the first time, they’ve brought multi-touch gestures from their successful iPhone and iPod touch products into their main computer offering. Although these features don’t replace the click, they could point to (pun intended) a future without it. What about a Minority Report inspired interface where ‘point and click’ becomes just ‘point’?

For many years, Apple’s relationship with the ‘click’ has been embroiled in the one or two button mouse debate. Seasoned computer users have derided their choice to stick with one button mice and even now their offering is a kind of fudge.

With the correct interface, could the click be superseded by a gesture? Gestures in computing are nothing new. Again, according to Wikipedia, the first mouse gesture was “the ‘drag,’ …introduced by Apple to replace a dedicated ‘move’ button on mouses shipped with its Macintosh and Lisa computers”.

For most, removing the click would have a fundamental impact on the psychology of human computer interaction, as expressed in this quote from the dontclick.it site:

clicks make me think of isolated segments this is immersive.
01.17.2008 msg# 37833 by ‘roger doonan’.

Apart from the psychology, what about accessibility/usability? By extension, some replacement for the mouse (pointing device) could help those with motor control difficulties. i.e. not having to click on exactly the right pixel on the screen. Take it a stage further, replacing the keyboard with a gesture based interface could revolutionalise computer usage for those of us for whom the standard QWERTY keyboard represents a barrier.

The end is in sight

There are lots of interface design problems that would need addressing before the clicking could ever stop. I wonder how complex a system could get before a gesture became indiscrete enough to place ambiguity between it and the user. I also wonder if computer interface designers will ever get to purely gesture based interaction without a paradigm (I got that word in Rik!) shift from creating more and more complex interfaces, towards distilling it right down to what the user actually needs.

These are just my thoughts on what may be to come. As always I’m hoping to add to any discussion that’s taking place, this is not a bid for revolution (although could you imagine an online petition to abandon the click? “Click here to abolish the click!” – wholly hypocritical).

Update 22 February 2008: “Apple Depicts Advanced Multitouch Gesturing Control Panel in Mac OS X” – an article written a couple of days ago about possible developments using muiti-touch.

Posted on Saturday 26 January 2008.

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