How Important is Visual Feedback When Using a Touch Screen

From check station point-of-sale devices (restaurants, grocery stores, etc.) to information kiosks, to the cars we drive (navigation systems), touch screens have become the input device of choice. While the versatility of the touch screen is highly desired, the poor performance it achieves relative to the mechanical keyboard has been something that users have been forced to deal with. Empirical research studies have found that touch screens consistently produced slower and less accurate performance when compared with keyboards (Barrett & Krueger, 1994; Wilson, Inderrieden, & Liu, 1995). Schneiderman (1998) outlines the many advantages and disadvantages to using a touch screen (see Table 1).