The industry trend towards touchscreens gained further momentum today with the release of Google’s Chromebook Pixel. 

Despite there being little in the way of tangible benefit to desktop interaction on current UI’s - the onset of touch adoption is an industry initiated (rather than problem solving*) inevitability. Scrambling for points in the innovation race, touch has become the de facto add-on to get the jump on the next guy - regardless of how subpar the experience is for the poor sods that have to use these devices.

Touch, as an interaction model is clearly brilliant in context. Phones, tablets, even basic kiosk type devices work well. But the common factors holding that success together are simplicity and ergonomics. Dedicated apps distill functionality down to brass tacks and UI’s are shaped around those simple needs and sit back engagement.

As is often written about - much to the chagrin of manufacturers like Apple, consumption constantly trumps creation on these devices. Sure there are edge cases where unique products find a niche that can be exploited by the medium, but the posit for scaling that same idea up to something that you no longer hold in your hand, just doesn’t hold water.

Devices like the Pixel are doomed to create frustration in users by virtue of the fact they’ve introduced a new interaction layer on top of a surface that was not intended for touch, or really ready for it on so many legacy sites and products - particularly so in the case of the Pixel, where that surface is entirely based around a web browser. Josh Clark suggests the solution is to make everything we design suitable for touch. That’s a lovely simplistic approach, but that presupposes that the product or site is A) suitable for touch** B) the business constraints of the project allow that to happen.

We’re at a juncture where this forced compromise could become such a burden that experiences get diluted at all ends of the spectrum to become average everywhere rather than appropriate for the user.

The notion of one UI to rule them all is a compelling one, but without decent detection and tailoring for touch (which we can’t do right now) we’re going to have to live with a glut of over-sized Fisher Price style products that hinder other experiences because of the injection of the need for touch support.

*What was broken with the desktop interaction model we had? No-one seems to have identified that in the excitement of the new and shiny.

**Some stuff is just too complex or precise it won’t work well with touch. Like Ever.