When your project requires a touch screen, getting what you need is kind of a big deal. To do this you need to understand your application, the environment the screen will be placed into, and the audience. With the the apple iOS for iphones and iPads, Android from Google, and Microsoft’s new Windows 7 Phone based devices, the media is all a stir about multi-touch based screens. Multi-touch is the ability to touch the screen in more than one place and have both points recognized as an interaction at the same time. This sure does come in handy if you are going to resize a photo by putting two fingers on screen and bringing them towards or away from each other, but, to be honest, not always needed for most kiosk based applications. As prices for all devices are dropping, you still shouldn’t pay for something you don’t need. If your application requires a simple touch of a button or sliding of a scroll bar, single-touch might be right up your alley.

Is your device going to be used in an industry, such as medical, that might require latex gloves to be worn? Perhaps cleaning fluids like water and soap are going to be making an appearance on the hand? You might need to check out a resistive touchscreen over a capacitive touchscreen. Capacitive touchscreens are seen with your iPhone or iPad. Notice that you can’t touch the device with any object and hope for recognition. Resistive touchscreens recognize a press between two plates and therefor recognize any object that can put force on the screen. This is ideal for glove wearers or if you need to […]