Touch App Design & Little Kiddos -- Great Advice from a Design Expert

My personal opinion is that little kiddos are going to drive adoption of total-touch based human-computer interfaces.  They did not learn to interact with computers using a mouse and keyboard -- and don't have to unlearn it.  Give them some good content on a well designed device, and they have a ball! 

Case in point, my two year old daughter LOVES our iPad.  She has no idea how to use a mouse or keyboard, but give her the iPad, she can unlock it, and start up her favorite app, Jack & The Beanstalk.  I don't think it is an accident that "Jack" is her favorite game -- a lot of thought and design went into the interaction.  Allbeit, some over done and annoying to Mom and Dad, but overall, it is a great app. 

Why?

I was doing some web research and ran across a blog article on Touch Based App Design & Toodlers by @LukeW.  Great article!  Basically, Luke breaks down a few tips on what works and doesn't work when designing applications for little munchins, including accomodating little gestures, doing away with splash screens, and non-intuitive menus.  Simple, but very important. 

Music as a natural use of multi-touch interfaces

I have been seeing a trend lately of adoption of multi-touch interfaces within music driven applications: ranging from piano playing to replacement of a traditional DJ interface.  It makes me think that there is something about music that lends itself to early adoption of the more initiative interface... I know this is deep and yet a simple concept, but there has to be something to the way music makes us feel that drives us to ditch the mouse and keyboard at first opportunity in preference for a multi-touch interaction.  I wonder if anyone has studied this?

Here are a few links to music based multi-touch applications I have seen in recent days:

• AudioTouch OS by @SethSandler
• DJ Table Concept as a senior project by Greg Kaufman