Designing presentations for touch-screen - by Chirag Dalal

Problem

Is there anything special I need to do when designing presentations for touch-screen systems?

Solution

Here are some suggestions from PowerPoint MVP Chirag Dalal:

Generally, you can consider a touch on the touch-screen the same as a mouse-click in the same position. But there are a few other points you should keep in mind:

• Avoid putting hotspots near edges: Edges do not have good precision, so a touch may not be recorded or may may mistakenly trigger a nearby hotspot. Also, presenters sometimes rest their hands on the edges. For this reason alone, hotspots near edges are a bad idea.
• Touch-screens can be configured to use an extended-time touch as a right-click. Consider whether you want to use or disable this feature.
• Touchpads don't allow dragging, scrolling, inking, or highlighting. A touch-screen is not the same as a tablet or touchpad.
• Touchpads don't generally support mouse-overs. Special capacitive touch-screens can detect something coming close, but most touch-screens require pressure on the pad to trigger a "click".

---