Tooltips in the era of touch

Question

Tooltips are an incredibly useful interface paradigm to know an application. They are the mapping between the visual control and the application specific action associated t

Answer 1

Well, the benefit of the tooltip is that it adds an overlying stage of (very minor) information before an action occurs. So it seems to me that adding that layer back in via a "double click" to perform the action with a "single click" to display information would be an equivalent idea.

I think that we've all seen the movies with the future screen interfaces where someone touches the screen and it splays out a geometric shape of information around that touch. Why not use that concept, have the first touch expand the information about the action as a useful in-page tooltip, and then the second click on the same spot would confirm/perform the action.

If not "click-on-item-shows-tooltip-second-click-performs-action" how about proximity? If you want information about a UI widget, with enough spacing, you could touch next to the widget and receive information on it, touch -on- the widget and perform the action.

Tooltips provide so little information, generally (pointer vs. hand, text-tool-tip, hover bolding) that I think that you could also just duplicate the tooltip information by paying close attention to user action history. If they've been clicking on two thing more frequently than another thing recently, have the default tooltip & added value & emphasis appear for those few more frequently clicked things instead of others.

Edit: Also, thinking about it more, drag in a space that doesn't need scrolling or the like seems like an alright trigger for tooltip information. Take the iphone's keyboard, for example. Each letter has a tooltip while you drag it, whereas the letter itself is actually activated when you release. Aids in repositioning precision.

Beyond that, I think that specifics come into play. Are you talking laptop tablet? phone touch interface with very limited space? I think available space plays a large part in how you have to do things with a touch interface.