Interface usability - Touchscreen support?

[Brook Powers]

I'm not wild about the interface. Even though I understand the reasons right click is limited, usability is going to be a key factor in market adoption (think iphone/ipad). There is no doubt that touchscreens, as in interface are intuitive and adoption is increasingly more prevalent.

Granted the video below is science fiction/hollywood.. but it could server as a design goal for Cisco.

Touch screen organization of topology, grouping,  collapsing/expansion of  groups and drilling into details by touching would allow MSPs/VARs to more easily organize, review and manage thier networks.

An intuative touch interface would certainly reduce end user training time, training costs and Cisco support call costs, while improve productivity.

Is Cisco considering tablet and touch screen clients in Cisco's design, interface and usability discussions?

[Marcos Hernandez]

Did they catch the perp? ;-)

One of my colleagues in charge of the UI enhancements in this project will respond to this inquiry. I think you will be pleased Brook.

Thanks,

Marcos

[Brook Powers]

Marcus,

I am pleased that you think I will be pleased

According to a very recent CA study, over $26 billion is lost to downtime.

http://arcserve.com/us/lpg/cost-of-downtime.aspx

I'm counting on Thunderbolt to help me combat those losses, with email alerts and escalating SMS messgaes to alert me to critical errors.

In order to receive and mitigate those errors, I need both convenient and efficient hardware interfaces.

Enter the Apple iPad and another recent initiative from Cisco/Citrix:

http://www.ipadsatwork.com/?utm_source=citrix&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=promo-pod

According to the survey http://community.citrix.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=158564368;

• 62 percent said they’d buy the iPad for work
• 72 percent said they have access to corporate resources using the iPad
• 38 percent said they work faster and better because of their iPad
• 88 percent believe the iPad can and will help them work better anywhere they are

The market will not be ignored!

[Michael Whitley]

Hi Brook,

Thanks for the feedback. I agree, touchscreens would be a fantastic way to work with one's network especially on devices like the ipad and cius. This type of touchscreen interaction is on our list of things to support in the future.

Improving the usability of our application is a very high priority and we are currently re-examining nearly every aspect of the portal with this in mind.

Thanks again,

Michael