One of the current drawback of certain touch devices (Iphone) is it's lack of copy/paste functionality. The difficultly in creating this functionality on a mobile device is that the interaction technique has to be non-intrucive to the core interface.
Unlike a desktop application where you can toss commands into a menu the interaction model on a phone has to be more direct and gestural. The copy/paste model I'm proposing tries to address some of these issues.
When a user is viewing a core text area:
- They can scroll (tap + drag ).
- They can move the insertion pointer (tap)
- They can use the magnifier loupe to position the insertion pointer (tap+hold)
In my illustration you could activate additional copy/paste gestures:
- You can bring up the copy/paste pallet ( tap+tap near the insertion pointer)
- Once the panel is open you can mark a selection (tap+dragging) from the insertion point creates a selection. Similarly you could create a selection with two fingers marking both corners..
- When in copy/paste mode the keyboard is replaced by your recently cut/copied blocks of text or images. You can tap a piece of text to insert it into your document
Note: The tap+tap gesture is sometimes used in application to zoom however it is never used to zoom while editing text or viewing read-only text such as in emails or contact lists.
Unfortunately at this point it's not possible for third party application developers to write an extension such as this so it's a concept sketch only at this point.
P.S. Did you know we're now developing and designing mobile apps? Check out our latest design work for a new fitness startup focused on running.