Everyone should be aware by now that mobile phones and tablets are taking over the world. The “normal computer” is no longer a desktop with a keyboard and mouse, but a touchscreen smartphone or tablet.
But we’ve just ended up with a new set of interaction problems, because touch is still quite new. We are still developing patterns of interaction, and we don’t really, in general, understand how touchscreens even work. All too often we make decisions based on anecdote, opinion, personal bias, hearsay and rumor.
This was underscored recently way with the launch of the iPhone 6 series. Many designers showed their focus on iOS and lack of rigor in process by panicking over how people will interact with the larger screen and hold a larger device. But we're scientists; we should demand proof and seek out information when it clearly already exists. On other platforms (Android, Windows Phone) large screen phones are becoming the norm so there’s data out there.
SUB
The ubiquity of smartphones has, while making many of us excited to work on mobile, in important ways actually hindered the development of good heuristics. Principles of “natural UI” have been taken to heart, and we believe our experiences are representative of everyone’s experience and preference.
All too often we make decisions based on anecdote, opinion, personal bias, hearsay and rumor. We malign others, and even discount user preferences and patterns which opposition to our own. For just one common example, I have encountered many who automatically assume only iPhone users are worth building for, often with no data to back it up.
More frustratingly, much of the foundational research cannot be applied completely or uniformly to modern devices. The devices have changed in use, form and technology enough just since the 1990s that care must be taken even with international standards on ergonomics and human factors.
For about the past two years [dates instead due to publication times and printed matter?] I have been looking closely at the existing body of research, and filled in the gap with several studies I performed myself or in coordination with others. I have found much of our knowledge to be outdated or grounded in poor assumptions, but have come to useful, actionable conclusions about how people really hold and touch their phones and tablets.
The Normal Computer
Ever since mobiles came into the public mindset as connected, Internet devices, designers and developers have been assailed by principles that tell us mobile is smaller, harder to use, slower, and limited. Most of all, that it's not as good as a normal computer.
I've always found this an odd point of view. Mobiles are not smaller, they are portable. They are not limited in input, but have more sensors, and more access to them than any desktop or laptop. And lately, I have been especially taking task with the concept of the desktop or laptop PC being a normal computer at all.
Computer science all but began with SAGE, a 1950s US Air Force project to build a giant network of computers that would control the air defenses of the US. Except it also was integrated into multiple control centers, so was multi-user, and had multiple outputs at each center. It had multiple inputs, including light pens (as close to touch as you could get at the time). It had sensors. It automatically accepted radar and other data into the system.
I tend to go so far as to say that the desktop PC revolution was an aberration. You might look around and see lots of computers, but paddlewheels were the ubiquitous method of river transport for a few decades before they were replaced by something better. The total installed base of PCs has started to fall, and there are in many regions and for many companies more mobile users than desktop.
The normal computer is now a mobile device, whether handheld, tablet or something in between.
- There are more mobile phones than people active in the world, 7 billion mobile devices. Not sold, active right now at the end of 2014.
- There are 2 billion smartphones alone in use. Growth is spectacular. Even in developing markets like MENA, in just the last two years they have gone from niche devices to over 20% of the market. They may be 80% by DATE. FIND ONE...
- And that outweighs the 1.4 billion desktop and laptop computers installed today.
- There will be more mobile tablets sold in 2014 alone than desktops and laptops combined.
- Things we take for granted in the west like everyone having email are not truly global. There are about 700 million active email addresses, and about 5 billion SMS subscribers.
The trend is mobile. And a lot of those few desktops being sold also have touchscreens, so many of the lessons of mobile apply to PCs over time. As with everything, the final history will be much more complex, so I expect the PC not to die off but to morph into something else. But for now, and for years to come, the touchscreen smartphone is the model of connected computing to most of the world.
Misconceptions About Touch
What we we used to “know” about touch was what Apple told us, the 44 pixel target. But that was based on some convenience of that platform’s design, and pixel sizes. It’s not based on the real world. Because the OS makers also don’t really know. We’ve all stumbled into this, and so unless you work for Apple or Google, you need to work /around/ their concept of touch.
- We know touch accuracy has nothing to do with finger or thumb size.
- We know it has no direct relationship to reach, and that doesn’t matter as not everyone holds their phone with one hand, anyway.
- There are not “no go” areas in the corner of the screen to avoid or put dangerous controls, just areas of more and less accuracy, which we can easily account for in design.
- No one, and no design solution, will yield pinpoint accuracy so you can use tiny targets.
- And I don’t know what the next big device will be, but it won’t be whatever one thing you are designing for today.
Josh Clark’s one handed–reach charts have been popular ever since they came out, because they gave a voice to the assumption that everyone holds their phone with one hand. Supposedly, this is primarily because the iPhone’s 3.5-inch screen is the perfect size for one-handed use—with the implication that other sizes are not. The idea, shown in Figure 2, is that people can comfortably touch anything within the arc of the area that the thumb can naturally reach, but as users stretch to reach other parts of the screen, it causes them discomfort.
But even ignoring the fact that people do much or most tapping with more than one hand on their phone, this assumption about reach seems flawed. We don’t have stretchy fingers, so reaching further doesn’t hurt, it simply becomes impossible! There are limits to what people can reach. I have repeatedly observed people adjusting the way they’re holding their phone so they can interact with the rest of it.
That sales data that I mentioned earlier indicates that people don’t seem to mind this. People keep buying large devices—and not all of them are people with large hands. In my research, a lot of participants use a second hand for tapping. No one complains about this—even when I test dedicated iPhone users by giving them larger Android phones—they just adapt.
Too long, too old, but anything good from here to add? http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/03/common-misconceptions-about-touch.php
References
- ACM article on SAGE is very nice. CANNOT find it now!!!
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/03/common-misconceptions-about-touch.php