Discuss the research foundations of this, and touch on cogsci and physiology. Use the proper section with the bones in the hand and so on. Segue with the fact that this is going to be permanent or very long term findings as people don't change...

Yes, we're scientists.

Sometimes when I bring this up in conversation--how we should behave as scientists--people laugh or look confused, but it's critical. It's core to why this book exists. UX is not just rooted in psychology and physiology of our human users, but

What do we do as scientists?

A common critique of working with others is that they interpret UX as UI, and UI as art, and art is subjective. We have information to back this up. But when we set this aside and let opinion, and observational bias creep in, we are just subjective artists after all.

We complain that business is structured to preserve intellectual property, too often at the expense of intellectual curiosity. But what passes for a pattern library is a set of screenshots, the best examples I see trotted out are student redesigns (so not real projects) and we agonize over the best color palette.

Embrace your inner scientist. Read not just the guidelines, but the background behind it all, then search the literature yourself, go research yourself, etc... SUMMARIZE HOW TO SEARCH, AND YOU SHOULD JOIN ACM FOR THE DL?

Physiology

While giving you a full understanding of the biomechanics of the hand would be interesting, it’s too lengthy to go into here. Basically, the thumb moves in a sweeping range—of extension and flexion—not from the point where it connects with the rest of your hand, but at the carpometacarpal joint way down by your wrist. The other joints on your thumb let it bend toward the screen, but provide no extra sweep motion. Bending is important because, while the free range of the thumb’s movement is in three-dimensional space, touchscreens are flat, so a limited part of the thumb’s range of movement gets mapped onto the phone’s screen.

We often forget that, because people live in the real world, their interactions with devices occur in the layer where we convert reality into flat representations of input and output. Physiologically, your thumb includes the bones that extend all the way down to your wrist, as shown in Figure 4. Plus, the thumb’s joints, tendons, and muscles interact with your other digits—especially the position of the index finger. If your fingers are grasping a handset, there is a more limited range of motion available to the thumb. But moving your fingers lets you change the area your thumb can reach.

Figure 4—The thumb’s bones extend all the way down to your wrist.

The thumb’s bones extend all the way down to your wrist. The thumb is your hand’s strongest digit, so using the thumb to tap means holding the handset with your weaker fingers. Your fingers’ limited range of motion and reduced strength seems to result in the use of a second hand for cradling the device. Plus, in any case where users may encounter or expect jostling or vibration, they tend to cradle the device—using one hand just to hold it and securing the device with their non-tapping thumb. Recent research by Alexander Ng et al. has explored the effect of trying to carry other objects while walking and using the phone. One-handed use causes a particularly high reduction in accuracy in this situation.

There has also been some small-scale research that explores our understanding of physiology in relation to modern touchscreens and models that predict our interactions with them, but it’s still quite early days for these. I have some concerns that they are not yet applicable to our design work because they do not correlate well to people’s observed behavior. But I have hopes that useful models will eventually emerge, and we’ll be able to refer to preferred and effective tap areas for each device and population type.

From here, and get the image of the hand as well! http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2014/11/the-rise-of-the-phablet-designing-for-larger-phones.php#sthash.USx7hbHl.dpuf

Human Factors and Normal Variation

Get some from the HF handbooks if I can!!! Somewhere there's a reference to finger sizes, in the standards work. Find it, discuss how relevant and how NOT relevant.

Bias and Opinion

How we are bad at self-reporting. We should know this from our general mistrust of using market research and surveys for usability and design, but still we fall into the trap. This is very much what caused me to do all this research originally: people who should know better regularly going off on how they use their phone, without a hint that they might be wrong as we have many biases. In my observations, people simply cannot observe themselves at all while deeply involved in another activity. Deeply involved in their phone, they do not see that they have changed their grip, and asking them to hold in different ways to get the source photos for all these drawings was almost impossible...

Science!

Overview that I did research, and also a lot of the other papers I referred to... Summary as I mentioned it earlier as being an issue, have touched on the old-tech issues in that chapter, etc.

We know this from: — 1,333 original observations on how people hold and touch their phones — At least 19 serious, academic studies (by others) which I referenced and analyzed — Including one with some 91,731 users and over 120 million touch events. — 651 new observations done in coordination with the eLearning Guild, on how people also use phablets and tablets in offices, classrooms and the home — Recently some of you may have read about another 31 people I videod from their point of view, touching their phones and tablets.

And this is starting a trend. Others have been doing their own research to extend from the work I’ve been doing, so we’re getting usage data from other countries, from other devices, gathered in different ways, and as users different things like carry around their shopping.

References

The Science of Touch (last edited 2014-11-19 14:48:40 by shoobe01)