There were already some good responses on the other questions, so I'll
jump in on the right-hand biasing question. The short reply is yes, it
is important to think about the physical issues related to where
controls appear on a touchscreen, especially for something that's a
larger form factor (i.e., not hand-held). Things like reach, strain,
and what is obscured while reaching for the controls should be
important concerns.
In one product I worked on (with a 15" touchscreen), in field
observation we noticed that a lot of users would use the product while
sitting and resting their on arm on their elbow or forearm, pivoting
it to interact with the touchscreen rather than lifting the whole arm.
In that context, it made sense to consider how we could place controls
on the screen to avoid making people lift or move their whole arm too
much.
So, we put the primary navigation (tabs) along the right side of the
screen and biased having most buttons/controls appear in the bottom
half of the screen. This tested well, even with a lefty, who we
specifically asked about it. She naturally used her right hand to
press the tabs on the right side of the screen without any trouble or
concern. We were pretty good about sticking close to the 3/4" minimum
size guideline -- if finer accuracy were required it might have been
harder for her to use her right hand for this. She used her left hand
for most other interactions.
We only placed controls that were infrequently used in the top 1/3 of
the screen, and rarely used controls in the top-left corner. Imagine
placing a frequently used control in the top-left of the screen where
you have to reach up and across your body and obscure the whole screen
to press it. We also didn't put any controls in the top-right of the
screen -- we reserved this area for important status messages, knowing
it would never be obscured by the user while interacting with the
product.
Regards, Adam
...
Adam Korman
[email protected]
On Feb 11, 2009, at 7:47 AM, Jeff Millington wrote:
3) Any experiences with right-hand biasing of the GUI when using a
7" LCD?
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