8 ms·
I really like the thumb-reach heatmaps. This has been my personal experience on larger phones as well: I should be able to "thumb the numbers". I don't like a
by sharpercoder 9y ago
I really like the thumb-reach heatmaps. This has been my personal experience on larger phones as well: I should be able to "thumb the numbers".
I don't like a redesign because it's simply too ingrained. It's a sailed ship.
Note that our screens are big enough to waste space to nothing, at least for a phone dial screen. So we can redesign it to:
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- horsawlarway 9y agoAs a left handed user... I fucking despise the idea of thumb-reach heatmaps geared solely towards right handed use. As a side note, we make up ~10 percent of all users. If you design to the thumb reach of right handed users by default, you're fucking over a lot of people. Add on that ~19 percent of the population has some form of disability, and a solid chunk of that involves hand/limb usages, making the head-up-ass assumption that a right handed thumb map is the "ideal" approach is... well you've shoved your head up your ass. ---- edit: I want to add, I'm not attacking you so much as the general premise of the article. I come off as fairly hostile on this since it's such a common day to day inconvenience for a broad swath of the population.
- glandium 9y agoI'm right handed, but somehow I hold the phone and dial with the left hand. I don't think I'm alone, so this is not only a left-handedness problem.
- thaumasiotes 9y agoI am right-handed, and I also hold the phone in my left hand. It goes in my left pocket.
- glandium 9y agoNow that you mention it, it's also in my left pocket.
- IgorPartola 9y agoGoing to guess: your keys for your car are in your right pocket because that way they are in your right hand when you go to start it.
- nathanaldensr 9y agoHah, yep. Wallet and keys in right pocket, phone in left... as a right-handed person.
- remir 9y agoIt's the opposite for me. I'm left handed but use my phone with my right hand.
- nulagrithom 9y agoAlso left handed. I feel your hostility 100%. So many apps are subtly designed for right-handed people that I simply have grown accustomed to fumbling around with my right hand when using my phone. Don't even get me started on various other items designed for right-handed people. Like this popcorn scooper I found at a nearby convenience store: http://a.co/jjanj7H http://a.co/jjanj7H I've even run in to butter spreading knives that are impossible to use left-handed. Being left-handed is already a UX nightmare. Please don't make it worse.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoAlso a lefty, I like to think of the right-handedness of the world as a dexterity challenge, when the other stressors of life aren't grinding me down.
- robocat 9y agoTotally agree. Aside: I discovered touching a navbar button often doesn't work for a left hander, whereas it does work for a right handed person. This left vs right handed UX flaw occurred with the navbar button at top left on an iPhone (e.g. back or hamburger). A left finger comes in at an angle that makes the capacitive touchscreen register the touch as occurring at the extreme left edge of the screen. A right index finger registers the touch more correctly within the navbar button. Some navbar buttons don't extend the touch hit area to the edge, so a left finger fails to click it, whereas a right finger works...
- dmarlow 9y agoWould love to see phone in the future be able to detect which hang is holding the device and provide the correct layout for different apps.
- programmarchy 9y agoAn interesting thought, but there's some other factors at play. Navigating through views typically proceeds from left to right, which is why the back button is on the left side. I suppose you could change the direction of the animations, too. That seems unnatural in the context of a left-to-right language though.
- gertef 9y agoRight-handed privilege. But still, the thumbs are probably the least "handed" element of the body. I mix right and left thumb use based on whatever I need to be doing with my other hand.
- jv22222 9y agoCouldn’t the device simply have a setting for left handed vs right handed for the new layout type? Assuming the hearmap is the mirror image for left handed folks.
- ssdesign 9y agoHi, I totally agree, the thumb reach map does show it as a right hand usage diagram, but the flipped view holds true for left handed users too. Also inn my proposed alternatives, I should have mentioned that the should have preference for left handed users to flip the diagram.
- bobwaycott 9y agoAs a right-handed user, I encounter trouble frequently when I grab my phone with my left hand, and find touches no longer register reliably. It seems right-focused is a reasonable default for a vast majority of the population, but there needs to be a way to alter to a left-focused scheme via settings or something. It is maddeningly frustrating when I occasionally realize, “Oh, fuck. It’s doing that stupid ignore-my-left-hand thing.” Were that happening constantly, because I’m left-handed, I’d be feeling pretty damn salty.
- jtms 9y agocalm down there buddy, its a software rendered keypad... easy enough to flip it 180 for lefties with a setting
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoWhich no developer will actually implement. During the reign of touch scrollbars, before Apple obsoleted them, it was extremely rare to have an option to place them on the left side to avoid hand occlusion.
- jeromenerf 9y agoRight / left, or rtl/ltr is not flipping 180 or mirroring. You want eventually the navbar mirrored, but you surely don’t want to read 321, 654, 987 on your number pad. Being lefty doesn’t make your brain read rtl. There is no quick wins there.
- taneq 9y agoSo... a checkbox in Settings, then?
- rconti 9y agoWait.. which hand do you use? I'm right-handed but I use the phone with my left. (and it goes in my left pocket, because my car and house keys are in the right, per other comments).
- flyGuyOnTheSly 9y ago>As a left handed user... I fucking despise the idea of thumb-reach heatmaps geared solely towards right handed use. Hold your horses! Just use the left side of the keyboard as a toggle button... when you click it once... the keyboard switches over to a left handed position and stays there until someone else switches it back to the right handed position!
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoI had an Oppo F1S for a few weeks, it had a gesture whereby you could swipe and reduce the screen size to something like 60%[1] (guessing) thereby enabling one thumb reach. My daily driver is an iPhone SE, I have average / medium sized hands and can reach the whole screen well enough. 1. http://androidaustralia-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_20151001_125129998-1024x768.jpg http://androidaustralia-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/u...
- BoorishBears 9y agoiOS has had the half size screen gesture for a while, on my 6+ it's double touching the home button (not pressing it, just a light touch)
- ssdesign 9y agoYes thats true, but did you try to do that gesture on a phone number dial screen? If you do that, it only shows numbers 1 to 9, rest gets hidden and is out of screen area. It would be nice if they managed to show all digits while the gesture brings the screen down.
- valesco 9y agoSame for Huawei (swipe on the menu bar at the bottom).
- jcun4128 9y agowow, had to come here and figure out what the last part of this comment is (being read aloud) was like "what is up with this long delay between numbers/underscore) hmm
- notatoad 9y ago>I don't like a redesign because it's simply too ingrained. It's a sailed ship. I think you're probably right, but i'm glad somebody is taking the time to experiment anyways.
- drb311 9y agoJust get rid of the dialpad and let us use the keyboard to dial numbers. Google Keyboard already has a dialpad-style layout and you can choose to centre it or move it to the left or right thumbzone. We already use the keyboard to type numbers and it works much better than a full screen dial pad.