5 ms·

Hand tremors and the giant-button-problem (2018)

20 points by 0xedb 5y ago

meristohm 5y ago
To anyone developing user interfaces: please make it easier to tap buttons and otherwise control the app. Music streaming apps are particularly frustrating with their small, non-framed buttons where a mis-click can lead to playing a song and overwriting the playlist rather than adding the song.
- saurik 5y ago
  I run into this constantly while using the YouTube app to "watch" (where I am mostly just listening to the video and otherwise carrying my phone; or even just transiently in portrait while moving the device) a video in portrait, wherein seemingly even very subtle touches at the edge of the device will lead to it jumping to other new videos and forcing me to go back... which seems to remember where I was half the time but the other half of the time just goes back to the beginning :/.
sleightofmind 5y ago
Please, a hardware rocker that serves as an up/down arrow key. Make it dirt simple to enable/disable in software (via, of course, the touch screen). Millions of people, with of without physical challenges will thank you by buying your phone. I'm sure better hardware suggestions than mine have been put forward to address this. Please, Dear Phone Maker who want's to be fabulously successful, choose one and do it. Take the power of engineered inadvertent clicks away from unscrupulous advertisers. Touchscreens are wonderful but they're not the answer to every need.
legerdemain 5y ago
Hey, how about some sort of physical device that enables you to scroll the page without having any other effect? Revolutionary! Might make it possible to wrest back some control over your attention from the digital mousetrap in your pants pocket.
TristanBall 5y ago
So happy to see someone paying attention to this.. my shakes come and go, better with meds, but laptop trackpads without separate buttons have been nearly unusable for me for years. Tap to click and drag to scroll are terrible ideas if you have the shakes. All the various multi finger gestures? Pfft, I can do 2 fingers well enough to be recognised about 80% of the time, but that's still hugely frustrating, especially when the attempt ends up registing as a click because I twitched. I have only bought Lenovo and some dell latitude laptops for years because of this, because they're they only ones that consistently have separate buttons.
sterlind 5y ago
Motor disabilities are really overlooked in UX. I have the most problems with modals and hovers, especially hovers with scrollable content, since it's hard to keep the eye tracker steady. Also in general I wish I could make buttons bigger without cranking up text size too.
stubish 5y ago
It is very frustrating to the elderly that more and more Internet services are becoming smartphone first or smartphone only. Desktop or laptop computers are usable, but touchscreens are not. Particularly the small touchscreens on phones. Given one parent's essential tremor, I'm somewhat surprised people are attempting to make the hardware accessible at all; adding a bit of whitespace might make it more usable, but I can't see it being usable enough to actually use. Fingers are big and I would have thought the margins would need to be measured in centimeters rather than pixels. But yay if a little more thought in the UX design does make some people's lives easier. I've come to terms with parents being dependent on me for modern banking, online shopping and government services. Which makes me acutely aware I'm going to be in the same situation and I'm hoping we will have grown out of this awkward phase by then.
quacked 5y ago
Step 1: Invent physical control panels with switches and buttons Step 2: Invent touchscreens Step 3: Invent touch-based control panels with switches and buttons Step 4: Remove all shading and borders from touch-based control panels. Turn all switches and buttons into a hellish nightmare of clickable text. Use the same font color for clickable and unclickable text. Turn all backgrounds into slightly different shades of off-white. Remove all borders. Stop organizing functions by panel. Release six incompatible versions per year--

20 points by 0xedb 5y ago

To anyone developing user interfaces: please make it easier to tap buttons and otherwise control the app. Music streaming apps are particularly frustrating with their small, non-framed buttons where a mis-click can lead to playing a song and overwriting the playlist rather than adding the song.

saurik 5y ago
I run into this constantly while using the YouTube app to "watch" (where I am mostly just listening to the video and otherwise carrying my phone; or even just transiently in portrait while moving the device) a video in portrait, wherein seemingly even very subtle touches at the edge of the device will lead to it jumping to other new videos and forcing me to go back... which seems to remember where I was half the time but the other half of the time just goes back to the beginning :/.

sleightofmind 5y ago

Please, a hardware rocker that serves as an up/down arrow key. Make it dirt simple to enable/disable in software (via, of course, the touch screen). Millions of people, with of without physical challenges will thank you by buying your phone. I'm sure better hardware suggestions than mine have been put forward to address this. Please, Dear Phone Maker who want's to be fabulously successful, choose one and do it. Take the power of engineered inadvertent clicks away from unscrupulous advertisers. Touchscreens are wonderful but they're not the answer to every need.

legerdemain 5y ago

Hey, how about some sort of physical device that enables you to scroll the page without having any other effect? Revolutionary! Might make it possible to wrest back some control over your attention from the digital mousetrap in your pants pocket.

TristanBall 5y ago

So happy to see someone paying attention to this.. my shakes come and go, better with meds, but laptop trackpads without separate buttons have been nearly unusable for me for years. Tap to click and drag to scroll are terrible ideas if you have the shakes. All the various multi finger gestures? Pfft, I can do 2 fingers well enough to be recognised about 80% of the time, but that's still hugely frustrating, especially when the attempt ends up registing as a click because I twitched. I have only bought Lenovo and some dell latitude laptops for years because of this, because they're they only ones that consistently have separate buttons.

sterlind 5y ago

Motor disabilities are really overlooked in UX. I have the most problems with modals and hovers, especially hovers with scrollable content, since it's hard to keep the eye tracker steady. Also in general I wish I could make buttons bigger without cranking up text size too.

stubish 5y ago

It is very frustrating to the elderly that more and more Internet services are becoming smartphone first or smartphone only. Desktop or laptop computers are usable, but touchscreens are not. Particularly the small touchscreens on phones. Given one parent's essential tremor, I'm somewhat surprised people are attempting to make the hardware accessible at all; adding a bit of whitespace might make it more usable, but I can't see it being usable enough to actually use. Fingers are big and I would have thought the margins would need to be measured in centimeters rather than pixels. But yay if a little more thought in the UX design does make some people's lives easier. I've come to terms with parents being dependent on me for modern banking, online shopping and government services. Which makes me acutely aware I'm going to be in the same situation and I'm hoping we will have grown out of this awkward phase by then.

quacked 5y ago

Step 1: Invent physical control panels with switches and buttons Step 2: Invent touchscreens Step 3: Invent touch-based control panels with switches and buttons Step 4: Remove all shading and borders from touch-based control panels. Turn all switches and buttons into a hellish nightmare of clickable text. Use the same font color for clickable and unclickable text. Turn all backgrounds into slightly different shades of off-white. Remove all borders. Stop organizing functions by panel. Release six incompatible versions per year--