Hot answers tagged touch-screen
41
Don't rely on shaking as the only way of selecting any common action. The exception is novelty apps like whips or throwing dice.
For other apps it is poor UX as it:
Is uncommon behaviour for many users, as most apps (sanely) don't use this action.
Has poor discoverability as there is no cue on the screen letting you know how to use it. There may be an ...
38
Luke Wroblewski covers this topic in his book Mobile First
He stresses the importance of transitioning your on-hover menus to mobile using the most
appropriate solution for your site:
...any actions that rely on mouse hovers in our desktop web
experiences need to be rethought—and that’s a good thing. Many uses of
hover actions on the web assume too ...
22
A main component of natural interactions is Direct Manipulation. Traditional interaction methods (keyboard) are very efficient but often very unnatural because what you do and what happens on screen aren't necessarily very logically connected. This was a classic problem with command line interfaces (or worse, punch cards). The Graphical User Interface was ...
17
I usually get both eager and upset everytime I stuble upon advanced UX topics, like Fitts' law.
Eager because I find the basic research very interesting, and upset because there are so many misinterpretations of these.
I actually have my own version Fitts' law:
Don't use Fitts' law as a formula, use it as a guideline.
So, what is the simple ...
14
It would mean a very different technology than what is currently used. I wouldn't try to force touch devices into screen device semantics. Touch devices are developing their own distinct set of user expectations. Touch to hover is perfectly acceptable. I've seen some nice examples of hinting to the user where "hoverable" areas are when the screen first ...
14
I think it has nothing to do with plasticine :). Hold up your hand and show "a small amount of something". You're probably pinching. "A pinch of salt" is a small amount of salt. I assure you that both the gesture and the expression have existed long before multi-touch :). Ask a person to demonstrate something large, and he will spread his hands. Ask him to ...
11
Have the list item be split. Something like a label to the left and a button on the right.
It is basically what you already proposed. Here is an example how it could look like.
There is just no hover replacement for touch based devices. At least not for all types of touch based devices.
10
The best examples I've seen use touch gesture hand icons, similar to these:
http://graffletopia.com/stencils/587
At times of application rest, where the app isn't being used -- the home screen can be devoted to a simple touch icon moving on the screen and appearing to click/flash on a button that is selected, but no further action is taken, until the user ...
10
Designing Gestural Interfaces by Dan Saffer is a nice start with some basics. I've been working on a largescale POI system for a postal company for over a year, and we've also done numerous user/usability tests and it is very different from your regular webapp or site. I think for me there were 3 or 4 major differences:
1) size and spacing (the tip of your ...
9
I don't think that we will ever get away from having some form of click/tap/"action" interaction. I saw dontclick.it for the first time quite a while ago when the site was first published and still think now what I did then.
Essentially by eliminating the ability to click you are greatly reducing the ability to consider an action before taking it. Consider ...
9
Two problems here; it's usually set at the hardware/OS level, and it's often far too complicated to present to the normal user.
Touch screens aren't supposed to have "sensitivity" like mice or joysticks do. It's direct manipulation, you should either be touching X or not. If a first press doesn't register, you press harder; this is annoying but it works. ...
9
Sensitivity of an input device means how much interaction needs to be performed to achieve the wanted result. It can be measured in:
Distance - how far an analog input device needs to be moved to affect the active element on the screen (e.g., mouse or joystick);
Time - how long an input device needs to transmit a signal to be considered an interaction ...
9
Gracefully degrade your subnavigation or drop it by reiterating its contents on the index pages.
It's true. Just look at the evidence below. Two great examples of responsive web design are Smashing Magazine and The Boston Globe. Ethan Marcotte himself was involved in the Boston Globe redesign.
Smashing Magazine: Drop the Subnav
Note in these screenshots ...
9
In Designing Gestural Interfaces, Dan Saffer touches (!) the subject of Fitts' Law in relation to touchscreens (specifically pp. 40-2.) Saffer argues that the law holds true for gestural interfaces; minimize reaching across the interface and making sure that targets are appropriately sized to accommodate the "cursor" (i.e., the finger.)
However, he also ...
9
To answer your specific question, users should not be able to activate disabled options.
To diverge from UX standards like this is a bad idea - most users would never click the disabled button, and those who did (likely by accident) would be surprised by the result.
They way I would solve this is to display printer status next to the button. Normally, this ...
9
The guidelines given for the various platforms are all based on the idea that the minimum size should be 9-12mm. The variation between the guidelines is mostly due to differing pixel densities on the devices, and hence different number of pixels needed to reach the 9-12mm figure.
Note, that this isn't an ideal dimension to make the button easier to use, ...
8
The basic gestures, such as flicking, pinching, and tapping, are mentioned in user guides that are included in the box. For example, see PDF manuals for Apple iPad, HP TouchPad, and Barnes & Noble NOOK (search for "pinch" to find the section on gestures).
If an application uses gestures in an unusual manner, developers provide an intro about the ...
8
Radio buttons are actually the most accurate (requirements match standard behavior) control for this. Just make larger, custom radio buttons that are easier touch targets. Remember to allow the label to also act as a touch target for the radio button.
Toggle buttons are not the right control, because the user does not have the power to use them as ...
8
Let's assume for a moment that we're talking about a touch interface without any other controls.
Direct Manipulation
As noted in the comments above, there are a limited number of gestures for directly manipulating content. From gestureworks:
The Tap family are all out.
Rotation is possible, but unlikely to be intuitive. It's also not particularly ...
8
You could try something like this:
Note the line breaks at left and right as well as the cut off text.
Omit the left line breaks if nothing to swipe to at left.
Even the line breaks alone would be a very simple cue that would be better than nothing if the cut off text is a problem to implement:
8
I definitely wouldn't do this; the pull down to refresh mentioned in John's answer is probably the most common gesture. Though if refreshing isn't automatic or is a common action for non-power users I'd personally recommend just sticking with a button; you have a pretty universal "refresh" icon at your disposal and refresh is quite often initiated from a ...
8
Yes, size can be an issue. Touch targets need to be bigger than typical desktop targets because the finger precision is worse than the pointer+mouse precision. With this worst precision the odds to do missed taps is bigger (like not touching a button or touching the incorrect one).
Usually, touch studies use as principal study variable the error rate. The ...
7
Refer to the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines (that link goes to the guidelines for web apps) for recommendations by Apple. There's a chapter called "Provide Fingertip-Sized Targets" you can probably use to base your decisions on.
Also, don't guess, test. Get some people with differently sized fingers (within your target audience) and have them try to ...
7
(Since I'm kind of lazy, I'll start off by reprinting my answer from a thread on SO)
Recent scientific research has found that:
[A] target size of 9.2 mm for discrete
tasks [i.e., single-target pointing tasks] and targets of 9.6 mm for serial
tasks should be sufficiently large for
one-handed thumb use on
touchscreen-based handhelds without
...
7
I've seen apps doing it in an interesting way: they make the most important element wiggle every few seconds until you touch it (e.g.: a call-to-action button). If it's draggable, then you could put 3D dots (or whatever they're called) over it forming a square like some elements you see in the OS.
7
IMO, if you want to do a great job, you need to completely redesign for a touchscreen -- not merely "translate" a website. Will this be a browser-based app?
Even if a pinch-to-zoom capability is present, if I was designing the app, I would assume that most users will not realize that. Consequently, you need to make buttons and links quite a bit larger to ...
7
Simply put, mouse pointer size doesn't matter very much besides personal preference.
A finger is only as accurate as it is big. A mouse pointer is always accurate to one pixel even if the display icon for it is larger than that. So the issue of size when talking about a mouse isn't nearly as critical as it is for touch.
7
There is not yet any standard, but a good place to start for any touch symbols is the Touch Gesture Reference Guide. In that the gesture would be (depending on what you mean by swipe)
7
Here you will find some papers mentioning the "gorilla arm effect". It's a pitty that some of them are not free to download.
Some more articles and references to this syndrome:
Wikipedia's mentions within the Touchscreen and Gesture recognition articles.
Jargon File's definition for Gorilla Arm (circa 1980).
A paper on affectations of workers' body muscle ...
7
This open source library is pretty good to start with and covers many types of common gestures:
http://gestureworks.com/features/open-source-gestures/
Alternatively, this one is pretty good as well:
http://gesturecons.com
You could also try a short video or animated GIF images to make the gestures more explicit, VideoHive offers many footages you ...
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