Usability of multi-directional sliders for touch interfaces

Question

I have been trying to solve the issues of having to use two sliders that represent values of different orders of magnitude to give users a fine control over the value they want to input. I was inspired by the gear shift control design and wondered if I could apply it to a touch interface to combine the two sliders together.

Basically it will snap to the high level marks and if the user drags down then it allows selection of the lower magnitude. I haven't seen anything like it around and was wondering if there are some obvious usability issues with this.

I think this should give the designer flexibility plus fine control over the input values by being able to snap values at different levels quickly.

UPDATE: I found a very recent example of the use of a 'T-menu' concept for text editing on mobile device.

Answer 1

Give the designer flexibility plus fine control over the input values

A reworked Picker element could achieve this without having to add the vertical dimension to the slider. A great example I love is Instagram's Adjust tool, which allows a user to rotate their images by sliding a wheel of values horizontally to a selection area. This allows users to finely select an incremental set of values through 1 axis.

Reworked Picker: if anyone knows the correct name for the Instagram example I'll be happy to edit. Linked to iOS example as this is closest thing I could find.