Press-and-hold or Long-Press Gestures: Unintuitive?

Question

Often, I find people struggle with the usage of press-and-hold gestures on mobile/web platforms. The mere thought of having a user press on a defined object and hold for an arbitrary amount of time before the product reacts seems overtly complicated and unobtrusive. My questions are:

1. For what use cases do press-and-hold gestures best fit?
2. Have there been published studies with regards to press-and-hold gesture intuition?
3. Are there more viable alternatives to this system?

Answer 1

The press-and-hold (or long press) gesture on a mobile devices mimic the secondary button press on a computer mouse. It is supposed to give you the same alternative options as the secondary mouse click on a computer (even on Apple devices). From a UX perspective this behavior is kind of odd, since there are no clues that the long press exist on an object, and the user is left to trying it out if they haven’t read the manual. Reading the manual to the just purchased smartphone is something that one would wish happen more often, but chances are that users learn from friends.

Still, downloaded apps seldom tell you that the long press exist, and this is bad. There should be some indicator that the object contain a long press option by a different visual cue for the user to rely on. This hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure it’ll emerge soon since there will be more and more (real) user experience testing on mobile apps as they become more and more important in our daily life.

Too bad it isn’t here already.

Answer 2

I think the point is that this gesture is unobtrusive. It doesn't take up UI real estate or complicate the interface. Because there is general problem with discoverability (if that's a word) as there is no visual cue, it's best served for less frequent actions. Once a user learns this, it's like learning the right click. They never forget it and use it when they don't know what else to do. Having this available as a designer is a huge bonus, but poses many challenges.

1. I find tap+hold best for lesser used actions and they're typically followed by a confirmation box or context menu. Often these are secondary actions assigned to a touch area that already has a primary action. Think of looking at a list where you tap to select, or tap+hold to remove from the list. I think android users to be more familiar with this as the 'add bookmark to homepage' action often requires a tap+hold. On android when you are looking at a list of bookmarks, you can tap to launch that bookmark, or tap+hold to launch a context menu with options to delete, share or add to homescreen.
2. In general, tap+hold and swipe are less intuitive to device newbies. Here's a gesture study by International Usability Partners. Obviously they don't advocate filling your app with tap+hold events. Even though this is from 2010, this might be considered out of date as the mobile world has changed a lot since then.
3. Good question. I would need to know more about the context in which you might use such a thing and on what platform before speculating.

Answer 3

Long-press is akin to a context menu and is predominantly used in Android. In iOS I have only seen Long Press in WhatsApp.

Its good as one gets more real estate on top of existing ones.

But yes it is not very intuitive and needs a bit of discovery. But I guess a little bit of discovery and learn-ability is inevitable.

Also Long-press is more heavy on one's motor(effort) skill than a tap or a swipe for example.

Would be keen to read any white paper/research done on this. If any exists.