Touch Usability

Bill Buxton: Designing for Ubiquitous Computing

Kevin Arthur — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 18:57:44 +0000

An inspiring recent talk by Bill Buxton at Microsoft's TechFest.

You can download the slides to click along here: http://billbuxton.com/Buxton%20TechFest%202013_v08.ppsx

Well worth an hour of your time.

Via Technet. Other TechFest talks here.

Gesture and NUI workshop August 5-9

Kevin Arthur — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 18:23:25 +0000

Jody Medich of Kicker Studio will be teaching a workshop at UC Berkeley that sounds quite good:

Gestural and Natural User Interfaces

Physical interfaces are understood, learned and experienced through the body and should allow for more natural interactions that fit the way we think. This workshop will explore how to design natural user interfaces that are, in fact, natural. Workshop participants interested in responsive environments, interactive displays, gesture, touch and haptics will learn how to prototype interfaces, design gestural languages, and test and refine designs with user testing. Participants will be given tutorials in gestural prototyping technologies, understanding the context of use, and user experience design. Workshop exercises include designing context-based gesture sets using the Kinect, and developing screen-based gestures using the LEAP SDK.

Link: Design Frontiers Workshop Series

The Rise of Tap-and-Hold

Kevin Arthur — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 22:04:18 +0000

Here's an interesting article at fast.co design about the clever use of the tap-and-hold gesture in two hot apps, Vine and Snapchat (or at least they were hot apps two weeks ago when this article was written).

On Vine it makes it super simple to record by touching the screen anywhere without having to locate a virtual button. I'd argue it'd be simpler still to use the phone's physical volume button, though.

In Snapchat the gesture is clever for the inconvenience it causes -- it intentionally makes it more difficult for users to take screenshots because they have to hold a finger on the screen while viewing content.

Link: The Secret Sauce Gesture Behind Vine and Snapchat

Touch Template

Kevin Arthur — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:20:22 +0000

Steven Hoober is taking preorders for a clever little touch template he's designed. Looks useful as an overlay and comes with additional guidelines on the sleeve. $10 each.

Links:

UPA 2012 next week

Kevin Arthur — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 17:21:44 +0000

Hello blog (& blog readers). Sorry for my absence of late. I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things soon.

Meanwhile, I'll be at UPA 2012 next week in Las Vegas. I'm look forward to learning and chatting about touch, gestures, mobile, physical interfaces, and the many other exciting UX things that people are up to. I hope to see you there!

In other news, I'm now working as a Senior UX Researcher at Lab126 in Cupertino. We're hiring UX people so if you're interested please get in touch.

Assistive touch

Kevin Arthur — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 03:10:15 +0000

A good article by David Pogue about the new "AssistiveTouch" feature that Apple added to iOS 5 for iPhones and iPads.

Link: Apple's AssistiveTouch Helps the Disables use a Smartphone

Limitations of touchscreens

Kevin Arthur — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 03:00:28 +0000

I like Edward Tufte's take on Brett Victor's recent essay, A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design. Tufte's comments are here: Touchscreens have no hand

A favorite line: "Dimensional compression is dimensional compression, however, and even those sentient beings that reside in string-theory N space probably whine that their N - 1 dimensional display device (necessary to fit in their N - 1 dimensional pockets) fails to capture the rich experience of their real N space."

Touch Mouse Concepts - Student Innovation Contest Winners

Kevin Arthur — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 01:23:12 +0000

Last month at the UIST conference there was a student innovation contest to design new interactions using the Microsoft Touch Mouse. The Microsoft Hardware blog has collected links to videos of the winning entries: Meet the Winners of the UIST Contest.

UPA 2012 Call for Participation is Open

Kevin Arthur — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:24:33 +0000

The call for submissions for next year's UPA (Usability Professionals Association) is now open and I encourage people to submit. I for one would love to see more touch and hardware related content this year.

Main site: http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/conference/2012/

They're also looking for reviewers, and you can sign up for that here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WYMT8M2

I've attended UPA for several years now and am helping on the committee this year. I can answer questions if you want to know more. In my opinion, UPA is the best UX/HCI conference focused on practitioners.

How Autodesk tested their Sculpt iPad app

Kevin Arthur — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:36:16 +0000

An interesting blog post from Autodesk on how they tested their "123D Sculpt" app for iPad, specifically with regard to different types of users: Straddling the device (Designing the User Experience at Autodesk).