Touchscreen Edge Cases

David Barnard:

While fiddling with the Nexus One last week, I was incredibly annoyed at how many times I accidentally tapped the Home button while trying to tap the space bar on the software keyboard. […]

While typing on the iPhone I’ve been subconsciously tapping slightly below the bottom row of the software keyboard because it requires less precision. My fingers were using that muscle memory while typing on the Nexus One keyboard.

Same thing with me using the Nexus One. And the Home button is a particularly annoying, almost devastating button to accidentally hit by mistake: boom, you’re back at the Home screen of the system, right when you were in mid-sentence, trying to type a space. Barnard links to this example of a Palm guy demoing the new Pre Plus making a similar mistake.

I think you can argue that this is a touchscreen application of Fitts’s Law.

★ Tuesday, 19 January 2010