Touch and click - bad mix
I’ve pointed out before that the Apple iPod/iPhone software’s reliance on the clickable panic button is a real weakness. This morning I’ve been working with an LG Chocolate which has a mixture of touch buttons for navigation and softkeys, but a real clickable keypad for data entry. The screen is dark, small, and recessed behind a fashionable casing and is not touchable.
I find it difficult to move from the light brushing movement needed for the touch buttons to the quite firm click of the keypad. Combined with the small size is makes for cramped fingers. Even discounting the awful LG user interface software, it makes for doing anything other than making calls very fiddly.
Clearly anybody with a feeling for user interface design will know that consistency of action is important; now we can add to that the need for physical consistency of the interface.
Insisting that everything be artificially consistent is, of course, just as bad, so I think that answering/hanging up calls work well with a positive click, even if the rest of the interface is just brushing.
Clearly there is plenty of scope for additional innovtion in physical handset design as well as user interface software.
