At some point during the last year, I solidified a set of thinking about touch screen button interaction - interaction design patterns.
I wrote it all down in order to blog it, included photos and have now somehow lost it, and will have to write it again. So much for all the efforts at a well ordered life.
This one will go live.
Premise one:
Putting your finger over the label of the thing you are going to enact is a bad design pattern.
Putting your finger over the label of the thing you are going to enact is a bad design pattern.
Fact one:
Labelling under icons was developed for the mouse pointer not the touch screen but has cross-pollinated.
Fact two:
Bad user-interface design has been attributed to be the cause of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor disaster. (It was actually a faulty valve, but the feedback on the control interface indicated the opposite).
Apparent from the QWERTY computer entry keyboard, which is designed to be a ‘touch type’ system and therefore not looked, why would anyone put the label for something with which they were going to interact underneath
In my first interaction of this article I used the nuclear power station control room and the airplane control ‘cockpit’ as examples of where no one in their right mind would obscure the labelling of the controls.
On the whole, when looking to back-up my theory I found this to be correct and the times when I have not been correct, the systems have proven to introduce catastrophic error - ie the three mile island incident. Ok, I have yet to sample airline and air-force pilots and ask what they think of having buttons with the label on them rather than above them. But that is my next step.
