The experimental research of the thumb’s comfortable control area

Abstract

Thumb control area is a significant concern for manipulating handheld controllers. In order to obtain the thumb’s comfortable control area of Chinese people, experimental measurements were designed and carried out. The measuring parameters included right thumb size, comfortable control area and comfortable control angle range. The data showed that with the increase of control angle (from 0° to 90°), the thumb’s comfortable control far-end limit and the near-end limit presented a monotonic increasing tendency. The thumb’s comfortable control far-end limit equaled to the thumb length when control angle was about 60°. Combined with the Chinese people hand size database, typical percentiles of thumb sizes were calculated. The results can provide references for handheld controller interface design, especially those for single-handed operations.