Designing for a thumb: An ideal mobile touchscreen interface for Chinese users

Abstract

This paper focuses on designing for cross-cultural users; specifically, it describes a study conducted to determine the "Comfort Zone" and optimal touch target size for one-handed thumb use. Similar studies have provided general measurements for touch targets, but they are not applicable to all the slots on a touchscreen, nor are they consistent with the actual physiological measurements (i.e., the size of hands and fingers) of Chinese users. The study used repeated measures in a within-subject design of 16 (slots) × 5 (target sizes) × 10 (repetitions). The results indicated the Comfort Zone for the right thumb of Chinese users is significantly different at 0.01 level, and falls on a fan-shaped area located on the inclined left side of the screen. Different locations were required for different optimal touch target sizes. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.