http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/09/iphone-thefts...
The author's grip puts the home button halfway outside his "thumb zone" forcing an awkward claw whenever you need to multitask or return to the springboard. Our grip puts the home button in a much more natural position.
Swiping near the bottom with my thumb hasn't bothered me so far, but the text is quite hard to read at that small of a size. I would also like to those cards a bit larger in the future.
cards seem to work better as implemented by google -- cards don't really have as much in common between cards.. they're one-offs. a newsfeed is a long story board, such as it is.
I keep it in my left pocket. It leaves my right (primary) hand free for doing other things. When I need the extra dexterity of using an index finger instead of thumb, I'm already holding the phone in the correct hand for my right index finger to poke at the screen.
(South paw here who uses his phone with his right hand.)
It always seemed like a little bit of a cheat - especially when the elongated 5 came out - just to show one handed use of a device is possible.
For me at least, the way the phone is positioned is hardly comfortable. The bottom right corner at the base of the thumb exacerbates the problem the author's talking about. When I hold the phone higher in my hand with the bottom closer to the base of the index, all thumb-hook problems tend to go away.
Obviously this is anecdotal, but I'd love to see some studies about how people hold their phones. In some respects, I've always felt one-handed device usage was neglected by manufacturers, but I probably didn't fully understand how many users simply use two hands. I imagine data around grips (similar to [this](http://www.razerzone.com/mouseguide/ergonomic)) and hands used for phones will be somewhat surprising.
While I agree wih all your points in your assessment, I'm curious about the point the research mentioned about users changing grips depending on task. Will this be a significant problem? Or would it be an unconscious adaptation.
Anyway, nice study on the interaction, and thanks for your reply.
Paper kills the ability to quickly scan the feed for the 10 percent of stuff that might interest me even momentarily. I can either see one thing at a time with the stories full screen, or three things at a time with them in an awkward location at the bottom of the screen and one of them (for which there is a 90 percent chance that I don't want to see it) taking up the top two-thirds of the screen.
It's certainly pretty and with some content other than my Facebook feed, it might be a good interface. It would be perfect if I wanted to read 90 percent of this stuff.
But that's the whole idea. It's to keep you more engaged. But that's not how I use Facebook. I don't want to "engage" with it. I've got a million things competing for my attention and most of them are better than my Facebook feed. I want to get in, find the interesting stuff and then get the hell out. I suspect I'm not the only one.
Isn't this what Flipboard does?
But I don't understand why these apps seem to be designed on the assumption that real-world Facebook users' feeds are actually filled with such photos. The same applies to the giant contact photos in Android 4.1+. This is great if all of your contacts have beautiful high-res headshots. In real life, most don't and it's an ugly pixelated mess.
It seems you're still reaching for a corner and curve your finger inward, isn't it as stressful for the left hand ?
What I've found myself doing is using two hands.
I think it's the fact that I am forced to touch, and swipe through stories I don't give a shit about. At all. Does anyone who is fellating the Paper UI actually use Facebook? You sure you really want to pan through hundreds of uninteresting posts...because it looks cool? I don't. I love the transitions and how responsive the UI is, but would I use this to take an overview of my friend's activity? Unlikely.
I'm probably not adding too much to this discussion since I'm just agreeing, but there it is.
I agree with this 100%. The lower navigation elements are WAY TOO small.
Another option (if any Paper developers are listening) would be to allow dynamic re-sizing of the lower navigational elements.
This is already allowed (it grows as you swipe up) - it just isn't "sticky".
Maybe I just have big thumbs.
I also find it fascinating how Facebook's main iOS app and Paper (per your article) conflict with your reachable zone. In the major app, they relegate the Search action in the farthest corner from right hand users. In addition, their overflow button on the bottom tab bar sits in the other 'Ow' zone.
Great write up.
That said, I prefer having an option of manually refreshing the UI. When I'm connected to a spotty 3G tower - I don't get any indication if its fetching data or not. I suppose I can drag down the main UI and expose the iOS status bar and see the little circular progress bar, but not an ideal situation.
Overall, it's a good interface for reading news articles and blog posts. It seemed like a terrible interface for going through status updates and wall posts.
