Sunday, July 28, 2019

usability - Should you optimize mobile experiences based on individual handedness?



In abbood's question "How to implement a stack exchange style voting for mobile?" he answers his own question with the following mock-up:


abbood's mock-up for voting on mobile


My immediate thought was that the up-vote control was on the wrong side. Why? Because my feeling is that up-votes happen more often than down-votes (because something not interesting is not worth wasting a click on) and the primary action on mobile should be on the left.


But that got me thinking. I'm a lefty, so when I hold my phone (in my left hand) it's easier to reach the control on the left, hence my thought to put the primary control on the left side. But for a righty, it would be easier to reach the right-sided control.


This may be a trivial example, but if you have a UI that requires a lot of tap-based input it could make quite a difference on which side the most-used action is located.


My question: should you optimize mobile experiences based on individual handedness? Has there been any research on this and is this practically possible?


Adding a setting which mirrors controls seems possible, but is there a way to detect this and do this automatically? Using the accelerometer perhaps, or maybe by measuring the speed to click depending on distance from either side?




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