A short post about a physical aspect of human interaction with technology.
Everyone laughs when I warm up for the over 40’s sprint race at the local primary school sports day.
“Taking it seriously eh?” (snigger)
Actually yes and no.
Or rather no and yes.
No, of course I’m not taking the race seriously. Not that seriously anyway.
But yes I am taking seriously the fact that at “my age” not warming up before running 80m is likely to do me an injury. Although I do exercise regularly, neither my leg muscles, my hip joints nor my hamstrings are used to running flat out from a standing start.
Now to bring this back to the virtual world.
We were talking yesterday with Dr Richard Marshall of Rapid Mobile Media about all manner of mobile things.
This finished with a chat about our personal preferences when it comes to mobile devices. Richard actively chooses an Android device over the iPhone largely on the basis of the keyboard. He doesn’t like the iPhone’s keyboard interface.
Which I, on the other hand, now feel really comfortable with. Once I came to trust the predictive text algorithm I found that I can more or less type in any old rubbish and the finished article will say more or less what I wanted it to say first time.
At least it does in the vertical plane.
It all falls apart if I try to type with the iPhone held horizontally. The keys spread out and my 43 year old finger muscles just aren’t used to it without a lengthy warm-up. Which I don’t have time for.
This keyboard stuff is all very personal.
But it’s obviously important enough to affect the choice of mobile device.
Then, earlier today, I was chatting with Scott Liddell at the Edinburgh (social media) Coffee Morning.
He’s recently made the move from PC to Mac.
And, having been a big user of Vista keyboard shortcuts, he’s effectively having to re-learn how to type.
(Whilst loving the overall Mac experience obviously. “They just work” you know.)
This People & Technology thing isn’t just about software.
Tags: ergonomics, interactivity, keyboard, linkedin
January 11th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Thanks for the name check – I do also prefer the Android UI to that of the iPhone. Two reasons: within apps the data is a lot denser on Android so less scrolling, and on the main screens, the widgets are really neat and save firing up apps. I find the iPhone grid restrictive and rather toy like.
But it is all subjective. My 81-year old mum really likes her Nokia 1200 because she can read the b/w screen clearly, but loves playing word games on her iPod Touch.
There is no one platform solution and never will be – you have to take the solution out to your users.