User test

The last week I've been doing some research on how people use their two hands when confronted with some simple exercizes simulating the touch screen situation. I like doing user tests. It generates more useful information then expected, some things expected don't occur, some things unexpected do and in the talk afterwarts every participant has an opinion on something. Useful remarks are made.

It's the little things that interest me. When something is placed within reach but outside the prefered working zone of the hands people will move it to within their prefered working zone. But if the task is simple, like when moving a piece of paper, this is often not the case. It also makes diference if people are standing or not. The prefered working zone seems to get larger and somewhat further away from the body. The working hight of the table has a large influence in this.
If two seperate objects are involved two hands are used most of the time. There is some indication on what kind of actions someone likes, and when there is a feel of control. In the exercizes of this user test, that is.

Getting a screen

Today is a happy day! After months (yes, almost three) of negotiation it's finaly there. A touch screen. It supports two simultanious input points. It can see your fingers. Well actualy it isn't here yet. It has to be build. Smart Technologies (CA) makes 'm. LogicaCMG bought it for me. I'm going to use it for building a prototype of my GUI.
You can find out more about the product at http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Products/SMART+Boards/Overlays/.

Augmenting the hands

The hands are versatile tools of the human body. Or actually the shoulder-arm- hand-finger system is a versatile system to be used as a tool. The hands (with “ hands” , I mean to include the fingers) are flexible, sensitive, have sufficient power to do loads of things with. But they also have shortcomings they are not that sharp, not as hard as steel and not as powerful as a bears claw. To deal with these shortcomings, or rather to deal with our surroundings, we have been using tools to extent the abilities of, to augment the hands.

So in HCI using both hands on a touch screen it would only be natural to talk about augmenting the abilities of the hands once again. And in the design process use some of the augmentations (as a starting point or preferably as a means to design epistemic actions) we’ve already thought of in every day life.