I recently drove a car whose whole control and entertainment system was a gigantic iPad-like thing mounted to the dash. It caused me to have a realisation about the #Ui and #UX of touch screens.

There is no way to touch a touchscreen without it treating that touch as intentional. What I mean is: without taking my eyes off the road, I can grope across the dashboard, find a knob or button—by touching it—without activating any function. Touching the volume button or temperature knob doesn’t DO anything until I do it with more force and intentionality. Not so for a #touchscreen.

My mobile #phone (an #iPhone 13) has no dead space in its face. There’s no part of the phone face I can touch without it assuming I meant to do that and I wanted to activate whatever was under my finger. Old iPhones that had physical home buttons also had dead space to either side: a safe space to hold the phone without DOING anything.

Computer keyboard have little raised pips on the F and J keys so you can find them by touch without looking. I do this all the time. But I don’t type the letters F or J. Touch screens have no such affordances.

I look at the #blackberry keyboard in this photo and I see a raised space bar. It’s an #affordance that lets you orient your fingers, and orient how you hold the phone, without looking.

I miss buttons.

https://mobilesyrup.com/2025/02/15/blackberrys-expired-keyboard-patent/

Just a reminder, especially in this wild time we live in. DO NOT INSTALL WORK MDM ON YOUR PERSONAL DEVICE.
If your work requires Microsoft Intune or similar MDM, to get email/teams/slack. don't accept it. It opens your device up for them to access private data and disable/delete your phone (even if they say they wont, they can)

https://blog.cdemi.io/never-accept-an-mdm-policy-on-your-personal-phone/

#privacy #android #iphone #work #email #outlook #microsoft