Touchscreens are central interactive elements in mobile phones. As a result, most input is done via taps or swipes from the fingers. However, we tend to forget that mobile phones are intrinsically handheld and that they rock and rolls naturally when held in our hands. For example, you might need to adjust your grip to reach the “previous” button on safari. In parallel to this, modern mobile phones are equipped with internal gyroscopes, rotation sensors, and accelerometers that record these tilts and rolls. We can thus wonder why UIs only sporadically rely on these additional movements to improve the user experience. The goal of this workshop is to make you explore this direction.
For this workshop, we thus welcome participants who want to create innovate UIs and who wish to develop their understanding of mobile phone interaction design. This workshop will firstly, introduce the participants to the findings of current research on the topic of handheld hand movements. Secondly, within small groups, the participants will be given a number of scenarios and will have the opportunity to design innovative UIs via rapid prototyping. Thirdly, each group will present their developed concepts and discussion will be held of the workshops learnings.
Rachel Eardley
Rachel has spent over 10 years working as a UX designer and has had the opportunity to work in a wide range of environments including Research labs, international corporations, early stage startups, academia, and agency. Currently, she works 4 days a week at Somo as a Senior UX designer and 1 day a week on her Ph.D. based at Cardiff Metropolitan University.