When people think in terms of pages, it might seem natural for component design and page design to occur in tandem. But this can undermine a team’s ability to name components and build a shared vocabulary. With colleagues at Clearleft, Charlotte Jackson developed an exercise to help everyone adopt pattern thinking. She takes us through the process step by step, encouraging us to get away from our screens and focus first on thinking, language, and approach.
How We Hold Our Gadgets
Touch adds a new dimension to our designs, and asks us to think not only about the canvas of the screen, but also about how users interact physically with the screen itself. We need to consider the ergonomic needs of holding a smartphone, tablet, or hybrid device—switching hands, swapping grips, and pointing, clicking, and typing. In this excerpt from Chapter 1 of Designing for Touch, Josh Clark examines the role of thumbs in driving our device interactions, no matter the size of the screen.
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