Size and usability – the devil is in the details
There’s an interesting post on Lukas Mathis’ blog, ignorethecode.net on virtual keyboards, which drives home how important are small differences in size to usability.
This is a comparison of the virtual keyboards on the iPhone, and it brings out how small differences (<10%) in size make a big difference in usability:
However, the HTC Magic’s screen is only 90% as tall and wide as the iPhone’s. This doesn’t seem like a huge difference, but it actually has noticeable effects on usability. This is a comparison of the screens of the two devices, scaled to match the proportions of the real devices:
Virtual keyboards on iPhone and Android
This small difference is one of the ways in which the iPhone’s virtual keyboard outperforms the Android version.
Moreover, in a fascinating recent comparison, one of the surprising advantages of a virtual keyboard was driven home; in a recent discussion amongst some of my colleagues and contemporaries, and with my daughters, the perennial question of physical keyboard versus virtual keyboard came up. The BlackBerry guys insisted that (not least because of their years of experience) the BlackBerry’s physical keyboard could outperform the supposedly ‘error-prone’ virtual keyboard of the iPhone. In a head-to-head test, the young iPhone users won, however. Interestingly, they emphasized one particular aspect: a touch/virtual keyboard is faster because you don’t have to physically press the key down…
