International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 40 (2010) 6876

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International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ergon

Touch key design for one-handed thumb interaction with a mobile phone: Effects of touch key size and touch key locationq
Yong S. Park, Sung H. Han*
Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), San 31, Hyoja, Pohang 790-784, South Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 7 October 2008 Received in revised form 4 August 2009 Accepted 4 August 2009 Available online 1 September 2009 Keywords: Touch key size and location One-handed thumb interaction Usability Mobile phones

a b s t r a c t
This study investigated effects of touch key sizes and locations on one-handed thumb input on a mobile phone. Three different touch key sizes (i.e. square shape with 4 mm, 7 mm, and 10 mm wide) and twenty-ve locations were examined in an experiment. A total of thirty subjects participated in the experiment in which they preformed a task of pressing a single target on a small touch screen. Two timerelated measures (rst transition time and task completion time), number of errors, and subjective satisfaction (pressing convenience) were collected in the experiment. The results revealed that the touch key size of 7 mm and 10 mm provided the best performance for time-related measures, while the touch key size of 10 mm only provided the best results for the other measures. In addition, the usability of touch key locations was statistically analyzed. Touch key locations providing good usability (good regions) were also identied for each measure. Recommendations were proposed for designing a touch user interface on a mobile phone based on the results of this study. Relevance to industry: The touch user interface is in the limelight of the handset industry. This study conducted basic research to investigate the effects of touch key sizes and touch key locations for onehanded interaction. The results of this study could be used for designing a touch user interface to enhance the usability of mobile phones and other small devices with a touch screen as well. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Touch screens are widely used for a variety of mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable multimedia players (PMPs), and mobile phones since they are highly intuitive and require little space to implement (Scott and Conzola, 1997). In addition, touch interfaces are easy to adjust the design parameters, such as key size, spacing between keys, and location on the screen (Colle and Hiszem, 2004). Mobile phones with a touch screen replacing traditional keypads, e.g. the Apple iPhone, are coming into the spotlight. Mobile phones with a touch screen have to present touch keys for user input as well as information for userphone interaction (e.g. notication). However, they have small touch screens that limit space for touch keys. Worse yet, they are unlikely to increase the size of touch screens due to mobility and portability. Therefore, it is important to design touch keys with the optimal/usable size.
q This work is based on an earlier work: Touch key design for target selection on a mobile phone, Proceedings of the 10th mobile HCI conference, ACM, 2008. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1409240.1409304. * Corresponding author. Tel.: 82 54 279 2203; fax: 82 54 279 2870. E-mail address: shan@postech.edu (S.H. Han).
0169-8141/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ergon.2009.08.002

Pfauth and Priest (1981) also reported touch key size as one of the most important design factors. Since 1980s, many studies have been conducted to investigate usable touch key sizes. Only a few studies, however, have been conducted for one-handed thumb interaction with a small touch screen (Parhi et al., 2006), while most studies have been carried out for interaction with a stylus as well as with an index nger (Beringer, 1990; Colle and Hiszem, 2004; Hall et al., 1988; Martin, 1988; Scott and Conzola, 1997; Sears, 1991; Sears et al., 1993). Parhi et al. (2006) examined touch key design implemented on a PDA. They manipulated ve different touch key sizes, i.e. 3.8 mm, 5.8 mm, 7.7 mm, 9.6 mm, and 11.5 mm square. However, thumb movements on a touch screen would be interfered by the PDA if the hand size is not large enough, which is different from real phone use. Note that most people move their thumbs freely when using a mobile phone. Two different approaches have been used to recommend desirable touch key sizes (Colle and Hiszem, 2004). One approach is to collect touch input for a spatial target and measure the minimum size that captures a given percentage of touch input (Beringer, 1990; Hall et al., 1988; Sears, 1991). Hall et al. (1988) reported the procedure of this approach in detail. This approach easily nds minimum touch key sizes with which the users can press touch

Y.S. Park, S.H. Han / International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 40 (2010) 6876 Table 1 Summary of the subjects hand and nger sizes. Dimension Mean (mm) 20.5 Standard deviation (mm) 1.2 Maximum (mm) 23.4 Minimum (mm) 17.7

69

Digit 1 interphalangeal joint breadth (thumb breadth) Digit 1 length (thumb length) Hand length from digitizer (hand length)

58.4 182.8

4.4 7.9

68.3 194.8

49.2 161.4

keys with accuracy of 95%, 99%, etc. With respect to accuracy only, however, it could provide the minimum touch key sizes. The approach is not applicable to analyzing other usability measures such as task completion time and user preference. The other approach is to manipulate touch key sizes experimentally and compare them in terms of performance and subjective satisfaction (Colle and Hiszem, 2004; Martin, 1988; Scott and Conzola, 1997; Sears et al., 1993). This approach can systematically analyze usability levels of specic touch key sizes with respect to plural usability measures, while it fails to identify minimum touch key sizes with specic accuracy. This study adopted the second approach and analyzed effects of touch key sizes on a variety of usability measures including task completion time, accuracy, and user preference. The users tend to use only one hand when they use a mobile device (Karlson et al., 2006). In other words, they hold a mobile phone with one hand and interact with it using a thumb. In addition, they would use both hands only when the user interface makes one hand interaction impossible or difcult. Touch key locations as well as touch key sizes have been considered as an important factor that could affect usability of one-handed thumb interaction. Parhi et al. (2006) divided a PDA screen into 3 3 areas, a total of nine areas, and found that central areas were more preferred than the others in terms of subjective satisfaction. However, the results for the nine areas are not enough to be applied to a mobile phone interface, since mobile phones often provide more than nine input elements simultaneously. For example, the Apple iPhone can provide twenty items at a time in the home screen. Park et al. (2008) examined a total of 25 touch key locations with respect to accuracy and user satisfaction, which is an earlier work of this study. However, it also did not include time-related

measures, important performance measures. To understand the effects of touch key locations more clearly, it is necessary to examine touch key locations from the overall usability perspectives including task speed, task accuracy and user satisfaction. This study aims to systematically investigate effects of touch key sizes and touch key locations on the usability of a mobile phone. The specic objectives to achieve the goal include: (1) Comparing different touch key sizes and identifying usable size to a mobile phone, (2) nding out how pressing performance and user preference changes according to touch key locations, (3) identifying appropriate touch key locations that provide good usability for onehanded input on a mobile phone. In order to fulll these objectives, a human factors experiment was conducted, in which three touch key sizes and twenty-ve touch key locations were manipulated. 2. Methods 2.1. Subjects A total of thirty right-handed Korean subjects participated in a human factors experiment. Their age ranged from 18 to 28 years old (average of 23.1 and standard deviation of 2.5). They had normal vision and no problem to freely move their right thumbs. Twenty of them had not used a mobile device with a touch screen (e.g. personal digital assistants), while the others had experienced for 1.2 years on the average. The subjects hand and nger sizes were measured in terms of three dimensions such as digit 1 interphalangeal joint breadth (thumb breadth), digit 1 length (thumb length), and hand length from digitizer (hand length). Greiner (1991) provided denitions and illustrations of the three measures. Table 1 summarizes the subjects hand and nger sizes. 2.2. Experimental design A within-subjects design was used in the experiment, in which two within-subjects variables (touch key size and touch key location) were manipulated. The touch key size factor had three levels (square shape with 4 mm, 7 mm, and 10 mm wide). A pilot test was conducted to select the levels of the touch key size, in which a total of eight different touch key sizes ranging from 3 mm to 13 mm (i.e. 3 mm, 4 mm, 5 mm, 6 mm, 7 mm, 8 mm, 10 mm, and 13 mm) were evaluated from a performance and user satisfaction standpoints. The pilot test reported that the 3 mm touch keys tended to provide poor usability, which seemed to be much lower than that of the 4 mm touch key. On the other hand, the touch key sizes of 10 mm and 13 mm seemed to provide the best usability and it was difcult to nd difference between them. Therefore, although the pilot test did not provide statistically signicant results, 4 mm and 10 mm were selected for a further experimentation as small and large sizes applicable to mobile phones. The 7 mm touch key size was also selected since it is the mid-point between 4 mm and 10 mm. The touch key location factor had 25 levels. Each location was one of the center points of 25 rectangular areas that had the same width and height (that is, one-fth of a touch screen width and onefth of a touch screen height, respectively). In the experiment, the center point of a square touch key was located at one of 25 touch key locations. Fig. 1 shows the 25 touch key locations and their IDs. Fig. 2 presents an example of experimental targets with the touch key size of 10 mm and the touch key location of 9. 2.3. Dependent measures Two types of dependent measures (pressing performance and subjective satisfaction) were collected in the experiment. The

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

Fig. 1. Touch key locations used in the experiment.

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because it was easy to develop a prototype using a programming tool, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. The PDA had a 8.9 cm (diagonal) touch screen (width of 5.3 cm and height of 7.1 cm) with the resolution of 240 320 pixels. Although there were a few mobile phones that equipped a touch screen, direct programming on them was not efcient since the mobile phone manufacturing companies did not provide appropriate and powerful development tools due to the lack of H/W and S/W compatibility.

2.5. Experimental tasks The experimental tasks consisted of two states, a stand-by state and an input state. In a stand-by state, the experimental prototype waited for any user press on a touch screen. If a subject pressed any location on the touch screen in a stand-by state, the state changed to an input state after 0.3 s delay. That is, a blue touch key (a target key) was presented and a timer started. When a subject pressed the blue target key correctly, a beep sound was provided and the timer stopped. Then a stand-by state for the next task was provided again. When a subject failed to press a target correctly, no response was provided to the subject and he/she was asked to continue to press the target until he/she succeeded. The subjects were asked to keep one-handed interaction with a PDA during the experiment. That is, they held a PDA by their right hands and pressed targets on a touch screen using their right thumbs. In addition, during the experimental tasks, the PDA was placed where the subjects felt comfortable to manipulate. That is, the distance between the subjects and touch screen on a PDA was not controlled in the experiment. Note that, people normally change the distance from mobile phones depending on the situations, e.g. walking/standing and indoor/outdoor, so that they could use their phones easily.

Fig. 2. An example of experimental targets.

pressing performance measures included two time-related measures (rst transition time and task completion time) and one accuracy measure (the number of errors). The task completion time was dened as the time taken to press a target correctly, while the rst transition time was dened as the time taken from the target presentation to the rst press whether it pressed the target correctly or not. The number of errors was calculated by subtracting one from the number of trials until pressing a target correctly. The rst transition time was used to measure how fast each touch key could be accessible. On the other hand, the number of errors could measure how accurately each touch key is pressed. In addition to the two measures, the task completion time was used to consider perspectives of speed and accuracy together. The task completion time consisted of the rst transition time and additional time required to correct errors only if the errors happened. In order to obtain the subjective satisfaction score, the subjects were asked to rate pressing convenience for each experimental condition. The pressing convenience means how easily the subjects could press a target. The rating scale ranged from 1 (extremely hard to press) to 9 (extremely easy to press). 2.4. Apparatus A commercial PDA with Microsoft Mobile Pocket PC 2003 (HP iPAQ rz 1717) was used to implement an experimental prototype

2.6. Experimental procedure Each subject was given written instructions on the experimental tasks and procedures at the beginning of the experiment. Then he/ she was asked to hold a PDA with his/her right hand and practice pressing targets by the right thumb. When thumb movement by the right hand was interfered by the PDA body, the subject was allowed to put his/her left hand underneath the PDA in order to support easy and free thumb movement like real mobile phone use. Examples for the two methods to hold a PDA are shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3. Two methods to hold a PDA. The left and the right gures show one hand and two hands holding, respectively.

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71

Mean first transition time (msec)

The main experiment consisted of three blocks, in which the subjects were asked to press targets on a touch screen as fast as possible. Each block had 25 experimental conditions (i.e. 25 different touch key locations with the same touch key size). For each experimental condition, the two-state experimental task was repeated 10 times. That is, a total of 250 tasks were performed for each block. After completing each block, the subjects were asked to rate the pressing convenience for 25 touch key locations. The presentation order of the three blocks was determined by the Latinsquare balancing technique. 3. Results Four measures (rst transition time, task completion time, number of errors, and pressing convenience) were collected for the seventy-ve experimental conditions (3 sizes by 25 locations). Table 2 summarizes the means and standard deviations for the 75 experimental conditions. 3.1. First transition time The rst transition time was statistically analyzed using the twoway ANOVA test. The results showed that all the main effects (touch key size (F(2, 58) 24.7, p < 0.01), touch key location (F(24, 696) 34.0, p < 0.01)) and the interaction between them (F(48, 1392) 5.7, p < 0.01) were signicant at the 0.05 signicance level. As post-hoc analyses, the StudentNewmanKeuls (SNK) tests were conducted on the signicant main effects (i.e. the touch key size and the touch key location). In addition, the simple effect test was conducted on the signicant interaction effect. The SNK tests revealed that pressing touch keys with the size of 4 mm took longer rst transition time than pressing touch keys with the other sizes (i.e. 7 mm and 10 mm). The difference of the rst transition time between 7 mm and 10 mm was not statistically signicant at the 0.05 signicance level. Fig. 4 presents mean values of the rst transition time.

1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0

1055.3 921.4 908.5

A
4 mm

B
7 mm Touch key size

B
10 mm

Fig. 4. Mean rst transition time (ms) of the touch key sizes. The same letter indicates that those conditions were not signicantly different from each other.

Two groups of the touch key locations, good regions and poor regions, were identied by the SNK test on the touch key locations. Good regions provided good usability in terms of each usability measure, while poor regions provided poor usability. Good regions provided statistically better usability than poor regions at the 0.05 signicance level. Then, a series of SNK tests were performed with partial data separated by the touch key sizes, because the simple effect of the touch key location was signicant for each level of the touch key size (for 4 mm key size, F(24,696) 22.5, p < 0.01; for 7 mm key size, F(24,696) 29.5, p < 0.01; for 10 mm key size, F(24,696) 13.2, p < 0.01). Fig. 5 illustrates good and poor regions identied by the four SNK tests, i.e. one for considering all touch key sizes together and three for each touch key size. Fig. 5 shows that center regions tend to require shorter rst transition time than edge regions. Specically, the touch key locations of 8, 13, 14, 18 and 19 (good regions) take the shortest rst transition time from the SNK tests, while edge regions including IDs of 1, 2, 16, 21, and 25 (bad regions) require the longest rst transition time.

Table 2 Means and standard deviations for each experimental condition (Numbers in parenthesis are standard deviations). IDa First transition time (ms) Size: 4 mm 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
a

Task completion (ms) Size: 10 mm Size: 4 mm Size: 7 mm Size: 10 mm

Number of errors

Pressing convenience (points)

Size: 7 mm

Size: 4 mm Size: 7 mm Size: 10 mm Size: 4 mm Size: 7 mm Size: 10 mm (0.18) (0.20) (0.13) (0.20) (0.11) (0.20) (0.16) (0.20) (0.18) (0.14) (0.13) (0.15) (0.19) (0.19) (0.14) (0.11) (0.17) (0.13) (0.23) (0.19) (0.49) (0.36) (0.26) (0.33) (0.25) 0.11 0.03 0.05 0.07 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.06 0.05 0.03 0.06 0.05 0.15 0.09 0.04 0.07 0.02 0.10 0.11 0.15 0.17 0.12 0.09 0.16 (0.16) (0.04) (0.06) (0.12) (0.08) (0.11) (0.09) (0.07) (0.08) (0.08) (0.08) (0.07) (0.07) (0.25) (0.12) (0.12) (0.15) (0.04) (0.17) (0.17) (0.19) (0.31) (0.16) (0.10) (0.19) 2.2 3.3 4.5 4.0 2.9 3.2 5.6 6.0 5.6 3.2 4.2 6.3 6.8 6.0 2.9 3.4 5.9 6.0 5.0 2.1 2.4 3.2 3.7 2.7 1.7 (1.6) (2.2) (2.2) (1.8) (1.5) (2.0) (2.1) (1.8) (1.9) (1.4) (2.0) (1.9) (1.6) (1.6) (1.3) (1.7) (2.0) (1.8) (1.9) (1.0) (1.5) (1.3) (1.6) (1.6) (1.1) 3.3 4.7 5.7 5.6 4.4 4.7 6.9 7.5 7.1 4.9 5.4 7.6 8.3 7.6 4.6 4.9 6.9 7.4 6.7 4.2 3.8 4.6 5.1 4.2 3.0 (2.0) (1.8) (1.9) (1.8) (1.9) (1.9) (1.8) (1.6) (1.6) (1.7) (1.6) (1.3) (1.2) (1.5) (1.9) (1.8) (1.4) (1.3) (1.8) (1.8) (1.8) (1.6) (1.6) (1.6) (2.0) 3.8 5.3 6.2 6.1 5.4 5.2 7.3 8.1 7.8 6.0 5.8 7.8 8.6 8.1 5.6 5.4 7.4 8.0 7.3 5.1 4.5 5.6 6.1 5.6 4.3 (2.2) (2.2) (2.0) (1.7) (1.9) (2.0) (1.8) (1.2) (1.4) (1.8) (1.7) (1.4) (0.9) (1.2) (2.2) (1.8) (1.4) (1.0) (1.5) (2.2) (1.9) (1.9) (1.9) (2.0) (2.4)

1209.3 1176.0 1061.2 1036.7 1158.5 1137.0 1033.4 989.7 951.6 1012.7 1060.9 994.0 955.8 913.9 1098.5 1045.9 1018.8 970.2 1012.7 1136.5 1173.7 1105.6 999.8 1040.3 1089.3

(180.7) 1077.3 (177.5) 1047.0 (177.9) 1559.1 (396.8) 1186.3 (203.1) 1102.2 (175.5) 0.53 (0.39) 0.21 (144.5) 1065.1 (109.7) 977.5 (176.0) 1616.1 (470.6) 1166.6 (163.2) 991.1 (175.7) 0.69 (0.54) 0.20 (103.1) 955.5 (115.3) 943.2 (137.0) 1388.7 (293.4) 1035.3 (147.2) 965.2 (138.2) 0.58 (0.52) 0.15 (106.2) 915.0(110.1) 947.6 (170.2) 1663.4 (890.6) 1034.2 (140.8) 984.9 (195.3) 0.89 (0.77) 0.23 (157.0) 917.5 (100.4) 896.3 (102.5) 1711.4 (800.3) 972.6 (86.9) 917.3 (92.1) 0.78 (1.00) 0.12 (163.9) 975.3 (102.0) 938.1 (135.1) 1517.2 (387.9) 1047.0 (136.8) 966.5 (166.0) 0.51 (0.39) 0.14 (137.7) 922.2 (108.3) 910.4 (126.0) 1301.9 (334.5) 1011.2 (140.3) 938.1 (133.9) 0.43 (0.37) 0.17 (127.4) 831.2 (60.4) 840.4 (84.8) 1335.0 (384.6) 914.0 (119.6) 861.3 (92.9) 0.54 (0.32) 0.16 (96.4) 845.0 (74.5) 919.9 (139.6) 1517.3 (567.5) 936.4 (149.5) 959.1 (167.4) 0.87 (0.60) 0.17 (111.0) 879.9 (86.0) 853.5 (91.7) 1314.7 (432.6) 935.9 (98.0) 877.6 (99.4) 0.53 (0.61) 0.12 (161.1) 925.1 (120.0) 925.5 (161.7) 1259.3 (233.5) 981.7 (115.3) 937.7 (167.0) 0.32 (0.25) 0.11 (96.9) 864.3 (107.0) 874.5 (101.1) 1281.8 (351.7) 937.4 (126.1) 904.2 (116.9) 0.47 (0.41) 0.16 (101.9) 828.6 (86.9) 816.3 (103.9) 1377.0 (428.6) 912.3 (116.0) 856.2 (125.8) 0.61 (0.43) 0.17 (80.2) 812.4 (75.0) 860.0 (123.4) 1484.7 (815.5) 918.0 (89.0) 947.3 (235.8) 1.00 (1.12) 0.22 (137.0) 920.3 (102.2) 876.0 (81.4) 1441.4 (367.6) 994.3 (121.8) 920.4 (117.9) 0.55 (0.39) 0.13 (115.8) 946.5 (121.7) 967.8 (187.4) 1265.0 (210.9) 994.1 (180.5) 990.0 (241.6) 0.37 (0.29) 0.08 (121.0) 905.7 (130.8) 875.8 (121.4) 1380.5 (427.0) 1021.9 (175.3) 906.0 (152.7) 0.58 (0.48) 0.20 (99.1) 853.5 (93.4) 845.4 (93.3) 1253.0 (341.1) 911.0 (103.7) 857.3 (99.2) 0.44 (0.36) 0.11 (114.0) 872.2 (85.1) 864.2 (133.5) 1475.6 (479.7) 965.9 (138.2) 922.3 (195.0) 0.73 (0.63) 0.18 (165.4) 963.3 (138.2) 913.2 (98.8) 1583.6 (500.7) 1104.5 (168.7) 981.6 (160.5) 0.66 (0.59) 0.26 (218.4) 1038.2 (216.3) 984.5 (157.9) 1553.6 (488.6) 1169.9 (412.9) 1061.6 (206.6) 0.59 (0.51) 0.24 (178.2) 951.0 (127.6) 920.9 (110.1) 1612.9 (624.2) 1144.2 (299.8) 1019.4 (292.0) 0.72 (0.60) 0.35 (98.2) 895.2 (73.4) 888.0 (114.7) 1350.0 (369.2) 1003.8 (139.7) 958.8 (189.2) 0.60 (0.51) 0.23 (113.7) 911.2 (106.6) 876.9 (84.8) 1587.4 (519.2) 1086.8 (237.3) 916.3 (98.7) 0.89 (0.72) 0.33 (122.5) 963.9 (110.7) 948.5 (145.2) 1551.1 (464.3) 1117.2 (185.4) 1044.4 (194.6) 0.74 (0.57) 0.29

IDs of touch key locations.

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Y.S. Park, S.H. Han / International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 40 (2010) 6876

1 6 11 16 21

2 7 12 17 22

3 8 13 18 23

4 9 14 19 24

5 10 15 20 25

1 6 11 16 21

2 7 12 17 22

3 8 13 18 23

4 9 14 19 24

5 10 15 20 25

1 6 11 16 21

2 7 12 17 22

3 8 13 18 23

4 9 14 19 24

5 10 15 20 25

1 6 11 16 21

2 7 12 17 22

3 8 13 18 23

4 9 14 19 24

5 10 15 20 25

For all touch key sizes

Touch key size: 4mm

Touch key size: 7mm

Touch key size: 10mm

Fig. 5. Good and poor regions in terms of the rst transition time. The dark areas and white areas represent good and poor regions, respectively. The gray areas represent regions that provide an average level of the rst transition time.

2400 2000 1600 1020.1 1200 800 400 0 951.5 1455.3

A
4 mm

B
7 mm

B
10 mm

Touch key size

Fig. 6. Mean task completion time (ms) according to the touch key size. The same letter indicates that those conditions were not signicantly different from each other.

3.2. Task completion time The same statistical techniques were used to analyze the task completion time. The ANOVA test showed that the touch key size (F(2,58) 88.3, p < 0.01), the touch key location (F(24,696)6.4, p < 0.01), and the interaction between them (F(48,1392)2.2, p < 0.01) inuenced the task completion time at the 0.05 signicance level. Similar to the results of the rst transition time, the touch key size of 4 mm required the longest task completion time, while the 7 mm

and 10 mm sizes were not different to each other at the 0.05 signicance level. Fig. 6 presents mean task completion time. The SNK test on the touch key location, also, provided good and poor regions considering all touch key sizes together. The simple effect tests showed that the task completion time was signicantly inuenced by the touch key locations when the touch key size was xed at each factor level (for 4 mm, F(24,696) 3.0, p < 0.01; for 7 mm, F(24, 696) 10.1, p < 0.01; for 10 mm, F(24,696) 7.7, p < 0.01). Then, good and poor regions for each touch key size were identied by the SNK tests at the 0.05 signicance level. Fig. 7 illustrates good and poor regions under the four conditions of the touch key size. For the task completion time, good and poor regions are different according to the touch key size. Left areas on a touch screen tend to be good regions for the smallest touch keys, while center and right areas tend to be good regions for the other touch key sizes (i.e. the touch key size of 7 mm and 10 mm). With respect to poor regions, the touch key location of 5 is a poor region for the 4 mm touch key size, while upper leftmost locations (IDs of 1 and 2) and the lowermost locations (IDs of 21, 22, and 25) are poor regions for the other touch key sizes. 3.3. Number of errors The one-way ANOVA on ranks, one of the non-parametric statistical techniques, was applied to the number of errors (Hesel and Hirsch, 2002). It required transformation of the collected data to the rank ones before applying the ANOVA. Then, the SNK tests, as posthoc analyses, were performed on the signicant effects (Aref, 1995).

Mean task completion time (msec)

1 6 11 16 21

2 7 12 17 22

3 8 13 18 23

4 9 14 19 24

5 10 15 20 25

1 6 11 16 21

2 7 12 17 22

3 8 13 18 23

4 9 14 19 24

5 10 15 20 25

1 6 11 16 21

2 7 12 17 22

3 8 13 18 23

4 9 14 19 24

5 10 15 20 25

1 6 11 16 21

2 7 12 17 22

3 8 13 18 23

4 9 14 19 24

5 10 15 20 25

For all touch key sizes

Touch key size: 4mm

Touch key size: 7mm

Touch key size: 10mm

Fig. 7. Good and poor regions in terms of the task completion time. The dark areas and white areas represent good and poor regions, respectively. The gray areas represent regions that provide an average level of the task completion time.

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73

P r e s s in g c o n v e n ie n c e (p o in ts )

1.5

10 6.3 8 4.1 6 4 2 0 5.6

Mean number of errors

0.62 1.2 0.9 0.6 0.3 0

0.19 0.08

A B
4 mm 7 mm Touch key size

A
4 mm

B
7 mm Touch key size

C
10 mm

C
10 mm

Fig. 8. Mean number of errors according to the touch key size. The same letter indicates that those conditions were not signicantly different from each other.

Fig. 10. Mean pressing convenience (points) according to the touch key size. The same letter indicates that those conditions were not signicantly different from each other.

The touch key size signicantly affected the number of errors (F(2,58) 871.0, p < 0.01). The SNK test revealed that, as expected, the number of errors decreased as the touch key size increased. Fig. 8 presents the mean number of errors. The touch key location was also a signicant factor (F(24,696)5.5, p < 0.01). In order to understand the effects of the touch key location more clearly, this study conducted SNK tests on partial data separated by the touch key size as well as on the entire data including the number of errors for all touch key sizes. Fig. 9 shows good and poor regions for the four cases. Fewer good regions are identied for the number of errors than the other measures (i.e. the rst transition time, the task completion time and the pressing convenience). The leftmost locations including IDs of 6, 11, and 16 seem to provide a fewer number of errors. Poor regions are different according to the touch key size. Four locations including IDs of 4, 5, 9, and 14 are poor regions for the 4 mm touch key size, while other four locations in the lower part of a touch screen (i.e. IDs of 20, 22, 24 and 25) are poor regions for the 7 mm touch key size. However, only one touch key location, ID of 25, is a poor region for the 10 mm size. 3.4. Pressing convenience The one-way ANOVA on ranks showed the touch key size (F(2,58) 41.0, p < 0.01) and the touch key location (F(24,696) 75.0, p < 0.01) statistically inuenced the pressing convenience at the 0.05 signicance level. The SNK tests on the touch key size and location revealed that a larger touch key size

produced a higher pressing convenience, as expected, and the center areas of a touch screen were preferred than the edge regions. Then, the SNK tests on the touch key location were performed on the partial pressing convenience data separated by the touch key size. Fig. 10 presents mean pressing convenience and Fig. 11 shows good and poor regions. Fig. 11 shows similar patterns of good and poor regions for different touch key sizes. Nine areas in the center region (the touch key locations of 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, and 19) were revealed as good regions for all touch key sizes, while ve touch key locations in the edge region (i.e. the touch key locations of 1, 6, 20, 21, and 25) seemed to provide poor performance for all touch key sizes.

4. Discussion 4.1. Effects of the touch key size This study evaluated three touch key sizes (i.e. 4 mm, 7 mm and 10 mm) in the experiment, and the results showed the touch key size of 10 mm provided the best usability. In addition, the 7 mm size provided statistically the same usability as the 10 mm size for the two time-related measures (i.e. the rst transition time and the task completion time). However, the touch key size larger than 15 mm were recommended as usable one in many previous studies (Colle and Hiszem, 2004; Ohara et al., 2002; Scott and Conzola, 1997; Waloszek, 2000; Wanger et al., 1996). This difference may stem from the touch screen size used in this study. A small touch screen with the width of 5.3 cm and the height of 7.1 cm was used

1 6 11 16 21

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For all touch key sizes

Touch key size: 4mm

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Fig. 9. Good and poor regions in terms of the number of errors. The dark areas and white areas represent good and poor regions, respectively. The gray areas represent regions that provide an average level of the number of errors.

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1 6 11 16 21

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Touch key size: 4mm

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Fig. 11. Good and poor regions in terms of the pressing convenience. The dark areas and white areas represent good and poor regions, respectively. The gray areas represent regions that provide an average level of the pressing convenience.

in this study, while large touch screens such as large monitors and kiosks were used in the previous research. The touch key size of more than 15 mm could not be applied to small devices (e.g. a mobile phone, a PDA, and a PMP) in which many information items should be displayed at the same time (Hong et al., 2005). In addition to the screen size, there are several factors that may affect usable touch key size. For example, interaction types (one-handed interaction vs. two-handed interaction), ngers used to press a target (thumb vs. index nger) and distance between users and touch screens. Parhi et al. (2006) investigated the effects of ve different touch key sizes such as 3.8 mm, 5.8 mm, 7.7 mm, 9.6 mm, and 11.5 mm for PDAs. In terms of task percent error, the touch key size more than 9.6 mm produced the lowest error percent, which seems to be consistent with the results of this study in which the touch key size of 10 mm showed the smallest number of errors. However, they found the task time decreased as the touch key size increased, while this study revealed no statistical difference between the touch key size of 7 mm and 10 mm in terms of the rst transition time and the task completion time. Use of thumb movement may be one of the reasons that make the difference. They used only North to South (or vice versa) movement that were known to better match the thumbs natural axis of rotation than East to West (or vice versa) movement, while this study did not restrict the movement direction. Table 3 summarizes usable/recommended touch key sizes from relevant studies with respect to three usability
Table 3 Comparison of the usable/recommended touch key sizes. Source Touch key size (mm) Task Number of completion errors time Comment Subjective Touch Finger used satisfaction screen size to press a measured target diagonally (cm) 10 N/A 20, 25 N/A 8.9 8.9 30.7 35.9 Thumb Thumb Index nger Index nger

measures including task completion time, number of errors, and subjective satisfaction. 4.2. Effects of the touch key location The results of this study showed the touch key location signicantly affected all the dependent measures. This nding is inconsistent with the study conducted by Parhi et al. (2006). They reported the touch key location did not signicantly affect performance measures (i.e. the task times and the percent error). The difference may be explained by the fact that their study restricted thumb movements so that moving distance by a thumb is kept constant for all touch key locations. In addition to moving distance, moving direction was also manipulated as explained in the previous section. The same moving distance and the same moving direction for all touch key locations would make the location factor insignicant. In this study, on the other hand, the moving distance and moving direction varied according to the touch key locations. The rst transition time tended to be fast in the center region, while slow in the edge region (see Fig. 5). This is because the thumb was located near the center region when the subject was ready to press a target on a touch screen. In terms of the number of errors, the touch keys located in the left part on the screen had fewer errors than the keys with the other locations (see Fig. 9). The touch keys located in the left part were less hided by the right hand when performing the experimental task. That is, the touch keys located in the left part provided the subjects with enough visual feedback information. The visual feedback information is critical to the experimental task since it is necessary to check if a thumb movement has reached a target (Meyer et al., 1990). Similarly, the touch keys located in the lower right areas (e.g. the touch key locations of 20, 24 and 25) showed poor usability in terms of the number of errors since they were interfered by the right hand. In case of the smallest touch key size (i.e. the touch key size of 4 mm) that produced many errors, the task completion time seems to be mainly affected by the number of errors (see Figs. 5, 7, 9). On the other hand, for the 7 mm and 10 mm touch keys, the rst transition time seems to mainly affect the task completion time since the number of errors for the two touch key sizes were quite low (for the 7 mm, mean 0.19; for the 10 mm, mean 0.08). The task completion time consists of two parts, the rst transition time and additional time until pressing a target correctly if the rst press is incorrect. The additional time is highly correlated with the number of errors. If the rst press is correct, the task completion

This study Parhi et al. (2006) Colle and Hiszem (2004) Scott and Conzola (1997) Waloszek (2000) Ohara et al. (2002) Wanger et al. (1996)

7, 10 11.5 20, 25 16, 18, 20

10 9.6, 11.5 15, 20, 25 16, 18, 20 20, 25 More than 20 1938

Not specied but large screens and index ngers

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time is equal to the rst transition time. The inuence of the rst transition time on the task completion time decreases as the number of errors decreases. The subjective satisfaction score (the pressing convenience) tended to be higher in the center region (i.e. the touch key location of 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18 and 19) than in the other regions (see Fig. 11). This is consistent with the result reported by Parhi et al. (2006). This study, however, provides more detailed results since it investigated a total of twenty-ve regions, while the previous study investigated only nine regions. 4.3. Design recommendations The results of this study lead to the following recommendations for designing a touch user interface on a mobile phone. The touch key size of 7 mm is recommended when time-related measures and the number of touch keys are considered important. The touch key size of 10 mm would be the best if all the measures are considered together. Frequently used touch keys (e.g. shortcuts for SMS messaging, phone call, and PIMS) should be located in the center area of a touch screen since pressing touch keys located in the center area took shorter rst transition time. Moreover, the center area was more preferred than the others. Input functions requiring an accurate control, e.g. a shutter button for a camera function and play/stop buttons for a musicplayback function, could be located in the leftmost area since the area tended to have a lower number of errors than the others. User interface elements for information presentation (e.g. indicators, progress bars, and notication) could be located at the edge region, especially uppermost and lowermost areas, since the pressing performance and subjective satisfaction in these areas were lower than those in the others. In other words, any touch keys should not be located in these areas whenever possible. Then, the designers could place touch keys except for these areas for a faster and more accurate input. 4.4. Effects of hand and nger sizes The hand and nger sizes such as hand length, nger length and nger width might affect one-handed thumb interaction with a mobile phone. Scott and Conzola (1997) examined the effects of nger sizes on keying speed and errors using the ANCOVA analysis. They found that the index nger size signicantly affected both measures. Also, it was found that a small nger took shorter keying time and made more duplication errors than a large nger. Duplication errors occurred if people did not remove their ngers from a key before a second touch was made, due to the lack of ne motor adjustments. Scott and Conzola (1997) discussed faster keying time could make more duplication errors because people did not take enough time to make ne motor adjustments. Although hand and nger sizes could affect the usability of touch key design, this study did not control the subjects in the experiment by their hand and nger sizes. From an engineering perspective, it seemed to be quite difcult to analyze interaction patterns and provide different touch interfaces according to the hand and nger sizes. Hence, a total of thirty Korean subjects with a variety of hand and nger sizes were randomly selected and involved in this study. Table 1 shows summary of the subjects hand and nger sizes. Then, collected data were statistically analyzed to nd usable touch key designs appropriate for a majority of subjects with normal hand nger sizes. Therefore, the results of this study could be applicable to the Korean people with normal hand and nger sizes.

Table 4 Body dimensions and touch screen sizes of mobile devices. Products Samsung SCH-W420 LG KU 990 Apple iPhone HP rz 1717 Length (mm) 115 104 115.5 114 Width (mm) 55 54.4 62.1 70 Thickness (mm) 12.4 13.9 12.3 13.4 Touch screen size (in) 3.2 3.0 3.5 3.5

On the other hand, if the designers want to develop a touch interface for specic Korean users with extremely large/small hand and nger sizes, the results of this study cannot be used. In addition, different studies are needed for different ethnic groups following the research methods proposed by this study. 4.5. Generalization to mobile phones The effects of body sizes of mobile devices were controlled in this study, since usable touch key design is different according to body sizes. For example, if two phones have different body thickness and the same body length and width, people can move their thumbs less freely when they manipulate the thicker mobile phone. Then, usable touch key designs would be different each other for the two mobile phones. Table 4 provides body dimensions of some mobile phones currently available in the market as well as those of a PDA used in the experiment, which shows each mobile device has a different body size. If the effects of body size were not controlled in this study, the results would be applied only to mobile devices with the same body sizes as the PDA, HP rz 1717. In order to eliminate and control the effects of body sizes, this study allowed users to move their thumbs freely during the experiment (see Section 2.6). That is, regardless of the PDA body size, every subject could move their thumbs freely during the experiment, which means the PDA body size would not seriously affect the one-handed thumb movement. Therefore, although the PDA is a little larger than mobile phones with a touch screen available in the market, the results of this study could be applied to mobile phones. This study aims to investigate touch key designs for one-handed thumb interaction. However, supporting by the left hand was allowed if it was difcult to move the right thumb freely while holding the PDA with the same hand. Although two hands were involved in the interaction with the PDA, this interaction could be classied into one-handed interaction since the subjects used only one thumb to press a target on a touch screen. Note that when people use mobile phones with two hands, they normally use both thumbs, or use an index nger of one hand while holding a mobile phone with the other hand. 5. Conclusion This study is one of initial attempts to investigate usable touch key designs on a mobile phone, in which the touch key sizes and the touch key locations were investigated. This study examined three touch key sizes (i.e. 4 mm, 7 mm, and 10 mm) and 25 touch key locations dividing a touch screen into equal areas with the same width and height. The results provided usable touch key sizes for usability measures (i.e. the rst transition time, the task completion time, the number of errors, and the pressing convenience). Touch key locations with good and poor usability (i.e. good regions and bad regions, respectively) were analyzed with respect to each measure. Moreover, touch key size effects on good/bad regions were discussed for the measures. Design

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Y.S. Park, S.H. Han / International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 40 (2010) 6876 Hesel, D.R., Hirsch, R.M., 2002. Statistical Methods in Water Resources. U.S. Geological Survey. TWRI Book 4, (Chapter A3). Hong, S.W., Han, S.H., Park, Y.S., 2005. Effects of typographical factors on readability of texts on PDAs. Asian Journal of Ergonomics 6, 114. Karlson, A.K., Bederson, B.B., Contreras-Vidal, J.L., 2006. Understanding Singlehanded Mobile Device Interaction. University of Maryland. HCIL-2006-02. Martin, G.L., 1988. Conguring a numeric keypad for a touch screen. Ergonomics 31, 945953. Meyer, D.E., Smith, J.E.K., Kornblum, S., Abrams, R.A., Wright, C.E., 1990. Speedaccuracy tradeoffs in aimed movement: toward a theory of rapid voluntary action. In: Jeannerod, M. (Ed.), Attention and Performance XIII. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 173226. Ohara, J.M., Brown, W.S., Lewis, P.M., Persensky, J.J., 2002. HumanSystem Interface Design Review Guideline. Nuclear Regulatory Commisions, Washington, D.C. NUREG-0700. Parhi, P., Karlson, A.K., Benderson, B.B., 2006. Target size study for one-handed thumb use on small touchscreen devices. In: Proceedings of the MobileHCI 06, 203210. Park, Y.S., Han, S.H., Park, J., Cho, Y., 2008. Touch key design for target selection on a mobile phone. In: the Proceedings of the 10th Mobile HCI conference. Amsterdam, Netherland. Pfauth, M., Priest, J., 1981. Personcomputer interface using touch screen devices. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 25th Annual Meeting. Santa Monica, CA. Scott, B., Conzola, V., 1997. Designing touch screen numeric keypads: effects of nger size, key size, and key spacing. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 41th annual meeting. Santa Monica, CA, 360364. Sears, A., 1991. Improving touchscreen keyboards: design issues and a comparison with other devices. Interacting with Computers 3, 253269. Sears, A., Revis, D., Swatski, J., Crittenden, R., Shneiderman, B., 1993. Investigating touch screen typing: the effect of touch keyboard size on typing speed. Behaviour & Information Technology 12, 1722. Waloszek, G., 2000. Interaction design guide for touchscreen applications. Retrieved Oct. 6, 2008, from. www.sapdesignguild.org/resources/TSDesignGL/CONTENTS. HTM. Wanger, D., Birt, J.A., Snyder, M.D., Dunscanson, J.P., 1996. Human Factors Design Guide for Acquisition of Commercial-off-the-Shelf Subsystems, Non-development Items, and Developmental Systems. Department of Transportation, Washington, D.C. DOT/FAA/CT-96/1.

recommendations were made from the results of this study. The results of this study may be applicable to designing a touch interface on a mobile phone. This study mainly focused on a simple task, single target selection. Investigating touch key designs for more complicated tasks (e.g. serial target selections) would be interesting future research. In addition, more studies are necessary to systematically investigate other important factors affecting usable touch key design such as spacing between keys, the number of touch keys on a screen, touch key layout, physical body sizes of mobile devices, etc. Acknowledgments This work was supported by the Korea Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government (MOEHRD, Basic Research Promotion Fund) (KRF-2007-313-D00913). References
Aref, S., 1995. SAS Recipes. Stipes Publishing L.L.C., Champaign, IL. Beringer, D.B., 1990. Target size, location, sampling point and instructional set: more effects on touch panel operation. In: Proceedinigs of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 34th annual meeting. Santa Monica, CA, 375379. Colle, H.A., Hiszem, K.J., 2004. Standing at a kiosk: effects of key size and spacing on touch screen numeric keypad performance and user preference. Ergonomics 47, 14061423. Greiner, T.M., 1991. Hand Anthropometry of U.S. Army Personnel. U.S. Army Natick Research, Development and Engineering Center, Natick, MA. NATICK/ TR-92/011. Hall, A.D., Cunningham, J.B., Roache, R.P., Cox, J.W., 1988. Factors affecting performance using touch entry systems: tactile recognition elds and system accuracy. Journal of Applied Psychology 73, 711720.