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Fig. 3.11
The Eclipse workspace
broader and shallower menus will be faster to use than narrower and deeper menus
(multiple movements take more time than choosing), although the size of the
effects are moderated by the naturalness of the categories of the menu items
(Landauer 1987b , pp. 146-147).
It is also worth noting that Fitts' Law also applies to moving to a particular key
on a keyboard, although the constants in the equation are different. The results here
would advocate making frequently used keys bigger and possibly putting them
close to the edge of the keyboard, depending on how they are used. The sequence
in which keys are regularly used is also an important factor to consider in working
out the layout of the keys.
3.3.4 Mobile Phones
Thumbing is an important area of interface interaction (see, for example, James
and Reischel 2001 ; MacKenzie and Soukoreff 2002 ). Many mobile phone users
interact using their thumbs rather than their fingers. In some cases they use one
hand, particularly when using those parts of the screen that can be used more easily
one handed. In other cases, they cradle the phone in the fingers of both hands, and
then enter data using both thumbs. Phones that have full keyboards, rather than just
numeric keypads, are particularly suited to using both thumbs for text input.
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