Designing for Touch

A Book Apart #14

by Josh Clark

Touch introduces physicality to designs that were once strictly virtual, and puts forth a new test: How does this design feel in the hand? Josh Clark guides you through the touchscreen frontier. Learn about ergonomic demands (and rules of thumb), layout and sizing for all gadgets, an emerging gestural toolkit, and tactics to speed up interactions and keep gestures discoverable. Get the know-how to design for interfaces that let you touch—stretch, crumple, drag, flick—information itself. It’s in your hands.

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Reference, Web, Programming

169 pages, ebook

First published October 29, 2015

About the author

Josh Clark is founder of Big Medium, a design agency specializing in connected devices, mobile experiences, and responsive web design. His clients include Samsung, Time Inc, TechCrunch, Entertainment Weekly, eBay, O’Reilly Media, and many others. Josh has written several books, including “Designing for Touch” (A Book Apart, 2015) and “Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps” (O’Reilly, 2010). He speaks around the world about what’s next for digital interfaces.

Before the internet swallowed him up, Josh was a producer of national PBS programs at Boston’s WGBH. He shared his three words of Russian with Mikhail Gorbachev, strolled the ranch with Nancy Reagan, hobnobbed with Rockefellers, and wrote trivia questions for a primetime game show. In 1996, he created the uberpopular “Couch-to-5K” (C25K) running program, which has helped millions of skeptical would-be exercisers take up jogging. (His motto is the same for fitness as it is for software user experience: no pain, no pain.)

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative and entertaining. I've been fortunate enough to hear Josh Clark speak on this at An Event Apart and this book was like an extension of that. His speaking personality definitely comes through in the text.

[Natalía Papadopoúlou · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only thing that I wish after this book is for somebody to update it for 2020.

[Ani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting insight into how people use their devices and how to improve the experience. Unfortunately I found the book and information repetitive.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Designing for Touch is good. It covers a lot without getting too heavy. I'd recommend if you're new to designing touch-friendly interfaces. It's a nice read. I flew through it and picked up a few nice tidbits. Came away with some potentially interesting gesture ideas.

[Chris Elkjar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great quick little overview of the challenges with more complex touch interactions.