How big should you make your buttons for touch?
Now that touch navigation is here to stay, people around the world are trying hard to get there websites and apps up to date.
Touch navigation means we use our clumsy fat fingers to click targets on a touch screen. What makes this worse is our hands and fingers are also in front of the screen we’re trying to use.
All of this results user interfaces designed for touch to have targets that are big enough for a person to easily and confidently click.
What’s a target you ask?
Targets are anything a user has to click; links, buttons, checkboxes, form fields, etc…
People often try to solve this problem by making their targets bigger than n pixels. The problem with this idea is that screens are all different resolutions and sizes these days. 40 x 40 pixels on an iPhone 4 is a lot smaller than on a 15” HD monitor.
Therefore to solve the problem of pixel density (i.e. ppi), we need to crack out the old fashioned ruler and measure the actual physical size of a target in our user interface designs. Archaic is sounds, yes, but it’s the only way to truly ensure acceptable target size.
For more information regarding minimum target sizes, check out this great article:
