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The invisible problem – Scott Jenson

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Whenever I explain my research at Google into mobile text editing, I’m usually met with blank stares or a slightly hostile “Everyone can edit text on their phones, right? What’s the problem?” Text editing on mobile isn’t ok. It’s actually much worse than you think, an invisible problem no one appreciates. I wrote this post so you can understand why it’s so important. But as it’s a rather nuanced issue, I may lose you. To help, I’ve sprinkled lots of headers throughout so if you get bored, just skip ahead. Android and iOS share a common problem: they copied desktop text editing conventions, but without a menu bar or mouse. This forced them to overload the tap gesture with a wide range of actions: placing the cursor, moving it, selecting text, and invoking a pop-up menu. This results in an overly complicated and ambiguous mess-o-taps, leading to a variety of user errors. It’s less of a problem if you only do short bursts of text in social media or messaging apps. But doing anything more

Whenever I explain my research at Google into mobile text editing, I’m usually met with blank stares or a slightly hostile “Everyone can edit text on their phones, right? What’s the problem?” Text editing on mobile isn’t ok. It’s actually much worse than you think, an invisible problem very few appreciate. I wrote this post so you can understand why it’s so important. But as it’s a rather nuanced issue, I may lose you. To help, I’ve sprinkled lots of headers throughout so if you get bored, just skip ahead. TL;DR Android and iOS share a common problem: they copied desktop text editing…

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