Hi Neal and list:
Have you found this to be true when proxemity is narrowed as well?
I think you will have a really hard time making the keys smaller. The testing we have done at Trace for various phone projects, A T M machines and other products I can't mention has lead us to believe that you start leaving out vast segments of the older population plus a number of other people when you make the keys too small to use. As it is now, the keys are just about the dimensions of a standard telephone, plus or minus. Well, and what is a standard telephone these days anyway, so perhaps that is not a good example. But I would caution against making them any smaller than they are now.
Neal
-----Original Message----- From: bookport-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bookport-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bruce Toews Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2006 1:15 PM To: bookport@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [bookport] Re: New Bookport ideas
What about keeping the keys the same size, but just moving them a touch closer together? My preference would be for much smaller keys much closer together, but I agree this would be a problem to people without the finger dexterity or precision. Bruce
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On Sun, 23 Apr 2006, Russ & Valerie wrote:
I agree that smaller keys will be a challenge for some.
My aunt is using a BP, and she can just manage the buttons as she is a
bit frail and her fingers not always steady.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Walt Smith" <walt@xxxxxxxxxx> To: <bookport@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Sunday, 23 April, 2006 11 21 Subject: [bookport] Re: New Bookport ideas
A BP with smaller keys might be okay, but I do wonder about the elderly or multi-handicapped user's ability to manipulate something that would enable a design of the size you mention here--a cigarette pack. While I don't know this to have been the case when the original device was designed, the present keypad certainly looks
as if this section of the potential market was considered. I know from experience and observation that many elderly users just can't cope very well with buttons the size most of us find usable. Since NLS, from what I gather, isn't planning to produce a truly portable player when they move to digital Talking Books, I can imagine APH wanting to fill this gap, provided they can work with NLS to get the
necessary permissions and work out the technology, so these folks would absolutely have to be taken into account in any design considerations.
I think that on balance, I also like the idea of moving to SD cards from CompactFlash, particularly if industry forecasts indicate that even higher-capacity SD cards may be forthcoming in the future and if NLS decides to move in that direction. Right now, 4 gig is the largest available size and if APH succeeds in removing all card size
limitations, I can see that some folks may very well want to buy even larger-capacity cards. My sole concern about using SD cards is their relative fragility when compared to CompactFlash--I just see them as being too easy to damage or lose. CompactFlash is certainly going to continue to be around for a long, long time, given the number of devices that are dependent on them, but using SD would certainly aid in designing a smaller player.
----- Original Message ----- From: "David Tanner" <david-tanner@xxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <bookport@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, April 22, 2006 8:20 PM Subject: [bookport] Re: New Bookport ideas
It's size is about half to two thirds an inch thick, about 2 inches wide, and about 5 inches high. I am guessing it would need to be a bit larger than this unit in order to have decent size keys, but it would be nice if the BP could be a bit smaller; say the size of a cigarette pack.
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