Let's Talk Buttons: The Impact of Community Feedback on Product Design.

We often speak about how important feedback from our 8,000+ Gliders community is for the development of Glide; The world's first intelligent guide for people who are blind or have low vision. It's the reason we host so many in-person demo events each year, as well as run exhaustive testing on each iteration of Glide until we get things just right.

This feedback often has a direct impact on our design and user experience development process, and this month we have a very clear example to illustrate this feedback loop in action; Buttons.

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So what about buttons?

As one of the primary inputs for how users interact with Glide aside from voice, getting the handle buttons right is essential to the successful adoption and user experience of Glide.

Over the past few rounds of prototyping and testing, we felt that we didn't quite have the handle buttons - which a user would press to indicate for Glide to turn, as well as to scroll through menu options - one hundred percent right. This wasn't just a hunch. Our thinking was informed and driven by the community at countless events. It was good, but we found some folks still experiencing challenges with them.

As a result, this month we want back to the drawing board. Our thinking on the both the design of how buttons are used when interacting with Glide, as well as the physical design and position of the buttons themselves, have evolved in a positive way.

For those that had a chance to feel a late model Alpha 1.6, the experience was three individual buttons placed in the grip area, underneath the fingertips. While this was successful for the middle button and the button that landed under the pointer finger, it became clear that the third button was pretty difficult for people to press reliably using the ring and/or pinky finger. It would not be a comfortable and reliable button to press easily.

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Redesigning for a solution that fits all.

Our latest version, which we've already prototyped and received feedback from over 30 users recently in both Chicago and Montreal, solves this issue.

In the new design, the left and right buttons are at the top side areas of the grip, mirrored left and right side to be used with either hand, and allow you to simply sweep the thumb up to the side to quickly access these buttons with the pad of your thumb.

The main middle button remains in the grip area and is easy to press by simply squeezing the grip in the middle area. The feedback is extremely positive across different ages, hand sizes and capabilities, and so we are now moving towards this direction for our final design.

We share this little example as a way of saying this to our community: Thank you. We find one of the most valuable aspects of building Glide out in the open with our community is that each of our decisions is informed not just by theory, design expertise, and a bit of testing. It's informed by real users getting their hands on our product at each and every stage, multiple times, until we get a resounding "yes".

Thank you to everyone who engaged in this process and continues to engage in our demo days and feedback sessions. Together, we feel confident we will be able to deliver a product and experience that will meet, and hopefully exceed expectations!