Designing Better UX For Left-Handed People — Smashing Magazine

I’m left handed. I have and always have had terrible hand writing. I never got my ‘pen license’ at school.

Yet, I’ve probably written more words in my life (several books, hundreds of articles, thousands or tens of thousands of blog posts) than more than 99% of all humans in history. Pretty good for someone who can barely ‘write’. Before the era of typewriters and computers this would have been far less likely.

I’d argue hand writing is a technology for right handed people. It wasn’t all that long ago (I missed this by perhaps a decade) that eft handed children were forced to write right handed since left handedness was even 60 yeas ago associated with sin, or evil. (The word ‘sinister’ in English has its origins in the latin word sinister, meaning the left, or unlucky side).

But there are many subtle ways to this day objects and interactions are designed for right handed people. Here Vitaly Friedman explores how we might address this.