gorilla arm

gorilla arm

The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens as a mainstreaminput technology despite a promising start in the early 1980s.It seems the designers of all those spiffy touch-menusystems failed to notice that humans aren't designed to holdtheir arms in front of their faces making small motions.After more than a very few selections, the arm begins to feelsore, cramped, and oversized - the operator looks like agorilla while using the touch screen and feels like oneafterward. This is now considered a classic cautionary taleto human-factors designers; "Remember the gorilla arm!" isshorthand for "How is this going to fly in *real* use?".