In what is a bit of an oddity in my family of entirely right-handed people, both of my daughters have turned out to be lefties.
Unlike the days when I was a kid, being left-handed is not such a big deal for them. There were no teachers trying to get them to write "correctly," and these days school desks are rectangular, not reverse-P shaped. Still, there are some glitches. My oldest complains that signing those electronic pads used for credit cards and deliverymen is difficult, because her hand often brushes up against the touchscreen. And, I learned this week, apparently a lot of coffee mugs are right-handed.
"You're kidding me," I replied when she said that. I figured this was just more teen grousing. "How could a coffee mug have handedness? If you're left handed, just tuuurn the mug." Which I demonstrated in my smug superior Dad way.
She pointed at the handle and said, "don't you notice that it feels different? It's curved for right-handed people."
This seemed ridiculous. Why would anyone curve the handle of a coffee mug? But it did feel a bit awkward in my grip. I looked down, and at the age of 42, learned something new: the handle's contours were clearly asymmetric. I shifted the handle back to my right hand. Darned if she wasn't right.
I went down to the kitchen and opened the cabinet and checked the cups and mugs. Not only was this mug's handle handed, but most of the other mugs were, too.
After doing a little research online, it was clear that I had completely missed out on this element of engineering. As someone who has never confronted this before, my initial reaction was that this is stupid. After all, most estimates peg left-handed people at making up about 10 percent of the people. When a coffee mug handle could just as well be symmetric, why leave out 1 out of every 10 coffee drinkers by having the handle favor the righties?
This, I think, is a case of applying the wrong standard. Manufacturers must figure that since 90 percent of the population is right-handed, there's no need to accomodate the lefties by making non-handed coffee mugs. But, perhaps engineers figured that making the grip better for righties would make mugs less likely to be dropped. So they opted to go for the better-for-most approach instead of same-for-all.
My question this week is this: which approach is better for software development? Optimizing the majority's experience, or unifying everyone's experience?
