CAThumbstick Pop-up joystick promises easy manipulation of future mobile phones

Interface design, buttons, click wheels, touchpads, joysticks, mices and so on are very important features nowadays for consumer products. People don’t care about functions anymore, if it’s hard to access. There are a lot of bad designs with good features and from time to time something good makes its way to us, like the Russian design of a pop-up joystick for mobile devices, called CAThumbstick.

CAThumbstick helps in daily use and in games, thanks to its clever design

The pop-up joystick is the result of cooperation between Russian designers Yurii Elshin and Alexander Sekirash from Industrialdesign.ru. The principle is very simple: you press and rotate the mechanism, that sits hidden when not in use, it pops up and from now on, till you press it again, it is used as a four way joystick. CAThumbstick offers the small footprint of regular joysticks found in mobile phones along with a more precise movement, which increases your chances of a more relaxed daily usage. When you stop using it you press and rotate it the other way, it hiddens again, and can be used as a regular button.

A Protech cellphone rendering using CAThumbstick

Very nice idea by those russians. I hope to see it in future devices, because I’m annoyed already with the way big manufactures design their latest products, with good looks in mind, not ergonomics principles.

Portable gaming consoles can successfully use CAThumbstick