Ergonomics of Working with a Graphics Tablet

David Revoy has one of the best articles I've seen about the Ergonomics of Graphics Tablets.  He has experimented with a variety of tablets and desk layouts and, best of all, created these very clear diagrams (such as the one below) to illustrate his article.

As Revoy shows and explains, "Most of CG artists use shortcuts on the keyboard to speed up their work-flow."  In this setup, the right hand is for drawing and the left hand is for shortcut keys (critical for switching between drawing tools, copy & paste, etc.).  The right hand moves back and forth for typing.

I'm writing this post as background for some UI research that I've started doing to improve the usability of software for artists and other pen-heavy users.  The first example is the script I wrote in AutoHotkey to set the location of the Tablet PC Input Panel.

Up next, I'll be looking at the Quill gesture design tool for pen-based user interfaces.  I think some interesting things could be done with simple gestures (like Graffiti unistrokes) in a vector drawing tool that haven't really been explored yet.  I'd like to explore rough drawing text, shapes, etc. and having the computer recognize it and convert it to a desired format in place.  Done right, I think it could lead to a more natural drawing experience while still maintaining the precision of vector drawing tools.