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# This chart explains why Threes! is so painlessly brilliant
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/chart-explains-why-threes-so-brilliant/
- Published: 2014-02-11T15:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2024-07-26T10:36:09.000Z
- Description: Like many of you, I am completely addicted to Threes!, the lovely new heir to the Drop7 and TripleTown fortune. And by fortune, I mean all of my time. David Wolinsky’s review hit the nail on the head, but as a strap-hanging commuter of New York City, I can’t help but feel like there’s something spec
- Author: Jamin Warren
- Tags: News, Asher Vollmer, Gesture, Greg Wohlwend, iOS, Paper, threes!, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

Like many of you, I am completely addicted to *Threes!*, the lovely new heir to the *Drop7* and *TripleTown* fortune. And by fortune, I mean all of my time.

[David Wolinsky’s review](http://killscreendaily.com/articles/reviews/feature/threes-lot-more-addictive/?ref=killscreen.com) hit the nail on the head, but as a strap-hanging commuter of New York City, I can’t help but feel like there’s something special about being able to play a game with one hand and hang on for dear life with the other.   

![](https://killscreen.com/previously/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/thumb_zone_screen_only_medium.jpg)

It’s not a common use case in a sense–having one hand hooked to a steel railing–but in another, building for this type of experience puts *Threes!* in a separate category of elegant user design.

It dominates something called “The Thumb Zone.”

The phrase was invented by Steven Hoober, author of the O’Reilly book *Designing Mobile Interfaces* and as the name implies, the Thumb Zone is “the most comfortable area for touch with one-handed use.” Hoober [found that 49% of users held their phone in one hand and used their phone with one thumb](http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/02/how-do-users-really-hold-mobile-devices.php?ref=killscreen.com).

In an unflattering critique titled “[Facebook Paper’s Gestural Hell](http://scotthurff.com/posts/facebook-paper-gestures?utm%5Fsource=Product%20Hunt&utm%5Fcampaign=90628d16da-daily-email-02-05-2014&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fterm=0%5F2cd7d34185-90628d16da-107140573),” Scott Hurff pointed me to the concept and he breaks down exactly why the Thumb Zone is so important.

> I’m a typical, bored user waiting in line for delicious burritos or coffee, I want to maximize my swipes / flicks and see as many stories as I can, as quickly as I can.

Replace “stories” with “moves” and you have an accurate assessment of how good mobile games *should* work. In fact, the ones I often spend the most time with on my phone (iPad is a different story) are the ones that cause me the least amount of pain. This may seem obvious, but it’s surprisingly uncommon. It still doesn’t explain *Flappy Bird*‘s ascent, but hey, let sleeping birds lie.