Fireside Chat 2 - the role of the thumb

Dan: Hey everyone, this is fireside chat number two. It's me, Dan. And me, Hannah. And today we're going to talk about the role of the thumb, which is an important aspect of mug handle science.

Hannah: Perhaps closely related to rule of thumb. But today we're talking about the role of the thumb.

Dan: Indeed. Indeed, indeed so, do you have any questions about your thumb?

Hannah: My thumb in particular? Well first of all, we talk about how the thing that separates us from animals is opposable thumbs. Do you agree with that?

Dan: I think there's maybe some other things that separate us. I think intelligence and agency and these other things involving brains might be a little more important.

Hannah: Wearing pants.

Dan: Wearing pants. Pretty good. So, when we're thinking about, Thumbs might be above pants.

Hannah: When we're thinking about the importance of our thumbs. What are what are some ways that our thumbs are important? Mm hmm. Besides giving a thumbs up.

Dan: Yeah, well thumbs up is pretty solid, quite important. Mm hmm.

When I look at how to hold a coffee mug and like what does your thumb actually do? In a traditional loop style coffee mug, some people will take their thumb and they'll sit it on there and they'll use it to help pinch. And that can be beneficial. It creates some friction that can keep the mug handle from sliding down and it can help with stability.

In other situations. People may actually have their thumbs up in kind of a hitchhiker's way. And I noticed that I do this on, as I'm holding a mug sometimes, and I was trying to wonder why

you're doing a thumb up, thumbs up?

And so, yeah, we'll call it the hitchhiker. What you can do to look at how your thumb interacts with the rest of your hand is try taking your thumb, putting it all the way up.

So this actually makes you more able to push with the bottom of your hand. So take your, take your other thumb, push it into the, the palm of your hand, like the lower middle of the palm. And if you stick your thumb way up like a hitchhiker, you can push really hard against your other thumb. Now take your same thumb and turn it like a fist and push, and it feels a little more awkward.

Hannah: Yeah. Why is that?

Dan: So your hand has a series of bones and when I curl my thumb in like a fist, you can see how it changes the orientation of all those hand bones.

Oh yeah.

And then when you go like a very wide, like a thumbs up, it changes it again. And what I've found is that you sometimes do both, depending on what you want to do. The other advantage is if your thumb is down, kind of like a fist, you have more ability to push right here.

Right where?

If I'm looking at my right hand, it's the right side of my palm. The side of the palm that's closer to my thumb.

If I curl my hand like a fist, I can push on there really hard. It's very comfortable. If I go up like this, it feels more awkward to push on the top. Mm.

Hannah: So, when we're talking about the quirky cup handle, where does the quirky cup handle push and what is the role of the thumb? Mm hmm. And why is this the best way to drink your cup of joe in the morning?

Dan: Mm hmm. Yeah, so the

Hannah: I mean cup of coffee, not a cup of joe.

Dan: Mm hmm. Yeah. Sorry, Joe.

So if I look at the quirky cup handle, I am pushing with the lower part of my palm sometimes, and the upper part of my palm, and they each have their own contact point that's specially designed for that.

And then the thumb also has a place that it can sit at the top and part of the design intent is that you migrate your thumb, depending on what you're doing.

What do you mean?

Your thumb may move.

Depending on what you're doing?

Depending on what you're doing with the mug.

What do you mean by what you're doing with the mug?

So if I have a full mug, it's heavy and I'm holding it for a long time, I need to use the lower part of my palm to push because I need to create torque because I need to hold up this mug and so sometimes your thumb might actually be up high in a hitchhiker position to enable you to be really comfortable.

Hannah: So you're saying that like if you're back in the office talking to your co worker and they're talking to you for far too long blah blah blah blah and you're sitting there holding your cup of coffee you might be doing different things. So yeah. So you with that mug because right now you're waiting for, you know, Mark to stop blabbing about what he did this weekend.

So you might do something different with your thumb so you can hold that coffee mug for a long period of time.

Dan: Yeah. And so the thumb up position be very, very good. Hitchhiker position actually be probably pretty good for holding that. Now there's other situations because When you hold a mug, you navigate and migrate your hand a lot.

I think in the Quirky Cup you do it less than a regular mug since you don't need to. A lot of times like having to move your hand all around this thing is just a crutch because it doesn't work in the first place. So

if I put my thumb on this thumb rest, I can do something interesting, as I'm picking up a mug, sometimes I want to, readjust. If I squeeze my middle finger and my thumb together, I can fully hold onto a mug I can create torque with that, and that allows me to find a comfortable grip where I really kind of nest my hand where I want to.

And I can use that thumb to help stabilize and squeeze as I'm picking it up. So that often helps. And then the other thing is if I have my thumb squeezing, I can add stability. If this wants to rock or rotate or turn, if I'm walking around and moving the mug a lot in different unpredictable ways, I need to resist that.

So squeezing the thumb can actually help add stability, and that's the same thing you do on a traditional loop style mug. You squeeze the thumb to add stability and then you might take it off to help hold.

Hannah: What is your favorite way to hold your thumb when holding the quirky cup?

Dan: I would say I move it between the two. Each one is for its own part of the journey. Mm hmm.

The other thing, and this one's probably the most important role of the thumb, the one I should have started with, is when I go to sip a coffee mug, in a traditional loop style mug, a lot of times I have looked at what I naturally do, and I often put my thumb on the mug, on the hot mug, right where the liquid is.

You're doing that because otherwise the mug is going to fall down when it's rotated up to sip. So your thumb migrates to keep the mug from falling down in that same way that we tried to create torque in order to hold up the mug in this orientation. We turn it up to sip. We want to create torque in a different direction.

We still want to create torque to support the mug. So to do that, I would touch the mug maybe or touch something. And, with a quirky cup you still likely will move your thumb, but you don't need to move it onto the hot mug. You can move it on to the part of the handle that's closer, and you can see there's this raised area, and these chamfers, these slopes, that are a good place for the thumb.

So your thumb wants to get closer to the mug. Meanwhile, you have this pocket, this upper pocket, on your palm. And those two are far away from each other, and that's super intentional. So we talked about torque, you need distance.

Oh yeah, we did.

And so we want to create torque in this sideways direction.

Well, if my thumb is close and this part of my palm is far away, I have an excellent way to create torque. This is pushing down, this is pushing up, and that creates torque that can hold up a heavy mug. So I'd say when you're sipping, your thumb might be here. When you're grabbing it and maneuvering and need stability, your thumb might be here on this thumb rest.

And then, when you're holding it for a long period of time, where it's very heavy, your thumb might be in kind of this hitchhiker position, to help put your hand in an ergonomic position to push hard at the bottom. So it's this thumb journey.

A thumb journey.

Mm hmm. So that's the role of the thumb in holding a coffee mug.

Hannah: The rule, the role of the thumb. Mm hmm. And, what's the rule of thumb?

Dan: Buy a quirky cup ha, ha, ha. Good stuff. Mm hmm. That's all for now.