It’s amazing that you don’t think any of this is based on real HCI.

People prefer larger tap targets on touch screens.

> People prefer larger tap targets on touch screens.

Only in a completely stupid, nonsensically A/B tested notion of "prefer". I'll refer you to this ~~excellent piece of satirical writing~~ actual post from Google design team: https://design.google/library/expressive-material-design-goo...