In 2011, we used one of
these to control our holonomic robot. The left stick controlled front/back and side/side translation. The rear LT and RT buttons controlled rotation of the robot. Instead of a field-centric code, the programmers mapped the right stick to be opposite of the left one for when the robot was facing the drivers. The buttons on the right were then mapped to a few functions of the robot using a simple button latch code.
Last year, the drivers decided to forego the gamepad and just used one of the Logitech kit joysticks. The rotation was mapped to two of the buttons on top.
We have only used holonomic these two years, and we typically leave it to the driver's preference on how it's driven.