How to make a minimalist user interface design intuitive
whitegloveapps.com
whitegloveapps.com
Equipping them with a microchip to provide intuitive behavior would add cost, leading to less overall satisfaction, and wiring the panel "correctly" would make the fan take longer to do its job leading to less overall satisfaction.
Can you explain further why "wiring the panel 'correctly' would make the fan take longer to do its job?" Would the fan take longer to get up to speed?
The answer to your second question is a first-year calculus problem: Voltage=acceleration to some limit, which you can plot as angles over time across time and speed. It might be fun to work a protractor and some graph paper to see how it would differ with more than three settings.
I think those two things (communication and implementation) are what makes Apple's interfaces great. As an example, the iPhone's touch screen is good enough that it almost always does what you expect- which was huge compared to other touch screens at the time the phone was introduced. I remember trying out an LG touch screen in the store, and it felt like using the iPhone screen through a thin layer of mud. Even if their interface was simple and easy to use, a few misinterpreted presses would exasperate new users.
As for communicating features, I think Apple's commercials do a good job of showing how the devices are used. Granted, it's easier to explain interfaces when they are minimal...
Yes, Apple's commercials are quite effective at showing intuitive user experiences. For example, the Mover app where you transfer pictures by flicking them to another iPhone: they only showed the app for a second, but you understood the interface right away. (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mover-lite/id312165666?mt=8)
I find one button interfaces that trade buttons for time to be confusing and unintuitive. The only way to operate them is by staring at them until they show the desired action. You can't adjust it without looking at it at all (which may or may not be desired depending on the use case). If you happen to miss the target action, you have to wait until the full cycle goes through again. Sometimes they make it so you have to hold down the button to cycle and then release when you see the thing you want--if you miss it, you can't just release and start over, because releasing is going to select the wrong action. This may not be the definition of unintuitive but it is the definition of annoying and inconvenient.
I had a pager back in the 90s that was billed as being easy to use because it only had one button. But it took forever, considering the actual complexity of pagers, to cycle through all the actions--and pagers only have like three actions on them anyway.
For a more complex device like a pager where there are many options you might like to do at any given point in the menu structure, I see how just one button would make the user experience worse.