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Comment by vortico | Hacker News Reader

Why is the UI on these things so atrocious? It took him a number of key presses just to select from a list of 6 and many more to finalize the purchase. Why not have a bunch of large tactile buttons at the bottom of the screen like all normal vending machines do? I don't want to wait in line for 3 minutes while some technophobe tries to figure out how to nagivate a pressure touchscreen with 12 menus deep. It's not his fault, it's the fault of the UI designers who think all they have to work with is a bunch of pixels and X/Y coordinates of presses. There's more to UI than that.

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It's because it's way, way cheaper and more flexible to use a touchscreen PLC, like one of these:

https://www.automationdirect.com/adc/Shopping/Catalog/HMI_(H...

than a huge mess of buttons and wires.

Just look at that linked product! Less than $500 and you have as many buttons and labels as you can shake a stick at, and it's all behind a pretty color display. I can hardly buy 3 buttons, a vinyl overlay, and pay for the labor for the wiring of that stuff (plus the PLC that you'd now need behind it all) for $500. Much less pay someone to make physical modifications to the completed machine when someone decides they need 4 buttons.

You say it's the fault of the "UI designers" who think they're working with pixels and X/Y coordinates. The situation far worse than that! The person who writes the UI for these is probably an EE thinking in terms of the primitive ladder logic that drives the machine. And it doesn't help that the software you use to configure these things is pretty terrible.

Honestly I have zero beef with touchscreen interfaces, some are a little clunky but I've never found one I couldn't figure out.

That said, DUMP THE GODDAMN RESISTIVE SCREENS IN THE TRASH. Seriously those things were fucking garbage when they were invented, now that we have capacitive screens, there is NO REASON WHATSOEVER to keep making me endure the touch technology of 2001.

While we're at it get them out of my fucking car too.

Don't you want to be able to control your radio with gloves on?

They make gloves that can work capacitive screens, and they aren't even expensive anymore. Meanwhile resistive screens suck just as hard with gloved or ungloved hands.

Resistive screens don't help with that in practice. Physical buttons do.

>Less than $500 and you have as many buttons and labels as you can shake a stick at, and it's all behind a pretty color display.

A raspberry pi + touchscreen is 1/5th of that. RPi is capable of running Qt5 which would be a solid UI choice.

How the heck have they survived?

A few reasons: Because a Raspberry Pi and Ebay touchscreen won't be running or supported in 20 years, while the PLC will. The IO on a Pi needs optoisolators and hardening that's built into the PLC, and it needs soldering, while the touchscreen has built-in screw terminals. And while the software sucks, anyone remotely competent can go from zero knowledge to bumble into a working, sturdy product on the PLC in perhaps 80 hours. Qt has a much steeper learning curve.

Essentially, the touchscreen is an RPi and touchscreen, plus some industrial enclosure, strengthening, and connectors all wrapped up into a product. That integration is definitely worth $400. Or, if you want the name brand stuff, the Allen Bradley version of the same will set you back another $2000.

In addition to all the features you'd have to pay someone to add, and software you'd have to pay someone to write, what are the noise immunity, temperature, shock, vibration, and emission etc. specs for a RPi? Does it have UL, CE, etc. approvals? Does it have a warranty?

Does it still have all these things after you've modified it?

The same way I was able to buy a $30 display and sensor off AliExpress, install it in a $5 plastic box, test it and resell it for $120.

Value was added. Sometimes, simply knowing what product to purchase is worth hundreds of dollars.

Oooh, that is a nice one.

I don't want to wait in line for 3 minutes while some old guy tries to figure out

Please rewrite, this is borderline discriminatory and quite offensive. Some "old guys" can be as capable to handle such UI as some "young guys".

Disclaimer: half-old guy.

[EDIT] thanks for replacing "old guy" with "technophobe".

Not sure why you are being downvoted. Perhaps because ageism is still a borderline ok form of discrimination?

I believe he's being downvoted because some believe that there should be a balance between political correctness and skin thickness rather than just full on PC. (This includes me.)

It's a lot easier to have a thick skin when you're in a demographic nobody discriminates against.

I'm sure it is. I'm not trying to minimize discrimination.

Well, you did talk about "balance" so you are to some extent.

[Edit] Also, you called it "PC" so, yes you are minimizing it.

How dare I?

Well, you do you.

There is no such thing. Every demographic gets discriminated against in some way or another, in ways that are not always directly comparable. Self-victimization, I'm sure, will be of great help.

It could have been that parent graciously took my suggestion and replaced "old guy" with "technophobe" in his/her comment, while mine stayed, implicitly making my comment a rather incorrect interpretation and triggering down votes from others. Downvotes are a small price to pay for clarity :-)

Perhaps people are sick of language policing.

If your talking about my Dad he wouldn't be eating salad anyway.

Do you really want a world where people pretend not to discriminate?

Fake it till you make it.

That actually sounds authentic.

I actually admire your request and also the new word, that replaced the "old guy". Will try to stick to it.

Have you ever been to a Sheetz gas station?

They seem to have a good UI (although they started working on it over 20 years ago).

https://www.cstoredecisions.com/2011/03/10/in-touch-with-foo...

As their menu has grown it has been getting a little harder to figure out where things are but moving around the menu is really easy. I suspect the latter helps with the former.

Also, what's wrong with a ham and cheese sandwich with mayo and Cesar dressing (in the article)? That's one thing that is great about the Sheetz UI is that I can add buffalo sauce, ranch/mayo, and bacon to nearly every sandwich, which is delicious. My all-time favorite is a bacon, lettuce, mayo, and buffalo sauce cheeseburger or chicken sandwich on a pretzel bun.

That's why I am always delighted when I see an iPad hooked up as a point-of-sales system.

Not because iPads are inherently superior to old style PoS systems (they are not, they can't provide tactile buttons) or because any one UI they offer is particularly good, but because they herald a new era of lower barriers to entry into the PoS terminals market.

I set up the Square POS app with their credit card reader for my kids' school uniform shop. It's got a grid of icons with the products.

Even the most utterly technophobic volunteer mum can operate it. So good.

Heck, I'm the complete opposite of a technophobe, and I could barely navigate a similar UX trying to get some food and drinks at Newark Int'l Airport. Every table had an iPad with a UI like this. IIRC, I even screwed up part of my order because the UX was so overly complex.

Same with the newer ATM's hopeless UX design my back hides the deposit cash function in the "card payments" menue FFS

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