So easy.
Not as efficient or cool, but nobody wants the newer stuff.
However, you know what else reacts to gooey spills? Why, touch buttons, of course. You literally cannot boil anything with a lid on the front areas, since the lid will condense vapor that will drip towards the button area and either startup other areas, or turn-off the device. The same if a pot without a lid boils too intensely. Dangerously, it has other resistive areas that heat up when their respective touch buttons are hit with droplets.
It has a lock button, but the lock button itself is placed in exactly the same area and has the same problem.
Half of those unplanned triggers will cause the system to lock up. Samsung Support's solution: unplug the oven.
We've got to do a better job of educating consumers. The marketing behind touchscreens is so powerful that it is unanimously considered as a feature, something you must have.
I get angry just thinking about the amount of marketing bullshit around touchscreens. Just go to Garmin Aviation website and now a lot of operation in airplane cockpits is offloaded to touchscreens. What happened to the scratch pad and press an index key in FMCs? Age old UI and it is so crisp and clear, there is absolutely zero ambguity. Write something in a scratch pad, click the button where you wanna insert the data.
This is a cost saving measure disguised as a feature. Public is dumb and does'nt understand UI/UX in the slightest bit.
It is just sad. As long as consumers keep buying, nothing will change.
My car has tactile controls but they control a cursor on a non-touch screen. In this case touch screen controls would be superior because it would be faster and there would be less time looking at the display.
An argument could be made for more controls to get away from the need for a cursor/menu at all, and while I largely agree, at some point you’re likely to have so many controls you end up looking at the controls anyway, even with tactile hints.
Even if not, in this case the major controls are basically shortcuts and they’re the most commonly used and important shortcuts. Adding more buttons and knobs for things used less frequently or of lesser importance would muddy the waters and make these controls more difficult to use.
To muddy the waters further, some controls can do double duty with things like cycling through functions, double clicks, contextual presses, etc.
I am not a pilot but am always interested in seeing examples of great user interfaces. Can you post a link or more information about what this device is? (Bonus: the version you love and the version you now hate)
The amber boxes are required fields and ---- are optional. The bottom line is a scratch pad. You first punch in the data there and push one of the index switches on the side to insert it in place.
Yea its not beautiful to most people (I disagree) but it is very clear in the way it works.
Here is the new one: https://www.aviationpros.com/tools-equipment/maintenance-it/...
> its not beautiful to most people
I think the same could be said about audio mixing boards, for example. I've found that interfaces for professionals often look ugly to the uninitiated.
I've said many times that you should give an interface two weeks, not two seconds. Interfaces that you love after two seconds, you may come to hate after using it every day. Interfaces that are intimidating on the first day, you may come to love after a few weeks, and even more and more through the years. For me, a great example is vi.
I wish more people knew this tradeoff.
>This is a cost saving measure disguised as a feature.
Cost saving is not bad. Cost saving allows thousands of new aviators to enter into a field they otherwise would be price locked out of, and enables them to have a safe and enjoyable experience. Consider the AV-20 and AV-30 touch screen instruments:
https://youtu.be/hhRrNQsBl2w https://uavionix.com/product/av-30-exp/
For $1600 they provide in one instrument what you usually would need 10-13 instruments for. These instruments are not cheap; they all cost multi-hundred dollars to buy on top of drilling the holes in the cockpit and the associated maintenance to keep them all airworthy. If one component of your AV-20 fails? Who cares; throw it away and install a new one. It's dead simple.
As for UX, physical interfaces are not immune either. There have even been fatal crashes attributed to putting a lever in a stupid place, labeling a button incorrectly, not flipping a switch on time, etc. Just because you may see some horrible touchscreen interfaces out there does not mean that touchscreens are horrible.
The difference is that the touchscreen can receive software updates. At any point you can completely rearrange menus and control to address shortcomings in the interface. Doing this is practically free; the only downtime is waiting for the firmware update to complete. Addressing shortcomings in physical interfaces? You're looking at dozens to hundreds of man hours on top of buying the new equipment to replace the old.
It costs Tesla $0 per vehicle to add a new button to their cars. It costs millions for everyone else. This is not a useless capability; it makes a difference every single day.
Complaint #1 about Teslas' from owners that I have spoken to is that the UI/UX requires total re-learning as opposed to other cars, and then when the re-learning phase is complete, it's still difficult to operate without full attention.
Sure, the argument 'Oh, they shouldn't be dividing their attention from driving.' is all well and good; but try convincing normal commuters that they should pull over to adjust the volume on their stereo. I don't think you'll win that one.
Tactile/physical components are just easier to operate without know-how, and without focus being pulled to them in its' entirety. The linear movement of a volume jogging dial is intuitive; there are two diretions on both the knob and the mechanism which is being affected -- it's direct, and obvious.
Touchscreens, usually, are none of these. Using a touch screen telephone is not an eyes off exercises, but dialing and talking to someone on any of my old flip phones or Nokias was. There was a fundamental shift from worrying about being able to do one thing very well to doing all things OK in the cell phone world, and I think that it's a shame that companies like Tesla think that this is a philosophy that should be pursued among auto-makers.
Thankfully, many automakers that were dead set on touch interfaces have begun to realize that they're not good everywhere.
Mercedes/BMW/Audi went away from buttons just to find themselves crawling back... and i'm okay with that. It makes the cars easier to operate, and less focus dividing on the road.
But they don't have to. On a Tesla you can adjust the volume using the physical knob on the steering wheel; similarly you can activate or deactivate turn signals using the stalks. This is an example of touchscreens and physical controls working together, just like it would be outlandish to expect pilots to touch-and-drag on a screen rather than using a joystick.
> Using a touch screen telephone is not an eyes off exercises, but dialing and talking to someone on any of my old flip phones or Nokias was
Is it not? Can't you use Siri or Google Assistant to call a contact, or in the case of Tesla the on board voice control? Of course the voice control may suck; but that again can be fixed with software updates just as we've seen in the mobile phone space.
> Mercedes/BMW/Audi went away from buttons just to find themselves crawling back...
Because their implementations sucked. Try using an iPad vs whatever you found in their cars; why is the iPad so much better? It doesn't have to be. You could very well have had an iPad-like experience with your car's touchscreen if the manufacturer actually put in the effort to refine it. Instead we got menus in menus in menus: a horrible experience.
In the aviation world, one of the most popular apps is ForeFlight, which enables you to navigate and perform common tasks on an iPad:
https://www.foreflight.com/products/foreflight-mobile/
It is popular precisely because you can interact with information on the iPad, rather than having to deal with the shitty UX on your on board GPS or weather instrument. ForeFlight is an example of touch done right, as opposed to doing touch for the sake of touch.
You’ve answered your own question: it’s the novelty. Plus people have been educated — by their phones.
Of course HN readers know that other than a few special cases (of which the phone is one) the touchscreen interface is worse. The problem is that white goods (washers, stoves) are cap ex and have a lifetime measured in decades. So there are plenty of people who have learned the hard way, but many more who have not yet learned the lesson.
As gratuitous touch screen is currently a fashion item attempting to differentiate between largely similar items. In another decade or so it will be considered an artifact of the 2020s, much like avocado-colored appliances and fold out stoves (we had one in the 70s) scream “1960s”.
But notice I said “2020s” (though touch screens have been around for a while), and that we had an item that screamed “60s” in a later decade. The latency in this sector is enormous.
I don't want my toaster posting on Facebook. I don't want to link my refrigerator with my Google account. And no, I do not expect my microwave to post pics of my food to Instagram. I want a toaster that toasts properly and can be cleaned. I want a refrigerator that runs forever, doesn't leak, and doesn't build up frost in the freezer. I want a microwave that won't burn out after a year and will heat evenly.
I've managed to find all of these things, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to find appliances that aren't disposable, favoring internet-enablement to high-quality construction. I'll pay for the stainless steel... leave the wi-fi hardware out, please.
Unfortunately, we're battling vicious hardware market forces and whatever you do - it won't beat the cost of existing players who cheapout in parts and UI, especially when mass produced in China. Hardware requires serious funding to get started and ME/EE skills are disappearing from the west.
Physical controls are getting more and more expensive due to dwindling demand. Many encoders from ALPS have been EOL'ed.
I don't think we're gonna get out of this horrible UX/UI rut.
My Samsung fridge can connect to wifi, but lord knows why. I can adjust the temperature, but why I would want to do that on my phone and not on the appliance itself I do not know.
If I'm home to deal with them, I can hear them sing. Yes, they play cute little songs when they complete their loads. If I'm not home, it makes no difference to me whatsoever if my dryer can send me artisanally curated messages about the glorious dryness of my garments.
I could see a use case if you had some sort of home SCADA controller that was locally networked and could operate a vent fan based on appliances being in operation or tell your fridge and HVAC to switch to power-saving modes based on the local energy market's posted power prices. But that's invariably not what corporate interests are offering because their incentives are so totally divorced from that of the end users.
You press the coffee type and immediately hit the "clean" button. Then the machine is dead with no recourse other than unplug. Try that trick on a Makineta.
Makes perfect sense, the only way you'll get a responsive touchscreen is if one of the engineers behind it actually cares about it being responsive.
Otherwise the job goes down to the designer to try and pressure the engineers into making it responsive which there is a chance they might not even be skilled enough to understand how to make that happen. If they don't want to make it happen there is a hundred excuses as to why its not actually their fault.
To make an actual good, responsive product you need people at every level of the implementation who care deeply about their work.
Why does a coffee maker even need a touchscreen? There are literally three options!
Nobody knew what the hell all the icons meant, and nobody cleaned the milk siphon so it went moldy and was thrown out after two weeks.
I insisted that we keep the old Bunn that had an advanced UI with a red illuminated On-Off switch. Six months later, it was the only one coffee maker still in use.
What’s the takeaway here?
A group of spoiled adults couldn’t be bothered to read an instruction manual or clean something?
But I know that I can't: I can care very effectively about one thing really well (typically oscillating between my job and family). Then there's space left in my brain to be sort-of effective at caring for three or four other things (social life, hobbies, sports, learning, personal growth, etc..). There's a little space in the end for things which are good, but I can't afford to think about more than the minimum amount necessary (voting, taxes, coffee machines, subscription services, recycling, keeping my plants alive, car/motorcycle maintenance, ...).
So the point is, I really really value things which don't require me to care or RTFM, because that frees me up to care and focus more on my job, family and friends. Maybe that's being spoiled, but it feels more to me like a pragmatic approach to mental health and productivity.
That's why $5000 coffee machines normally come with either a maintenance contract, where someone comes around regularly to restock/clean/maintain it, or you have a designated person or department within your company who's job it is to take care of them.
The manual for a new car is an inch thick, and flipping through it while driving trying to figure out how to turn on the defroster is BAD BAD BAD BAD design.
Still can't figure out how to turn on the defroster in a new car. My old truck was simple - turn the knob to "DEFROST". My cat feeder invented all its own icons, trying to get it set up is a nightmare. I keep the instruction manual next to it.
I hate Steve Jobs for convincing the world that written words are bad and random cute pictures are cool. Please, bring back "DELETE".
When Jobs had to choose a washing machine for his family, he chose a Miele with plenty of words on it:
https://9to5mac.com/2011/03/07/how-steve-jobs-picks-a-washer...
Famously, using a trash can instead of "DELETE".
A Mac evangelist came to my workplace shortly after the Mac was released. His entire presentation was about how icons were far better than words. He asserted the function of the icons was obvious, and so needed no explanation. He passed around a sheet of paper with a bunch of icons on it, and said isn't that right?
This all fell apart when nobody could figure out what the box of Kleenex icon was. He was visibly flustered by this, eventually exclaiming that it meant "PRINT".
This was all made worse by the practice of copyrighting icons so every company invented their same-only-different icons.
But, the Mac won anyway and PRINT and DEFROST became hopelessly uncool, unhip and old-fashioned.
I predict that, like all hieroglyphic writing systems, icons will eventually evolve to have associated sounds with them, then they'll morph into simple pen strokes, then we'll be back to a new phonetic alphabet.
Is it really that hard to figure out what STOP on the international stop sign means?
I know from experience traveling in foreign countries. Even in Japan.
For another example, how long did it take you to figure out that that "hamburger" icon was really MENU?
I'm using Chrome Browser. To the right of the address bar there's a star icon. Sorry, I have no idea what that means and have to hover over it - "Bookmark this tab". I have no idea why anyone would associate a star with bookmark. I have no idea how anyone would look up a star icon on google. But I know how to look up "bookmark".
When I open up my Twitter page, there are 5 icons under my picture:
1. two triangles and a dot
2. GIF
3. three cantilevered beams
4. a happy face
5. a car battery with a clock attached
Sorry, I don't know what any of these do. Hovering over them provides no information. (Maybe GIF means add picture, but my pictures are JPGs, not GIFs. What does a happy face do? Inject me with heroin?) I can click on them and find out - but really, what kind of argument is that for "icons are better!"? It isn't any better than randomly turning controls hoping to turn the damned defroster on so I can see, and hoping I don't hit the ejector seat button.
I fully agree with your points on UI icons and flat hamburgers. It repeatedly violates discoverabilty. But to add to your point, most products will already have some form of regionalization. Software will typically have language specific strings, physical products will have instruction manuals and warranties in the local language. In practice the translation effort already happens anyway for non-anglo markets. So even the reservation you mention of learning a foreign language for non-english users is most of the times a non-issue.
Around the time Walter was working on Datalight C, I was working at a computer game company in Austin that most geeks over the age of about 35 have heard of. All decisions of note at this well-regarded company were made by a figure of equal repute, someone with the tech chops of one Steve and the charisma of the other. This guy wasn't a Mac user himself, but there were a few Macs in use around the office, and he fell for the WIMP paradigm hard.
The games in the series he was known for were historically keyboard-driven, but the one we were working on at the time, the sixth, was the first to be developed on the PC rather than the Apple II and also the first to feature a GUI. So everything was icon-based whether it needed to be or not, because "that's how the Mac does it." Hieroglyphics were hot again, who could've seen it coming? Don't complain, just work like an Egyptian.
At the time this flavor of Kool-Aid was being consumed all over the place, from game companies to office/productivity software companies, and it unquestionably all went back to Jobs, or more accurately the cues Jobs took from PARC. We weren't alone in being ordered by management to Think Different(tm) by ripping off some guys in Cupertino.
What’s the option besides on and off, keep warm?
Yes but that’s not relevant, I’m asking specifically what the third option would be in a or with 3 options.
That said, most classic home espresso machines have 3 buttons: (a) on/off toggle, (b) coffee/hot water toggle, (c) steam toggle.
All of the above multiplied by small, medium, large.
All of the above multiplied by weak, normal, strong, and double shot.
All of the above multiplied by zone defense, man to coverage, and missile command.
And for 3 options, most classic home espresso machines have 3 buttons: (a) on/off toggle, (b) coffee/hot water toggle, (c) steam toggle.
If you shut down the device it tries to brew again, though I expect that it’ll quickly switch to keep warm when there’s no water to boil (I never actually tried).
I recently looked at the latest models, and they've basically have not changed. Maybe a bit more silent. That's it. The rest is all connectivity and LCDs. Solutions looking for a problem.
The smartest thing it does is tell me to replace my water filter or that I need to descale. Which is really just a matter of counting.
https://www.cuisinart.com/shopping/appliances/coffee_makers/...
To differentiate it from the previous model so as to sell new product when the previous model that has already been purchased is continuing to perform its designated task. I.e., to convince some segment of their customer base to throw out the working model from last year in exchange for the "new fancy" model of this year.
Humans are often fooled way too many times by "oohhh... shiny and new and different... gotta have that...".
It's probably cheaper than physical buttons and can be used across multiple SKUs where each one would require it's own set of buttons otherwise.
Oh it can show you adverts too.
Objectively worse in every way to the end user than a nice set of buttons.
This is particularly shameful in devices that are so simple. Basically finite-state machines, something that everyone in CS should learn in 101 classes.
My oven is hardwired into the mains supply. To power cycle it, I would need to turn off the circuit at the breaker panel. I don't think this is at all unusual.
Now, I keep getting invitations to upgrade for the new one. The TM6 is a lot less noisy, and that would be amazing as mine is probably audible across the street - but, and this is a massive BUT: It has a touch screen interface, introduced with the TM5.
NO WAY. The TM4's physical interface is brilliant in its simplicity; every button does one thing, and one thing only; the motor speed knob is big and tactile.
I don't need nor want the complexity and latency of a touchscreen, and dealing with crappy firmware updates. Hopefully I'll be able to keep servicing mine for the longest time.
What better use for a fragile and overly complicated touchscreen than in a hot, moist, harsh environment?
Please tell me it has to sync with a cloud server as well, lol!