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Comment by appleiigs | Hacker News Reader

The crammed design is also seen in their electronics and other household items. Things that seemingly that have 1 function such as rice cookers and toilets are jam packed with buttons, lights and beeping.

I also avoided Toyotas because of the crammed dashboard/consoles and all the beeping. Unlock door, closing hatch door, starting the car is just beep, beep, beep. Instead of toggles like BMW, they would have an individual buttons for AM, FM, CD, Bluetooth, Aux.

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I take it you've never used a Japanese rice cooker? They have far more than one function -- aside from making steamed rice, you can make rice porridge, congee, steam other foods, and some can even be used to bake cakes. Not to mention you can time-delay the cooking to specify when you want the rice to be ready (which means it also has a clock). These are just the features my middle-of-the-road rice cooker can do -- more expensive models have even more features.

So the buttons are serving a purpose, the question is whether it's better to have more buttons or more touch-screens or other "less crammed" designs. Aesthetic concerns aside (personally I've gradually grown more fond of the "crammed" designs as having their own aesthetic), buttons are also practically better because they always do exactly one thing -- meaning it's easier to learn and use for most people (including older and vision-impaired users). If the cost of having less buttons is that users have to learn how to navigate a set of menus for each appliance they own (many of which will have rubbish UIs) then I'll take the extra buttons. I also like that my rice cooker beeps when it's done -- it reminds me to go fluff the rice (or acts as a signal that it's time to have dinner).

Cars are possibly the best argument for physical-button-based designs -- because you usually operate them without looking at them! Touch-screens or any other complicated but "less cluttered" design just means that you can't use them in that setting. I get anxiety looking at the Tesla dashboard -- maybe the reason they're developing self-driving cars is so that you can operate the dashboard without crashing?

I have an orthogonal approach to rice cookers. I find that the extra features are pointless and were added purely to differentiate themselves from competitors (or even between models themselves).

Of the people I know who use rice cookers, they all use it to make rice, but usage of the other features drops significantly afterwards. After all, do you feel like using your rice cooker to make oatmeal?

My ideal rice cooker has one button: a physical switch, and no timer.

My rice cooker at home have setting for different type of rice. Because unless you know what you are doing, different type of rice (Japonica, Basmati, Thai Jasmine, etc) have a slightly different requirements in term of water volume, etc.

My rice cooker has different buttons for different kinds of rice (because they require different cooking times and temperature gradients), and rice porridge is quite nice for when you're sick -- I guess you thought I meant oat porridge in my original comment. And being able to have freshly-cooked rice at a fixed time (for breakfast or dinner) is super useful. I personally don't like congee (I didn't grow up with it), but my partner cooks it from time to time for herself. So we end up using most of the features pretty often.

But I guess whether you'd find those features useful really depends on how often you eat rice at home -- my partner is from south-east Asia so rice is part of basically every meal. When the rice cooker is empty, I fill it at night and set it to finish cooking in time for lunch the next day (if you just cooked it and left it overnight it wouldn't be as fluffy).

I don't use my rice cooker to bake cakes, but these kinds of features are born from the fact that in Japan very few households have full-sized ovens and so other appliances have to fill those needs.

This "crammed" design allows for button-function coupling, which makes buttons stateless and predictable.

I don’t know about anyone else but the move to touch screens has been awful. I don’t need 2 menu layers to adjust the air temp or seat heater. All I really want is apple carplay.

+1000

It's one thing to have a touch screen to control your phone - where your attention is the phone.

It's another to have a touch screen to control the accessories of your car - where your attention is driving.

Yep, When you want FM you can press the FM button rather than press the mode switch an unknown number of times requiring you to watch the display. My car has a rotary selector for air con mode and I usually just turn it all the way to one side and move it the number of clicks I know are needed. That way no looking is required.

I don't think any technology has improved on the decades-old three-dial system for air control in a car.

You're not fan of thermostat controlled systems where you set a temperature you want and that's what it maintains?

We have a Subaru with manual settings (3 dials) and a Volvo with a thermostat. The Volvo was set the day we bought it and I don't know that we've messed with it since. The Subaru, on the other hand, is always being adjusted.

The Volvo one seems to be smart enough to know when hot or cold (dry) air is needed on the windshield. It's pretty great.

3 dials, with one being the temperature, one being the fan speed, and one more for the modes:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d8/99/f0/d899f00fe8ae8cb22e6e...

They're aware; they're saying that targeted temperature is a simpler control that obviates the need to try to manually tune the fan, used vents and degree of heat.

But the reasoning for choice of the first two isn't just about desired temperature.

Basically I think three dial is the right UI, but the temp one should be a thermostat, not output control (as I guess it generally is based on experience) - that doesn't obviate the need for (or utility of) the other two.

I was just trying to help the disconnect between those users. I think that makes sense. I also like the utility of applying air to the different vents, especially in the winter as I live in a cold area and either defrost faster, warm my feet faster or warm my hands faster.

But fan speed is different than temperature?

I believe the Volvo system ties fan speed to the difference desired and actual temperature / humidity.

Yep - that's essentially what our Subaru has and I'm always messing with it as I drive.

IMHO, the Volvo system is superior. That car also cost about twice as much so maybe it's not fair to compare the two.

Personally, I much prefer the manual ones, where I can trivially tweak the settings without having to think about it or look away from the road. But that's in part because I usually have the windows down, so constant adjustment is needed to compensate for speed, outside temp, wind speed/direction, etc. - at this point, changing it is second nature. With a touchscreen, even if I could get used to the lack of tactile feedback, it's impossible to know if the right screen is up without looking away from the road (the same issue arises with radio settings).

I've experience with many of the thermostatat systems, and none of them seem to know what I want.

Actually that's exactly why I like Japanese made product. In the west it's almost always 3 button device but to access most functionality you need to do some arcane ritual like press this button for 5 seconds then press this button then you will see the LED flashing and now you can do what you want. I'd MUCH rather have 30 buttons all which precisely do one thing.

> Things that seemingly that have 1 function... are jam packed with buttons

    $ ls --help | grep '^ *-' | wc -l
    59

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