The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces
uxdesign.cc
uxdesign.cc
A tactile button has far fewer accuracy issues with positioning: if you can feel the button, you won't start pressing 2/3 off and then get further and further off until you're triggering something else, as happens all the time on touchscreens.
A knob provides a richer communication path between your brain and the device. With touchscreens, you can basically just poke and swipe, with some unintuitive nuances like long press or multi-fingered gestures. With a knob, you're using separate muscles and so can associate muscle memory based on the size, texture, and granularity of "click" feedback as you turn. We also have the ability to finely modulate the rate of twisting something—compare that to tapping frantically on a touchscreen left/right icon to control a quantity.
Knobs don't share space in our muscle memory with buttons. To some extent, different knobs and different buttons are distinguishable too.
Physical sliders are good for fine-grained control, but are also good at just smashing them all the way to min or max. When I try that on a touchscreen control, it might not make it all the way to the extreme, or my angle is wrong (no physical constraint to keep my hand/finger in place!) and it doesn't register at all because I veered off of the control.
Even when I'm looking at the screen already, using a directional pad means I'll always gradually get further and further off until it stops registering. Either because my attention is on a different part of the screen, or because my fingers are in the way of seeing the displayed pad. Not a problem with a physical stick or knob.
The amount of times when I swiped down from the top (to open the notification shade or whatever it is called now or to refresh the page), the UI shows pulling down the thing fully... and when backs off. I repeat the gesture, but again it goes all the way down and retracts back and nothing happens.
And of course when I don't need that, I just swipe down to go top of the page - it thinks what I actually want to refresh the page. Many comments were lost that way.
A tactile button has far fewer accuracy issues with positioning: if you can feel the button, you won't start pressing 2/3 off and then get further and further off until you're triggering something else, as happens all the time on touchscreens.
I gotta mention that I have a circa 2000 Japanese luxury car and the dials that control the stereo and the air conditioning are actually remarkably unpredictable. Turning the knob at all quickly will disorient the system and you can have a large increase in value or no-increase-at all (it seems to be an artifact of the knob changing a digital value). If you look carefully and move slowly they work but they essentially have all the drawbacks you describe with a touch screen - except you can't do something else entirely, thankfully. Obviously, better design would fix this so one does have to say "properly designed knobs are better".
- rotary knob for function (microwave power level, defrost mode, some never-used oven modes) - rotary knob for time; this turns itself back towards zero as it unwinds - audible "ting" when timer elapses - physical press button for the door latch
I can heat food with a single turn of the timer knob.
Most microwaves require you to navigate. You can fuck off with that shit, not in my house.
There are no good implementations of touch screen buttons. However, there are some good implementations of touch sliders though, particularly on some LG microwaves (which someone else also brought up[1]).
I've written about these microwaves previously on HN, so I'll just quote myself[2].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31506358
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30873016
> Regarding microwave oven ergonomics, the best one I've seen doesn't have old-school dials, but a touch-sensitive slider bar. You may think this is bad, but it works very, very well. The front of the microwave has the time display, the time slider bar, and two buttons: stop/cancel and start/+30sec. Open the door and there are a few auto cook options and power level options. There is no number keypad at all; the slider bar gives you both very fine and coarse-grained control, depending on how fast you slide across it. It's all very intuitive, and I was very impressed with it.
For example, the focus ring of a consumer digital camera lens drives me nuts, it's practically impossible to do a pull focus reliably between two objects. If you do it a little faster or slower, it will be off, regardless of the travel distance. On the other hand, professional cinema lenses usually have actual mechanical focus wheels attached to ensure perfect reproducibility.
https://youtu.be/UzpEHwZ-s-M?t=9
I can't believe we're asking software developers to recreate the world on a screen. It's an incredible amount of work that never gets done, leaving us with unintuitive interfaces.
Not to mention Pebble's "low-tech" screen was so clearly visible in direct sunlight, while I have problem clearly seeing the fancier screen of Fitbit when it's slightly bright outside.
(If any of you are suffering from terrible stationary, I would recommend trying out Midori MD Paper notebooks or Rhodia Rhodiarama notebooks. Midori makes beautiful and functional notebooks with precision ruling that satisfies the engineer in me, and Rhodia uses luxurious Clairefontaine paper suitable for fountain pens and stuff)
That reminds me of many Asian web site UI’s: they’re very dense by some Western market standards because many Asian markets’ Internet users apparently want dense information transfer in their user experience, which seems to be eschewed by many current Western site designs.
That gives me an idea, which I credit to you sfink. To make a product with knobs, buy knobs of slightly different makes with variations that feel slightly different, slightly different texture, different roughness, different give, despite being all of them supposedly the same jelly bean part. This helps muscle memory because despite appearing basically the same the muscles and spine know the difference right away, secretly.
What that means is for a 6-knob device you need 6 suppliers. What that means is there's room in the market for many companies, and less economies of scale, despite being formally a commodity. What that then means is there's more diversity in the marketplace, and more companies that can each stay afloat, competition is less cutthroat. The other thing that then means is American and Chinese companies can coexist in what is otherwise a bitter-fought market. In fact, one good way of getting subtly different knob feels is in fact making them in different countries with different regulatory environments dictating how not to make the knob.
And what that all means is we reduce the final stage of economies of scale--wars and empires.
Modern computers, GUIs, and even the TUI, provide flexibility for a device. They're good at manipulating many different types of information.
If you have something that is meant to do something very well and it is critical then it makes sense to have a machine with purpose built physical controls. Controls which enable you to manipulate that one critical type of information accurately and easily.
The dedicated machine with physical controls will have to be correct, complete, and durable. But it will always work better because the controls are designed for real human bodily movement. They become truly enmeshed in muscle memory. You know where a control is relative to the others. It's just different.
Not to mention using a touchscreen to adjust the temperature while driving is incredibly dangerous compared to a dial you can feel for without taking your eyes off the road.
Haptic feedback is a core part of how humans process the world, and to remove it in favor of more frequent updates seems like a naive decision at best.
Flatness in phones works because we can use our full attention - which is also why car accidents happen when people use it while driving.
I very much agree with you, and would like to add that flatness in phones is a feature because today phones are pocket computers, and computers should be able to provide any arbitrary UI to function as such. Cars on the other hand are not a computer nor are they intended to function as one.
The fact that modern cars expose part of their on-board computer to the driver is no excuse to treat any capability that may be handled by said computer as something exclusively accessible via a touchscreen UI, especially when its something that is expected to be interacted with while driving (audio playback control, climate control, windscreen wipers, etc.). A touchscreen is fine for features that should not be done while driving and did not exist or were not easily accessible prior to the ubiquity of touchscreens in cars. For all intents and purposes those are computer features. However, subjecting anything that was previously available via mechanical interaction to it is an unacceptable regression.
All the smart TVs I ever had lasted a long long time physically, but after a couple years they invariably started being noticeable slower than when I bought. The same happened to a guitar effects unit I had: changing patches became somewhat slower after update. And the battery of a wireless guitar transmitter I had now only lasts half the time it used to after the update. I honestly can say I dread updating almost any software today.
I try to avoid buying tech that can be updated, and tech that can connect to the internet in general.
Absolutely does. You see this in console video games. As soon as online updates became possible, game-breaking bugs at launch became practically the norm, instead of incredibly rare (minor bugs were common enough before ["I AM ERROR"], sure, but game-breaking ones, while not unheard of, were rare). Charging $60 for a late-alpha-quality product.
If it was all executed well, it would be fine. The problem is, it isn't.
A public beta used to actually be a mostly-finished product, but is often used now as a 'preorder for early access' period. The last one I participated in was for Elder Scrolls Online, and it was kind of funny with how broken things would be. It wasn't as funny when the game launched with a few of those bugs still in place.
Could this be a form of assisted obsolescence, in which a user who has owned a device for a few years is being subliminally urged to buy a new model?
It can act as a spring, a rotary encoder, a joystick, small detent, big detent, etc.
Changing the temperature while driving on a good touch interface is trivial and incredibly far from incredibly dangerous. Besides with CC systems nowadays people look at the set temperature just as often. More advanced features like toggling internal air circulation do require a peek, but so do the buttons on most classical cars where you have multiple buttons in a row with unlit icons.
I still prefer buttons for the tactile feel and feedback, but the downsides you listed are pretty much made up.
The great benefit of a touch screen is unlimited update capabilities. It seems absurd to me that there are still cars rolling off the factory line that have unupdatable software in 2022. Your car is basically outdated and replaceable by something better within a year. That’s great for the manufacturers, but not for the customer. Compare that to a 3+ year old Tesla which works almost as good as a brand new one despite big upgrades to their internals, largely thanks to regular updates.
Or, maybe your personal experience doesn’t translate to everyone, and touch controls are indeed dangerously distracting for most people. What we need here is evidence (user studies) and not anecdote, but anecdotally I can say operating a touch screen without looking at it directly is not something I’m capable of doing, even for things I use often.
Looking away for even ~3s at motorway speeds is 100m driven without looking at whats in front of you, I'd say that's fairly dangerous
> The great benefit of a touch screen is unlimited update capabilities
It also introduces a single point of failure for any features on it, at least with physical buttons you stand more chance of operating other parts of the car if one breaks.
A car from the 70s, with proper care, would still work today just as well as it did when it was brand new.
In my view, a car should only require software updates in very rare circumstances. It should come with hardware and corresponding software that is fit for purpose and works. Most definitely I do not ever want any over-the-air updates. Requiring updates is a sign that the software was not properly engineered in the first place. I do not want that in my car.
If, for example, we are talking about upgrading the entertainment system, then it should just be made modular, like it used to be. Want to get an improved entertainment system with a better screen / better navigation system etc.? Take the old one out and install a new one. But the old one must keep working as well as on day one 20 years in the future, without any required software updates, even if the manufacturer goes bankrupt.
You say this like it's a good thing. It's bad enough when apps get non-optional "updates" that make the experience worse. I don't want my car interface to go to shit because a designed wanted to add more padding to everything.
More realistically though, this means cars will stop getting updates after a few years but the remote access system will still be there providing a juicy attack surface for hackers.
I’m just not buying an EV until there’s one that doesn’t rely on a giant touch screen for everything or I can’t buy an ICE vehicle anymore.
I have a 2018 Mazda3 and I like the backup camera. But I can control the climate control and temperature with physical buttons. The seat warmers have buttons. I can control the volume with a knob or on the steering wheel.
The radio, unfortunately, is software. Seems like that much is unavoidable. But the small screen that is there is secondary to everything else I want to control while driving and I don’t ever need to use while driving. I’m typically using Apple CarPlay (or previously Android Auto) so if I do need to do something, I can use voice controls and at least keep my eyes on the road.
I don’t mind small screens, as you said, they’re not going away. What I don’t want is a giant screen that controls everything.
Though I don't know if they followed through
> Like most modern Mazdas, the CX-5 uses an ultra-wide, non-touchscreen infotainment system.
Buttons and knobs for HVAC
https://www.autoguide.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/20...
HVAC is screen-independent. So is volume, thankfully.
We can hope, but there's reason to be pessimistic:
> With traffic fatalities spiking over the past few years and with no real plan for how to make screens less distracting, we seem to have entered into the type of brutal acquiescence that’s common in the tech era; car manufacturers will keep putting bigger and more complicated screens in cars without much thought to safety or even functionality, and we, the consumers, will continue to buy them.
> ...
> The incentives of carmakers are pretty clear: Touch screens are cheaper than designing and installing a mechanical panel. And given that most cars today are reliable, come with lengthy warranties and an array of mostly uniform features, a big screen becomes a way for a car brand to distinguish itself from its competitors, especially on the showroom floor before potential buyers have a chance to really immerse themselves in just how annoying the screen will be.
One of the weaknesses of the market is that it doesn't necessarily give consumers what would work best for them, it just lets them pick from what they're given. Barring regulatory action, I don't see device-makers moving away touchscreen maximization.
Who's this "we"?
I'm in the pre-buy stage, it looks like my record of non-car-ownership will end at 23 years. (My last car was stolen from a SOMA lot in 1999.)
It does look like I'm buying used and IC, because I will not have a touch screen. I've driven basically every model of car you can rent, and some of them are less offensive than others, but they're all ass. Backup assist is vaguely nice, but I learned to parallel park before they existed, so I don't really care. And everything else about them is actively worse.
The UI is such a weird thing to cheap out on. As far as I'm concerned, keep your butt warmers and solenoid-driven seat adjustment, I want physical knobs I don't have to look at to use.
That's not a solution - you have to look at market of brand new cars, as whateber is avaliable now will replace all the used cars.
> Of course it is a solution. I end up with a car that doesn't have a touch screen.
The point is that solution is only a band-aid. Cars wear out. New cars turn into used cars, which turn into "classic cars", which then turn into museum pieces. Especially with the later two steps, supply drops and maintenance becomes harder.
There is a reasonable chance I won't buy another vehicle, so I don't care what the rest of the market does.
Good for you, but why do you feel you need to weigh in on the new car market when you have no intention of ever participating?
Because we're discussing a complaint about modern cars, and "always buy used ones that predate the change, and plan to die before those become unavailable" doesn't really address the complaint. It's a rather idiosyncratic and radical way of avoiding it, and bends the conversation to discussing that personal idiosyncrasy.
My car has these things, controlled by physical buttons and knobs. They're nice features and they don't require a touchscreen to use.
After the panic subsided, I decided to learn the voice commands. It seems that each device, now, has its own language, which we have to learn in order to function. A modern tower of Babel.
Also worth acknowledging that the battery makes up a huge chunk of the car both physically and in terms of cost, and yet is a consumable, so I guess this lowers the resale value of EVs significantly? I wonder if it's even worth any of the remaining savings on the rest of the car after fitting a new battery. Maybe the next stage is scaling up lithium-ion recycling to drive down battery replacement and general battery cost to a point that "everyone else" can join in the EV game.
It would be a big step backwards for society if a new wealth gap is created when oil becomes too expensive to continue running cheap ICE cars and only moderately wealthy people can afford cars priced exclusively at "new" values without a 2nd hand market.
That's coming whether you want to or not.
Once we start pricing in the externalities of climate change into road vehicles (which is beginning to happen, slowly), cars will become increasingly unaffordable to those in the bottom quartiles of income.
I don't want to drive—or negotiate with AI to drive—a giant cellphone on wheels.
Not sure I agree with that. Even Porsche are doing touch screens, unfortunately.
They do have a rotary dial and push button that controls the display, so no touching it. Makes it a lot simpler when your UI designers are restricted to left/right movement and button push. Can't hide things all over the place and under deeply nested menus.
Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are designed to be touched. Navigating either without a touchscreen is a horrible experience and requires significantly more steps than just touching the item you want on the screen.
The only thing I can remember might be the address entry, but that can easily be done with the keyboard on the phone itself (click "phone" icon in the on-screen Auto keyboard to handoff).
What I think is a lot more weird is that archaeology works: i.e. you can dig in old European cities and find the remains of older cities underneath. The short answer is that stuff like dust, decaying plant matter, erosion from nearby mountains and debris from the buildings themselves can effectively create this new layer on top, but it still feels counter-intuitive because we're not used to thinking in these timeframes: https://www.straightdope.com/21341986/how-come-archaeologica...
That said, people I know have a strange resistance to using voice commands with their cars and phones.
1. Do not want to talk in the loud-clear voice needed for them to work (e.g. someone else in car is on their phone, kids are sleeping).
2. Completely soured on the experience due to things like this[1]
Like if I want to tell my alexa to turn the temperature up on the thermastat I have to remember this exact phrase: Alexa, tell the ecobee to turn the temperature [up, down], [ecobee name]. Anything else and alexa tells me "ecobee doesn't support that". And alexa/siri/google are all top of the line, offline processing inside a car's CPU is measurably worse, and syntax is even more esoteric.
Ever try to use voice commands to tell your car to give you GPS directions to the nearest walmart? Basically impossible unless you have the street address memorized, and even then it's a 10 minute ordeal with a lot of stops and starts because the processor wasn't listening as soon as you started speaking to it so it only caught the end of an address, or it misheard a number or street name, etc.
Voice control is far from being an acceptable alternative to physical dials and switches.
Touchscreen for other things: android auto, apple car play (which provide maps) and more complicated user settings (such as whether you want the lights to stay on after you turn off the car for a while)
It's a shame they went more "slick" with the 2022 refresh, still tactile, but just more flush and less accessible without a glance. [2]
[1] https://cdn.motor1.com/images/mgl/OYAqe/s1/2020-chevy-bolt-e...
[2] https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/02/2022-...
https://www.automotiveaddicts.com/25445/2012-chevrolet-volt-...
On the latest Mazda 3 (2019+) it does seemingly only use the screen for info and back up camera. There's a big wheel in between the seats to move about the menus. I test drove one recently and it is very nice and intuitive.
Apparently they wanted the Apollo style space-age interfaces with all the knobs and switches. Just, they didn't have the budget, and paint was cheaper.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/09/how-star-trek-artist...
> According to Michael Okuda, original Star Trek art director Matt Jefferies had practically no budget. "He had to invent an inexpensive, but believable solution," he told Ars. "The spacecraft of the day, such as the Gemini capsules, were jammed full of toggle switches and gauges. If he had had the money to buy those things, the Enterprise would have looked a lot like that."
> What could be simpler to make than a flat surface with no knobs, buttons, switches, or other details? Okuda designed a user interface dominated large type and sweeping, curved rectangles. The style was first employed in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home for the Enterprise-A, and came to be referred to as "okudagrams." The graphics could be created on transparent colored sheets very cheaply, though as ST:TNG progressed, control panels increasingly used video panels or added post-production animations.
In the 32nd century, tho, they use programmable matter because people like tactile feedback, it turns out.
(Aside, in the novels they came up with a reason for this: During the Earth-Romulan war they had to go partially low-tech to avoid the Romulan telecapture technology, a technology they'd just developed to remotely hack into and control enemy starships. Apparently the design kept for ~100 years up through TOS when they finally learned more about the Romulans.)
My family tried an Echo Auto for voice control in one of our cars last year, but we ended up disconnecting it.
We drive through hills and mountains often, and it was common for voice commands to be ignored or to have seconds in latency because of spotty mobile network.
It worked OK in cities, as long as you were not on an underground parking lot, which was a common occurrence.
I understand this concern and opinion. I just wish that people who had this opinion realized that their car has a very modern voice interface that can reliably understand commands for temperature changes.
I know, I know, it's not the buttons you're used to, and these systems used to be very bad. But give it a shot sometime. I was impressed with Tesla's implementation, and I imagine the rest of the industry has caught up too. The best part is, it's the safest method of all, because it doesn't require taking either your hands or your eyes off the road. So if safety is your jam (and it ought to be!), this is really the best solution.
So sure if you are willing to talk to your car like you're a CNN news anchor, then yes voice interfaces are great and far safer than touch screens.
Also, cue the skit about the thick scottish-accented guy trying to activate a voice-activated elevator...
Buttons, please. And only buttons.
The link for those wishing to watch and skip a google search:
Very new, expensive cars, sure.
Meanwhile, most cars are shifting at least some controls to touch, because they have to have a big screen anyway (backup camera requirements).
Unless... - The radio is playing. - The windows are open. - You're driving in heavy wind/rain/hail pelting the car or other driving conditions making an awful racket. - You don't drive a super expensive car, but one designed by marketing, bean counters, and summer interns. - Other people in the car are talking/conversing. - Other people in the car are sleeping (long road trips aren't uncommon for many). - You have an accent. - You don't speak a language supported by the car maker. - You have a speech impediment. - You have a physical disability preventing clear or any speech. - A software update breaks the system.
So what exactly is the benefit of moving to touch screens / voice control? I'm pretty sure physical buttons and dials don't suffer from any of those problems except for maybe physical disabilities, but at least with physical buttons/switches/dials, you or a third party could modify and/or tie into them to suit the specific needs of the disabled driver. Good luck getting the auto makers to let you modify their software for a similar purpose. I just don't see the point in moving from something that works well in the vast majority of scenarios to something that works measurably less well, with virtual no real benefit. Fine if voice control is in addition to physical, tactile interfaces, but the trend toward replacement doesn't fill me joy.
When it works -- and it works in most of the situations you mentioned (spoiler alert: I work in this space) because it's designed to -- it's safer than using any physical controls at all.
I get that adoption of the half-ass solutions is frustrating. But if we are truly targeting a future where being able to manipulate car features is to be as safe as possible, voice is the best way to do that, at least until we have a solution to beam thoughts directly to the car's computer.
- latency
- it has a boot procedure when you turn the car on. While this happens, the controls have quite substantial latency. However the first thing that happens is it begins playing audio.
- there is a knob for adjusting volume, but it's still part of the same system as the rest of it. There is still substantial latency to this control, especially immediately upon turning the car on. However even a little latency here is really annoying, because one naturally adjusts volume via trial and error.
- if you've paired the car with your phone via Bluetooth, it immediately sends a message to your phone to start playing whatever audio was played most recently at whatever the current volume is. I wrote a tasker routine to intercept this, but an android patch a while back helpfully broke this and I haven't bothered fixing it.
All of this combines for a user experience dramatically worse than an aux cord. It's kind of spectacular in its terribleness. And this is an otherwise great car.
A touchscreen from an 20 years old Archos MP3 player is extremely bad while an iPad Pro M1 is very good.
At least to me, I haven‘t seen a compelling reasons that touchscreens replacing analog car controls isn‘t a square peg going into a circle hole.
Not saying they'd definitely be good if only some one loved 'em, but judging from the car touch screens I've used I believe no one has tried yet.
> it has a boot procedure when you turn the car on. While this happens, the controls have quite substantial latency.
I've got one better. Controls during bootup in my car are simply ignored, and the bootup duration for Carplay in particular is so bad that it makes the bluetooth delay seem acceptable.
> However the first thing that happens is it begins playing audio.
This is ironic because I wish mine would start playing. There's no setting for playback behavior either. The only setting, in fact, is the ability to reorder and add/remove third-party apps.
Oh, worse still, sometimes audio doesn't play even when you manually select something. The UI will register it as playing but the audio doesn't come through. When this happens, you have to disconnect and reconnect your phone, which is dangerous in motion. It's a joke. It makes me wonder what the deal is, and I have no idea who to report the bug to.
> All of this combines for a user experience dramatically worse than an aux cord. It's kind of spectacular in its terribleness. And this is an otherwise great car.
Yup. My beater in college that came with some random aftermarket radio was better. Carplay is pretty but beyond that it feels like an afterthought as an experience.
Yeah. In the same boat and my wife like to play pranks when she uses the car. Turns the volume to max right before removing the key. When her phone is not found it defaults to radio. That "saved me" from having to drink my morning coffee in the office on more than one occasion + it's good training for the heart.
Edit: Forgot to mention that the volume knob is ignored until the system fully boots up and the audio starts as soon as you twist the key.
How about no sound? How about defaulting to silence? Nope…
What is allows for is: cost cutting. Not having to install a mask, a button, wire harness and QA everything is a massive manufacturing cost saving. It speeds up production and lowers the amount of components that need to be sourced, installed and later made available for replacement as part of a service.
This is the same situation as with Electron apps - the savings aren't for YOU the USER, the savings are for person MAKING the thing. They get all the benefit at the cost of your user experience.
I hate Electron as much as the next average HN user, but isn't the benefit of Electron actually kinda for the user as well as the developer, in the sense that Electron is basically a one-stop shop for porting to other platforms?
For instance, Microsoft Teams is written in Electron. This means the application is pretty damn well identical whether users within my company are using Windows or Mac computers. There are advantages to that.
I'd say for myself, Unity is a great example of where, basically; if I went 'native', I would really only be supporting one platform, like I used to when I did game dev in the late 90's and early 00's. But Unity gives me the power to flip a switch, and then all my friends can play pretty much the same copy of my game on any platform of their choosing.
It also means if there are bugs on one platform, they usually show up on another as well; making QE and addressing bugs a little bit easier, making for a better user experience.
Not a fan of Electron, just saying that there are benefits to the user for using such a system.
Disadvantages too. Unlike a website, I want the software on my computer to take advantage of the native UI and other features unique to the OS. If Electron didn't exist MS would still build teams for multiple platforms. It would disadvantage small developers but the majority of users (who use well known software developed by large companies) lose out on the prior mentioned benefits thanks to Electrons existence.
2022 Honda Civic but with physical buttons probably doesn't move the needle because car buyers are price sensitive and because 2022 Honda Civic with screen is still better than alternatives.
I had a 2017 Honda Civic Hatchback. First year of the new model design, it had a touch sensitive volume control... After that, I think it was the 2019 and up all Honda's came with a volume knob AS A DIFFERENTIATOR because the UX was so bad without it.
I wonder if someday we'll have an open-source car, sort of like the framework laptop. I think it would be amazing. Think of the robust market that has cropped up around custom PCs and custom bicycles.
It does take way too long to boot up.
I tend to have the same opinion, but at the same time I'm not convinced:
- I bought 1 year ago a new car for 80k $ => that's not cheap and in my opinion putting 4 extra buttons (up/down) or 2 extra knobs to control the temperature of the two front seats wouldn't have been an incredible engineering challenge that would have added hundreds of $ to the cost (which was anyway high).
- we have ~100 buttons that all work reliably on our keyboards, which are connected to our PCs/notebooks with just a single cable => I admit that in a car there is the extra challenge of temperature variance (car parked in the Sahara or somewhere in Iceland), but I cannot think that that's an engineering wonder (worked fine during the last 100 years).
Therefore maybe the trend is driven by designers: make everything shiny & slick, risk of having the own work thrown into the trash when taking a step back to do usability tests vs. physical controls so let's just forget about that.
I wanted to mention that. Sure, the way auto electronics were traditionally installed was expensive but a keyboard is $20 by itself, a midi music keyboard designed for wear and having buttons and knobs is ~$150. A modular system of instruments and controls that fits around the steering wheel and has a single cable coming out could not be that expensive.
Changing to something like would require a lot of adjustment of electronics processes - different chips and voltages to allow the modularity and single cable, I would guess. But touch-screens also need this I would imagine.
Although I suspect the addition of backup cameras has given automakers excuses when it comes to rear visibility.
I've read this argument again and again but I wonder: How often do you people change the temperature in your car? Mine is set to 21°C since two years, never felt the need to change it.
People use cars differently. Your experience may not be universal just because it is consistent. Besides individual variation people also differ in whether and how many passengers they regularly transport and how many drivers share the car (e.g. my wife and I share one car and often drive together).
In my cheap pickup I have to constantly adjust temperature and fan speed. In my old German "ultimate driving machine", it's set and forget.
I ended up giving this exercise to a lot of candidates. About 30% said they would project the UI onto the windshield.
Soon:
“You need to return the call from your mom before the car will start for home.” Etc.
These days the digitization of everything means that modern cars with physical controls usually have up/down buttons to change the fan speed or temp. So like the Ford Flex I rented recently, you can't tell from touching the physical control whether the fan is at max speed, so the sequence is, look on the console for the right button (because there are were a half dozen or so identical buttons next to each other), hold it down, while listening to the fan speed until it sounds like its stopped getting faster. Then when you want to slow down, one has to look/feel for the button, hold it for a second or two until it seems to be roughly at the right speed, try not to over/unershoot because its laggy/etc.
Some of this is the result of climate controls designed to hold a given temp rather than setting the fan speed directly, where the assumption is the fan will run at max until it reaches it set point. But that is annoying in a whole other set of cases, including the one where the car isn't doing a good job of circulating the air causing a hotspot on the sunny side/etc. On my wife's car I find myself pushing the climate controls to max cool when I get in because its trying to run in "silent" mode, or waiting for the AC to come up to full pressure and I want it to cool down faster, then I have to look at the controls to reset it back to something reasonable when it finally starts to reach a comfortable temp.
Putting a trimmed-down Android tablet into a car is cheaper for manufacturers, but it's bad for usability.
There's been some research done that finds touchscreens are more distracting than drink or drug driving:
https://www.ala.co.uk/connect/in-car-touchscreens-more-dange...
There are annoying devices which have a very small number of tactile buttons, and overload them with multiple functions. Monitors, watches, and clocks tend to be especially bad, because the user interface is not used much. So you get some tiny unlabeled buttons, and have to consult the manual to find out when you need a short press, a long press, a press and hold, a two button press, or a paper clip.
Another class of annoying devices is point of sale systems. Some say they're ready for your card but really aren't - the store's system and the credit card terminal are not sufficiently aware of each other's state. Some have a RFID sensor, but it's not clear where the sensor is. Or when it's listening. Some are just really slow. Probably because they're doing too much in a busy "cloud". However, POS systems do work better today. I haven't had a transaction totally fail to be completed in several years.
They aren't. Your car may be a poorly designed exception.
The things you need to use need to do while driving can usually be done with controls on the steering wheel.
If you need visual feedback while using your steering wheel controls you can glance at the dashboard screen.
>using a touchscreen to adjust the temperature while driving is incredibly dangerous compared to a dial you can feel for without taking your eyes off the road
Your car is poorly designed. You can adjust the temp on MANY new cars without the touch screen with simple up down buttons and very clear temperature with its own always on display.
Though, as an aside, dials for temperature and fan speed are fine, but they also use a dial for changing which vents the air comes out of, which makes no sense. Also, the dials rotate infinitely, even though the ranges are finite. It means I still have to look to see what the setting is at, instead of being able to tell by feel.
By comparison, the 1992 Honda Civic climate controls are way better: https://i.imgur.com/r8JjjNw.png
Yikes. I know I'm just a nobody on the internet, but if I worked at Honda in any position of power, I would do everything in my power to get the people responsible for rubber-stamping this fired.
This is unacceptable for a modern vehicle.
But I agree that by objective standards, it's unacceptable.
A lot of designers (or marketers) seem to be trying to copy the look and feel of Apple devices without understanding the factors that led to their design.
I get why the trade off is worthwhile on smartphone.
But I hate the push in automotive application. Yes, I'd like a big screen for navigation, but don't replace HVAC controls.
It's not just about touch screen. There is overuse of capacitive buttons in cars. And it is all about dollars.
They are easier to clean for sure but I can't believe the current "click this, slide that" UX is the best the manufacturers could come up with.
It made me wonder if anyone actually tested the damn design before approval for mass production.
That'd be my go-to panic resolve anyway
* For folks unfamiliar by this I mean it takes almost zero effort to turn the switch off, but takes a little bit of force to switch back on
If I'm honest I only noticed it because the last one I came across seemed to be wired upside down (easy on, resistant off) and I'm almost certain the house before had the same but wired the "right way"
Could just have been some rogue grease or something either lubricating or gunking up the switch haha
I've never seen one of these soft touch control designs on a cooktop but I did hear they existed and at least one cat had turned one on by standing on it resulting in a house fire. The only dumber idea I can think of is a touch screen, which I'm sure they're hard at work integrated right now.
Right, that's bad design.
The cooktop I'm familiar with always turns off and beeps if something (metal pots or a liquid) covers a part of the button area.
To turn it on, you have to press two different buttons within a certain time limit, with a pot standing on the appropriate cooking zone. Most cats probably won't manage to do that.
> The only dumber idea I can think of is a touch screen
Oh, don't get me started. We own an oven with a touch screen. It's pure idiocy. But the cooktop is actually very good IMO.
Cats responsible for 107 house fires in Seoul in past 3 yrs ... According to the Seoul Metropolitan Fire & Disaster Headquarters, cats are believed to have started the blaze by turning on the electric stove in the kitchen with their paws. ... Electric induction cookers often come with touch-sensitive buttons, which can be switched on by the paw of an animal.
The knobs are more convenient to operate, but they tend to accumulate grease in the joints and other parts where you cannot reach. And if you want to clean them thoroughly you need to disassemble the knobs and that's annoying as hell. For me being easier to clean compensates everything.
The other thing is you can buy new knobs which can update/change/refresh the look of an older cooktop.
Got the touch buttons now and am forever turning stuff off randomly. It's like my hand meats are drawn to pressing more than one button at a time
I guess the idea is if the water overflows it'll 'touch' multiple buttons and turn the heat off but I've only ever turned it off by accident so far haha
Then, when in a shocking twist of events it's absolutely miserable, the tests are slightly mangled to highlight the usability gains ("easier to wipe", "looks modern and integrates well in a modern kitchen") and ensure no one's yearly bonus is endangered.
Surprisingly, it works out really well despite competition because everyone's doing it pretty similarly.
If your next question is "but why on Earth is it done like that!?", well, there are many reasons for that. But the tl;dr is that making kitchen appliances with universal, "boring" features, which last for 20 years, would spell disaster for a lot of companies in a lot of industries, from home appliances to furniture, and for smaller, specialized suppliers in these fields. The market has fine-tuned itself for frequently replaceable junk that's just good enough to that someone can plausibly say "well ackshually" when I refer to it as junk. Anything better would inherently result in much longer growth cycles, which Western management and stakeholders are not capable of handling anymore, and would disrupt "fashionable" trends, which would further prolong growth cycles in both home appliances and connected industries (furniture, home decor, cooking vessels believe it or not, and so on). It would also make it difficult to outsource mass production to cheap factories with poor quality control processes, thus driving prices up even more than the better materials and design would warrant, but that's more of a second-order effect than a cause by now.
Sauce: I used to work on consumer products years ago -- not kitchen appliances specifically but I know people who did those, too. Attending meetings was a lesson in cognitive dissonance and doublespeak and it's one of the least rewarding tech jobs you can imagine.
Designing and selling long-lived consumer products is a tremendous effort in terms of regulatory activity and logistics. And if you're just entering the market, you're entering a market where established players have been sitting on standardizing committees, lobbying regulatory bodies, and have had special deals with manufacturers, transporters, TV channels and shopping malls since Jimmy Carter was in the White House, and have been able to leverage them when dealing with online shops since the days of the dotcom boom.
Furthermore, getting that "more of the market share" requires actual first sales to happen in the first place. Selling fewer, better, and inherently more expensive products by claiming that yours are really good and last a long time is not very straightforward at all: it's not like everyone else is openly advertising that they're selling cheap junk that's worse than their 1980s versions in every way except maybe power consumption (because we can make better power supplies now). If you're selling kitchen stoves that last for twenty years, it's gonna be at least seven or eight years before anyone really believes you.
So all this requires tremendous initial investment in a pretty hostile environment. Consumer markets are already perceived as low-yield and under tremendous price pressure. But, worse, some segments -- household appliances in particular -- also suffer from a "marketshare = dead market" problem: if you sold someone a washing machine that lasts fifteen years, you're not going to sell them another one for fifteen years. So if you're selling things that last for fifteen years, you gotta convince the folks whose money you're depending on that you can keep selling things at a reasonable pace for fifteen years from now, and you won't really know if you've succeeded at your basic value proposition ("we make better things that last longer") for at least seven or eight years into it.
That's not just pretty risky, it's on a timeframe that's about an order of magnitude higher than companies/investment funds/people willing to throw that kind of money into things that run on electricity are able to work with.
That's not to say no one has been entering these markets. They have, but they've usually done it through other value propositions -- stuff that's even cheaper, stuff that's ethically sourced and so on. New premium brands do pop up but they either target prosumer/super premium markets (slang for "super rich people who want to brag or impress"), where the rules are slightly different, or go straight for the professional market first, where the rules of the game are very much different, and use whatever reputation they can make there to start selling home appliances too.
From my limited experience with touch operated stoves - these would be just as reliably operated by randomly throwing darts at a board.
No use of the touch screen for the basic flow. But if you want to do something else like start self cleaning or turn steaming on, you use the touchscreen rather than pull out a manual that tells you to press button 1, 3 and 4 for 4 seconds.
Says everyone on Linux with their ridiculous custom setup on an obscure window manager. The difference here being that you can change things to make them more comfortable and don't have to wait for some "designer" to have the idea first.
So it seems like a fairly good trade-off to me.
There's no way around it. I do my best to clean under the knobs of my stove but they don't come off. Don't even get me started about how much of an ass pain burners are.
When I'm not renting I'll definitely install an induction system. If I never deal with cleaning burners, and knobs again it'll be too soon.
A good physical knob or button usually feels much more luxurious and expensive.
(my own pet peeve though are microwaves - they are a positive monstrosity of horrible interface bearing no connection to actual typical usage. I'd like one with a massive "add 30s and start button", and anything else is a nice optional extra for me :-D
A pretty good idea, I'm sure other manufacturers have the same but I don't know the marketing lingo.
[1]: https://www.manualslib.com/manual/972967/Whirlpool-Jt469.htm...
This is the ideal design and no one can convince me otherwise. Same thing goes for ovens. All I care about is "how hot do I cook/bake this?" and "For how long?"
Two dials is perfect.
I have no idea why domestic microwaves come with a maze of buttons when such vastly superior knob technology exists.
Turn the knob for time, hit ok, get power prompt, hit ok again for 100% (or adjust using the knob for less), microwaving starts.
There is also specific program functionality to tell it you have 200g of mince meat to defrost or whatever and it figures out the time/power setting, but I personally never use them.
They iterate over the design bits (black knobs on black microwave -> silver knobs on black microwave -> current design), but the microwave remains the same
The best are often a big knob controlling a digital LCD timer. Started with a single start button doubling as +30s.
That's exactly how this one worked. I wish I could recall the brand, but I don't; it felt more like an industrial device than a home appliance.
I've been using an induction stove for years now, and I still can't get over the fact that I don't have stepless control over the output power. When I have to keep something on a simmer, I'm continually adjusting the controls because keeping the pan on 2 will eventually get off the boil, and if I keep it on 3 it boils too hard.
Give me back my continuously-variable controls, please.
The stove at my parents place has some touch control to activate another heating ring(?). Not only is that hard to activate with wet or greasy fingers, but after a couple of years of use it keeps turning itself off now. Thank god that thing fails "closed" and does not (yet?) spontaneously activate effectively doubling the heating power.
One vote for the physical buttons. If you want to act quickly, tactile buttons are really annoying.
And it's not just that, but words with the same meaning can have vastly different lengths depending on language, which may or may not fit in your original design. To name an example: If you have an fan-assisted oven, you can have a small round button labeled 'fan'. In Dutch, however, the word is 'ventilator', which would require much more space.
If only we could all decide upon a "default" language to use globally, much like a lot of software out there is available only in English which seems to be good enough (almost all programming languages included) for most cases.
Then again, I'm the kind of person who finds most localizations in my native language to be uncomfortable to use and attempts by the academia to force people to use translated IT terms pointless - that will only lead to more confusion.
Of course, not everyone knows multiple languages so maybe that's not the best argument, since we should be accomodating to many people if possible. And then there's the fact that I might have to learn Mandarin eventually if such an initiative came to pass.
I LOATH my current oven / cook top that has up and down push button arrows and a tiny screen that is pointed at my waist ...
1. Far easier to clean (you even mention this despite saying it brings no features...)
2. Easier for a lock function to help prevent kids/accidental turning on of the stove
3. Take up less space, makes the stove top a flush surface making it more reusable as a counter top
There are pros and cons to knobs vs capacitive buttons on a stove. In my kitchen I do not have a lot of spare counter space, so having the entire stove practically flush with the rest of the counter with absolutely nothing protruding is a big positive feature to me. I've never personally encountered any misunderstandings of the on/off or up/down buttons, and I've never had issues with boil overs or something triggering buttons unwantingly or been unable to make adjustments while cooking. So for me, the flush capacitive buttons are a huge selling point; having knobs would be worse in my use case.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?st=stove+top
Lets compare two pretty similar stoves and see how they compare to my 3 points above:
Electric stove with knobs: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/ge-profile-36-built-in-electric...
Electric stove with touch controls: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/ge-profile-36-built-in-electric...
1. Which one looks easier to clean, the one that's literally a flat plane of glass, or the one with six protrusions which would need to be removed to clean under, which then need to be individually cleaned themselves?
2. It looks like this one actually has some kind of lock function, so that's nice. Not all knob-based stoves have this idea. Looking around at other stoves this feature is somewhat uncommon, but not ultra rare.
3. Once again, one is truly a flat plane of glass, while the other has six protrusions on it which you then have to deal with when moving things around the counter. Its nice not having those dials in the way when you're just trying to use that space as a counter in a pinch.
Having knobs on the top sounds like an incredibly stupid idea. For all the reasons you posted and more. No wonder people look into touch solutions if that’s the baseline comparison.
In the US this is the norm in cheaper, smaller kitchens and especially rental units but becomes less common in larger kitchens with built-in ovens. Its not like counter top stoves are the "baseline", its just a common arrangement as well as all-in-one ranges. Sometimes cars have two doors, sometimes they have four.
See these kitchens with a separate stove: https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/6e40a3a3/dms3rep/multi/k... https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/2e/78/ac2e785c29d9892d155a... https://imagesvc.meredithcorp.io/v3/mm/image?url=https%3A%2F...
And these kitchens with a combined oven+stove: https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images... https://cf.ltkcdn.net/interiordesign/images/orig/273067-1600... https://static.onecms.io/wp-content/uploads/sites/37/2020/11...
Both styles are pretty common in the US, it all depends on the layout of your kitchen. In my home, the oven is built in to a wall higher up off the ground with multiple drawers underneath. The stove is separate and on top of a large counter with lots of drawers underneath. Having knobs on the face of the range is less safe in a house with kids, its way easier for them to manipulate the knobs on the face than knobs on the top. Plus, having knobs on the face would mean I'd lose the wide, shallow drawer with all my quick cooking utensils right at the very top of the stove area. It would have to be several inches lower, making it less convenient. The controls on the top also make it easier to see and adjust the controls instead of having the controls be lower and pointed at my crotch. So there are positives to having the controls on the top. Like lots of things, there are tradeoffs either way.
Having touch controls on the top of the range is a nice feature for my kitchen. My experience would be worse if the controls were dials mounted where my most used kitchen drawer is currently, and would put my house in more danger from kids having easier access to them.
Have fun cooking with 2 zones, any time you need to adjust the heat of the next zone you need to press select 3 times to circle the whole stove and then adjust several times with plus or minus. Add the mandatory touch-delay to each action and by the time you reach desired temperature your food is burnt already. How can anyone think this is a good idea?!
And those that buy them are loathe to admit they suck until after they've sold it off (because admitting it sucks means admitting you made a bad purchase).
(I haven’t read the revised edition (2013) of Norman’s book, I guess he must address touchscreens)
Cars? Motherfucking abysmal. ATMs? How many times we tried to press a button realizing you're missing it completely because there's a 3-inch think screen? Laptops? Only those who like fingerprints. Cameras? I think if you are seriously using it, you prefer tactile. Signature pads? This should not even exist. Vending machines? I think they're more confusing with buttons jumping on screen and changing their labels than without. Handheld video games? Still rely on buttons.
I wish designers would not try to stick them in everything. They're only good for small handheld devices to cram lots of functions in, and they're always a UX compromise. They can only improve the number of functions you can squeeze in a device.
I prefer devices with qwerty to be honest, and if you already have a qwerty input plus sensor "joystick" w/ pressable button under it - I am talking about Blackberry - you quickly realize that you don't need sensor input except of for apps w/o proper support of joystick and webpages w/ GDPR.
> Signature pads? This should not even exist.
Drawing pads?
> I wish designers would not try to stick them in everything.
I wish designers and MARKETINGers stop to place them in anything, except of mentioned higher.
> Vending machines? I think they're more confusing with buttons jumping on screen and changing their labels than without
I have a vending machine from Porsche auto salon and buttons doesn't jump. Sensor is needed for adding kind of luxury mood if you already have a display which is needed for jumping Porsche logo.
What these have in common is that they are touchscreens. I can't think of a case of something else which just happens to have a touchscreen where I wouldn't prefer some other interface.
Eh, reconfigurability and dynamic interfaces are great for developers because it allows you to change things later and fix mistakes. Context sensitive UIs assume my brain can switch spatial contexts as well and for some interfaces, context switches are expensive on my brain. I want to rely more on muscle memory so I can focus on higher cognitive tasks, I don't want my UI to be one of those higher cognitive tasks.
Touch interfaces have their place but too many fall prey to the allure of sexy and try to slap it on every problem. On phones it ultimatelt makes sense, even there jumping between apps and updates on apps I find myself spending time figuring out interfaces far more than I should need to. This hurts usability more than helps it. I understand the goal is typi ally continuous improvement but I wonder for how many the goal is simply continous new shiny
Why am I not surprised?
Helps to focus on the content. That's exactly what marketing dreads.
My Breville coffee machine only has buttons and knobs, which works fine for the basic flow since everything has a dedicated button. But once you want to do something like run a cleaning cycle you will have to read the manual every time because there is nothing intuitive about holding double shot + single shot and then power for 3 seconds. Or holding program and then power to open temperature adjust then clicking one of the buttons to set a temp which isn't labeled and needs the manual to decipher.
While on the touch screen model, the basic flow might be slightly less nice, but the most complex flows are also reduced to about the same complexity and can be intuitively worked out while using the device. Combining physical buttons for basic flow with a touch screen is the best of both imo. I have used some ovens which use a normal knob like it would on an older oven, but if you want to do something like start a self clean cycle or adjust steaming, its done via the touch screen.
This. But if I have to choose, then I'll have physical buttons over a touch screen. Why? Because I use the "basic flow" every damn day. Whereas I only need to set the clock every few months.
it's really easy. grab the clock. turn the hands to the desired position. optionally wind it up. put back on the oven. the only thing i dont understand why would anybody put his clock on the oven?
Common basic functions: knobs dials switches.
Extended functions: there's an app for that, or suffer through modal button changes like you describe.
Save on BOM costs, less points of failure, and does not require an SoC with display controller and a software stack running a (usually janky and slow and non-standard) UI.
I have a bike gps which has some functions as a phone app but the phone app no longer works.
I'd argue that's not an example of touch screens being better than buttons but rather the button interface in question being poorly laid out, and as for the phone, it's not the lack of physical buttons but rather the on-screen guidance that makes life easier. My grandparents' cooker is a button-free wonder and I couldn't work it out the first time I tried to turn it on.
Most people have a solution in mind before they even look at the problem, and that solution is usually "build an app", or "slap a screen on it". With bureaucracy, it's "put the form on the internet".
There are a few low tech devices I much prefer:
- A kitchen timer vs. my phone. I don't need to unlock the phone and navigate to the timer app. I just twist the knob until I see the desired number. Hell, it's probably set to 3 minutes already, because I mostly use it to make tea.
- My microwave has one knob for time, and one knob for intensity. Best microwave interface ever. It doesn't tell time, so I never need to adjust it. I had microwaves so complicated that I turned to social networks for help.
- Stoves. I refuse to buy a stove without knobs. I have hated every stove without knobs I've ever used. Touch-sensitive buttons don't work with oven mitts, but get triggered by a wet rag, steam and spilled spaghetti sauce.
- Car infotainment. Each knob controls one thing. It's always in the same place, and I can find it while keeping my eyes on the road.
- Wired audio. This device is paired to the device it's physically connected to.
"put it on the blockchain"
But to your point, you're absolutely right. If you want to actually deliver valuable solutions, you need to have a good understanding of what unmet need you're trying to address. Otherwise you end up with a bad problem-solution match, and you waste everyone's time. Too often, technically minded people put too much emphasis on what's novel instead of what's valuable.
I don't think a knob is the optimal interface for time. In microwaves you need to input both low values of ~10s and very high values of ~600s with good precision on both cases. Sure, a logarithmic knob will give you that, but I don't think it's what you would expect.
For power it's good. It's even a much better interface for the power level than the usual. But then, anything is a much better interface than the usual microwave power level one.
> Wired audio. This device is paired to the device it's physically connected to.
There used to exist those wireless speakers with two pieces, one you physically connected to the audio output on the device, the other had the speaker. The transmission was analog and sucked due to noise, but it was much more reliable and had less lag than bluetooth.
For some reason, instead of fixing it into a digital transmission, everybody just stopped manufacturing the device.
Even then, a knob works perfectly. It does not need to set the value linearly. The first quarter of the timer could be 5 second increments, and the second half minutes.
> I don't think a knob is the optimal interface for time. In microwaves you need to input both low values of ~10s and very high values of ~600s with good precision on both cases. Sure, a logarithmic knob will give you that, but I don't think it's what you would expect.
I definitely disagree. I had a stove once that had a perfect knob for setting time. The rate of increase/decrease was determined by the speed that you twisted it. Turn slowly for fine granularity, fast for large changes. I think it may have done something clever when you started fast and then slowed down (the natural thing to do), since I think the naive thing probably wouldn't work that well.
It felt *awesome*. It sounds silly, but it's been just over a decade and I still miss that control knob. I think about it every time I'm faced with the latest way of adjusting some quantity. It's definitely not just because it was a physical knob—plenty of physical knobs are irritating and only good for either small or large changes, or feel unpredictable, or don't have good tactile feedback (too smooth and too chunky are both bad).
Having to LOOK at the number? ;)
I can talk to the phone while I'm slicing: 'Hey Siri, set a timer for x {timeunit}"
> "Wired audio."
Hoping this one doesn't keep disappearing...
The old model. One physical button for coffee, one for cappuccino, one for espresso, one for tea water. Single press instantly gives you want you want. For more custom mixes you can optionally change the strength with another button on top before making your choice.
How is this progress? I don't want "engagement" with my coffee machine. I just want it to give me coffee with as little effort as possible. It's exactly like you say, someone was given the task to solve a coffee app, instead of looking at the actual problem first.
For example, the Oculus Quest, there's a on / off button fine, easy to understand. Except, it magically turns itself on if it assumes, you may use it, and turns itself off if not used anymore. Unfortunately that is often not correct, so you start counter acting, holding it carefully so the sensor does not react and double checking if it turned off or just on again, when switching it off. Congratulation, they made a simple on / off switch unintuitive.
I see this pattern everywhere. It seems ux designers are trying to hard to be clever. Just give us a Tool, that does one thing and always acts the same. If it doesn't make sense, let the user learn from it's mistake.
I'm willing to pay extra to avoid touch screens in my cars, washing machines, door locks, and personal computers. I can't be the only one!
A classic example of this is the situation where an experienced cashier on an "analog" system can just fly through the buttons and complete transactions in no time, while at the same time a rookie would take that much more time to ramp up, figure out, and internalize the various button mappings. A darker interpretation of this would be that the system is optimization for fungible workers, where swapping out one cashier at will for another has negligible impact on productivity.
You need essentially eliminate "modes" - like the clock/set time/radio mode buttons on your alarm clock. I'm not saying he's right - but he's worth reading.
Even 40 years people already joked about the alarm clock you mentioned: everyone knew how to use VCRs, but the damn clock was never adjusted. Since it was neither intuitive, nor something a user would memorize how to do, most VCRs just sat there saying 12:00 or 00:00 forever. For the alarm clock, of course, we had to learn since it was its main function.
I see this in music equipment a lot, too. To program something with modes you need significantly more time than something with just knobs. And the performance possibilities are also much limited as soon as you bring in menu-diving.
The touchscreen versions can be more complicated - but since they also have the ability to change the knobs to presets they may be more useful to actual sound engineers.
One important aspect is that with tactile controls one barely needs presets, though, except for recall. Mixing done from scratch is quite fast, even when compared to presets, so I would argue that there is a significant tradeoff when going digital.
A couple more advantages:
* A small interface makes small things small. A voltmeter doesn't need to be as big as a computer, and there are lots of gadgets that are smaller.
* One-foot operation, such as the page turning pedals that musicians are now using for their sheet music.
Sometimes the old ways are better and have lasted so long for a reason.
If I didn't have physical buttons on the steering wheel to press, I wouldn't bother using the stereo at all.
Driving is the absolute worst environment for touch screens. Not only am I unable to look at where I am touching at the same moment I want to touch, the whole car is moving unpredictably in relation to my finger.
I do agree the volume slider is a terrible choice of interface, but TBF there is a tactile, physical volume control on your car within reach of your hands while they're on the wheel. There is a volume adjustment on your steering wheel, so theoretically you shouldn't even have to use the volume control on the stereo while you're driving.
The slider is a bad idea because the car is bouncing up and down, so your hand isn't stable unless you pin it down with your thumb or something like that, and you have to look away from the road. The car doesn't roll as much, so a knob is inherently more stable, and can be found by peripheral vision plus feel.
Why would you have to look down at the wheel but not the dashboard?
This literally never happens on any of my cars. I'd rather not have to be distracted with an uncomfortable car in the middle of driving and then have to feel around navigating a few different knobs and buttons to make my car comfortable, my car should just automatically be comfortable.
> There's enough distracted drivers on the road to watch out for
You were more distracted having to think about the climate, take your hand off the wheel, feel around for the knobs, and adjust them properly than someone using automatic climate control where they just never have to make that adjustment in the first place.
When I arrived, some groups in the organization had begun to refactor these Matlab interfaces into WPF applications with slick new updates to the widgets, but it was really lipstick on a pig. After listening to all the stakeholders and users our proposal was to develop a skeuomorphic radio interface (green box with a bunch of dials and frequency display). Only the critical controls were featured on the radio face. All of the configuration options were buried. Now, I get all the eye-rolling when it comes to skeuomorphism as a fad, but it really resonated with our target audience and their superiors. This "Virtual Radio" soon became the defacto style for all communication devices throughout the organization. Because of the animation capabilities of VPF we were able to mimic both the look and feel of the various analog radio controls. It was super realistic. More importantly it allowed us to more easily communicate our designs to a broad audience, including: soldiers, contractors, technicians, and top brass. It has been nearly a decade since I left the company. I hope that this design has gone away. Not because it was ineffective (or trendy), but rather these communication systems needed to evolve to be self-configuring and self-operating, requiring little if any interaction by a soldier other than monitoring. After all, the best interface is one that doesn't need to exist.
Most soldiers are in their early to mid 20's, right? They might have never encountered an analog radio at this point! On the other hand, those old physical UIs did have a certain intuitiveness to them that might just be easy to learn, even if it isn't familiar.
But then again, English isn't my first language.
Now that I think about it, I've heard people here say, for example, "1 nought 1", "1 nought 2", "1 nought 3" etc for 101, 102, 103, and so on.
Of course, I always thought they said "1 'not' 1", and not "1 'nought' 1", and didn't ponder too much into it, even though neither of them made sense to me.
"Good afternoon and welcome to Lords on the second day of the first test. So far today we've had five hours batting from England and already they're nought for nought. Cowdrey is not out nought. Naughton is not in. Knott is in and is nought for not out. Naughton of Northants got a nasty knock on the nut in the nets last night but it's nothing of note. Next in is Nat Newton of Notts. Not Nutring - Nutting's at nine, er, Nutring knocked neatie nighty knock knock..."
Here at timestamp 0:32 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6dl8og
It's a low resolution matrix of LEDs behind a plastic facade that displays current air quality measurements pretty simply but effectively.
It's a clever design choice for many reasons, not just because it lowers the BOM of the device, but because people already have enough computer/phone/TV high resolution displays in their living spaces, and in contrast the Awair looks somewhat elegant in contrast.
There are some reasonable critiques regarding the accuracy or effectiveness of these consumer indoor air monitors, but I get far more questions about the Awair than I do about any other devices I have. Some of that is its novelty, but some of it also is the minimal UX.
Though the author did hit the nail on the head about tactility.
The value a product expresses really is the product. The user has to feel something about it. A medical device in a hospital setting used by nurses on patients needs to express professional sophistication to the patient and reliability to the RN. The simple LCD display makes sense for expressing something purpose-built, e.g. for a doctor doing a test, but for the RN, who does most of the care and patient interaction, things like rapport, trust, and familiarity go a lot further, hence asking for a touch screen.
Once as a PM on a security product, I entered into the UX development with the perspective of producing a consumer product that just told you the thing you needed to know, believing that the value we were providing was from our ML analytics back end we had invested so much in. What came back from enterprise sales was, "we want more widgets on the screen, can you just make it look like it's doing something?" My reaction was, "find smarter customers," which of course was the the most uniquely and profoundly wrong response in almost every way at once. After going out on some sales calls, what customers wanted was our data. They didn't care about our huge ML pipeline with a calm and decisive consumer oriented UX, because in their environment, having smooth products was not what made them express power to their own stakeholders - they expressed their own value by showing whizzing screens of data. What they really wanted in hindsight was a private telemetry and surveillance API for fleet devices, like a more featureful MDM, but scriptable so they could demonstrate their own value - and not an ML model that did that for them. A low tech command line or API was the real product they wanted. Customers who did like it were enterprise managers who wanted to show they were hip to silicon valley driven tech change.
I'd wonder if we could make a radial web chart of the values a customer really has and the result would indicate the design language elements the UX of a product should have. You'd have to figure out what things like "powerful" mean to your customers, and what would equip them to become that through using your product. Other sub values are things like authoritative, safe, precision, virtuotic, calm, belonging, competent, inventive, hidden depth, compliant and aligned, elevated, the exception, etc. Based on these, I'd design a product UX around a stack ranked set of values like these.
Makes me think there is a future in new kinds of input devices though.
However, if you have a device with a single function, there's no need for that. Your physical controls will always match the device's function. Use those.
How can I make it change based on my schedule, as I'm home most of the day on the weekends while I'm often out during the week?
Seems like its not that great of a UI given the requirements I have.
You're trading sometimes being in the house at the wrong time to every day being in the house at the wrong time. Then your other statement doesn't matter if its programmable or not, if you're constantly in disagreement of what the thermostat should be you're going to be fiddling with it regardless of if its programmed or not.
I realize people's experiences vary greatly, but that's kind of my point about looking at the basic Honeywell thermostat and declaring its a great user experience. To me, its a terrible user experience and far worse than my basic 7 day 4 stage programmable thermostat which I touch once a season and otherwise let it be. In the end I save energy, reduce my bill, have on average a more comfortable house, and I rarely have to interact with the thermostat.
The ability to make quick changes to HVAC, radio, or heating/cooling settings is now requiring drivers to take their eyes off the road to drag a greasy finger across a virtual dial, it's pretty inane all things considered.
I know that, many years ago, cars started to display speed and tach displays as digital, and that was fairly quickly reversed, because people kept seeing their speed as a jumble of characters (look at digital displays that change rapidly).
I know that a number of auto manufacturers are starting to ditch touchscreen, for knobs.
I've found that haptic feedback is helpful. I use it (as well as a "retro-style" LED display) in my latest little timer app[0]. The earlier versions of that app were a lot more complex, and I ended up removing a great deal of the flexibility. So far, people have given me good feedback on the new "Fisher-Price" interface.
Microwave controls. One dial for power and one dial for time is all you really need and much better than numpad controls.
I'm genuinely amazed that touch screens are still seen as "high tech" by so many people. They've been common for a decade and most people should be very familiar with their flaws. They're harder to use, more susceptible to defects, provide little or no feedback, and add expense to the product. The only real advantage touch screens have is that they are dynamic, so you can cram multiple interfaces into a small physical footprint - at the cost of only being able to display interface at a time. And I guess you could theoretically update the interface after sale... but I don't know if I've ever seen that done in practice other than to fix bugs.
Icons just mean nobody can use it. Heaven help the poor user who loses the manual that has a chart to decode the icons.
But my pre-reading children couldn't operate it. I'd say "nuke it for a minute and a half" and they'd twist the knob and ask "Is that enough? Which way should I turn it?" See they couldn't do the math to know if 45 seconds was more or less than a minute and a half.
If it'd been buttons I could have said "Press 90 seconds" or whatever and they could do that. Later when we got a different microwave they had a better time.
http://images.gtcarlot.com/pictures/48277419.jpg
It's no surprise given that Saab has a history in aerospace.
I totally get why car manufacturers are moving to essentially a big iPad as a replacement for the overall dash (it's like when the iPhone came out and people loved their Blackberry keyboards), but from a function vs form perspective - buttons are way easier.
I still think the HVAC vent knob on my Saab was the most innovate knob I've ever seen and nothing compares today.
It allowed you to redirect the air in a fluid full 360 degree (semi-circular) position seamlessly. All other cars it's 2 separate horizontal and vertical controls.
I'd imagine production has plummeted since the glory days, but there ought to be stock of some things around still and people salvaging nice parts?
I don't do any hardware work worth mentioning, but I hope to get around to amending that soon, and I'd find it attractive to use interfaces appropriate to the task (which, as people here have noted, will mean the ones on topic in a very substantial share of the cases).
You shouldn't need to salvage unless you really want some vintage pot knob or slider that you can't find elsewhere. Industrial hardware usually needs to be tactile (eg operated with gloves).
Some modern stuff is better anyway, like mono OLED displays which are far more readable than LCDs.
Same for office phones (which have a plethora of buttons e.g. for conference calls that are not useful in many contexts).
"Touch Screens in Cars Solve a Problem We Didn't Have" Jay Caspian Kang, NYT May 23 2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/23/opinion/touch-screens-car...
I'm reminded of the big red button almost everything in a machine shop has.
Becoming faint? On my Microsoft keyboard, the letters on the keys soon wore off completely. I had to re-learn touch typing.
I want a real hardware volume dial on my phones and laptops. Mostly so that I can turn them down and be sure that that I will not embarrass myself by making noises at events where silence is expected.
And I miss DIP switches. It is just brilliant that you could configure it once and for all. E.g. I have smoke detectors that could all be linked together by pressing some buttons in a weird ritual, but when you change a battery they forget and run down the battery in no time trying in vain to sync.
Electronic consumer devices like Minidisc players and PDAs used to often have a multitude of buttons to directly access all commonly used functions.
Curious, because I thought the reason nobody did buttons anymore was that printing a pattern on a touch capacitive surface was dirty cheap.
Whereas I assume tactile buttons require a lot work when mounting/building the product.
Am I wrong?
I guess an 8 digit display is still cheaper than a touch screen :)
I like to claim the development the last few decades seems to be going from specialized tools that performed their task beautifully to generic tools that performed that task (or some semblance thereof) at all.
Case in point: "Desktop evolution"
The philosophy of simple > complex isn't low-tech or high-tech, it just is.
I do honestly think, and I'm not a big smartphone fan, that a virtual keyboard on s smartphone's screen with haptic feeback (where the phone vibrates a bit when you "press" a key) is infinitely better than membrane keyboards.
Now I'm not saying everything should be replaced with screens+haptic feedback: what I'm saying is membrane keyboard are the worst piece of shit man ever invented.
On the other hand my alarm system has buttons (zero screen): one button, one function. And the feedback on these buttons is perfect. It's bliss. Same in my ultra high end, but thankfully nine years old, car: one button, one function. And when you press that button you know it's been pressed. Perfection. (I say "thankfully nine years old" because the very same car brand/model now uses screens everywhere instead of buttons).
So you can have two exactly identical looking user interface and, without trying, it's impossible to tell if it's a complete piece of shit or not (well, these membranes things: you kinda spot them from a mile): you need to actually press the buttons to know.
Membranes are the opposite of perfect user experience: they're mediocre turds.
I worked on controls with one company and their solution was to put a membrane overlay on the panel but place low-travel physical buttons behind it. You had the advantages of a membrane overlay (sealed from dust/moisture, better artwork on top) and the higher reliability of the button. And if the overlay tore or wore off the system still worked.
This a related issue with slow response times of modern UIs. I spent a decent chunk of my career replacing AS-400 systems with ones accessed through the browser. Those AS-400 systems were often hosted in the building and were written to run on servers from the 80s or earlier. With modern hardware they rendered screens within single digit ms and I think the emulator did some input queueing.
Users would know that to, as an example, change someone's address they'd have to hit 7, 3, enter, 3, tab, tab and start typing. With a browser interface they couldn't do that because the latency was unpredictable and the page might not be ready for their input. Usually we ended up slowing the users down significantly.
I agree with you WRT tactile interfaces, the only reason things like the iPhone work are a combination of text prediction and over-reliance on rare ingredients like rare earth minerals to make that super strong glass and super thin, long lasting batteries.
(China controls a lot of those mines now, because Obama was a weak leader who handed Africqa and SE Asia over to totalitatians.)
I hate how many things were taken digital rapidly, classic example being I read about Nordic countries ditching AM/FM radio.
It is cool and good to be able to buy a twenty dollar radio and set of rechargable double AAs, and then have access to news via folks like NPR + some classical or whatever to flood a room with noise when you need to go full cyberpunk at the library, but the library was closed due to COVID.
I can't tell if the generation after millenials are all what that hentai loving sci fi guy from boing boing warned us about: unable to use the command line or understand the value of general purpose computing, but on my end I'm about to go stand outside with a sign and a cup rather than waste energy and resources standing up a website, writing out a bunch of "creative nonfiction", and then having folks pretend that if they send me something like "Monero" (that might be secure in a technial sense, but is literally sold only in one physical location in my city.)
(A long time ago, I considered being a designer, but that's subjective, and it seems like the field is structured so they mostly invent ways to steal ideas from the technical folks who make it possible for them to have the serenity first to think up cute designs.)
So many designers forget that "low tech" designs were planned after years or generations of iteration and shouldn't be changed lightly -- that might be a load bearing lorus ipsum ;)
(For context, the reason you're getting this type of reply is that around 2010 I offered to work for a major FFRDC codeing up custom forensics tools that would be more usable so they wouldn't need to pay millions for training and licenses, but I never even got a reply to my email despite being referred to that person by someone who founded an entire conference on my area of research.
Then again, we were also discussing whether I should join the FBI at the time.
(My take was they hadn't figured out how to navigate the conflict of interest between the counter intelligence mission and the criminal division, just like the NSA hadn't figured out how to navigate offense and defense or the secret service never learned to navigate the dual mission of offense and defense)
Later on, at Defcon an SS agent (using THAT acronym on purpose) told me if you want to know what it's like to be in the secret service, go stand in a suit on your front lawn in 80% humiudity for twelve hours, but to be fair I didn't check if I could apply and ONLY focus on things like counterfeiting, since I've made it clear for over a decade I won't kill the president, but I'll absolutely pull out my phone and arch my eyebrows at the corpse as I take a photo if someone else does.
This poster paid 150 dollars on a nonprofit salary to go see Obama gaslight him on encryption after.
This is like the fall of the USSR.
Post better.
Be Better.
TL;DR: Great article, thanks for sharing Marban. I agree that low tech interfaces are cool and good.