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Comment by testfoobar | Hacker News Reader

Touch screens are also pretty terrible for older people. Vision and fine motor skills both degenerate. Without tactile feedback, it is hard for older people to determine if they've successfully clicked on something. Gestures can be tough to teach and successfully implement without error.

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Worse than touch screens are those touch buttons (you know, where the thing is just printed on the outside of the TV).

I have no idea why, I'm fluent with touchscreens in the usual way but something in my brain just.... I don't know. Theoretically it should be the same, right? Except it feels horrible and wrong and I even have trouble trying to find the button.

Probably because I'm vision-impaired and an actual touchscreen is usually backlit and easier to see, while for physical buttons I've always compensated by using my sense of touch more (move hand towards general area of button, narrow it down with my fingertips).

The lack of the tactile click also certainly has something to do with it as pointed out above.

I'd actually be really interested to know from any UX design people here that work on this kind of thing - am I an outlier or does everyone hate them?

It's not just you. Most touch screens will have some sort of feedback (visual, tactile or auditory) to let you know when you've pressed a button. Those touch buttons on screens and monitors don't.

Thank god the touchbar is finally gone from the MacBook. It was such a strange delight to use the new model and have the media keys reliably work.

I didn't mind the touchbar as a concept, but the implementation was terrible and it should never have replaced any keys.

Yes, I'd love to have the touch bar as long as still had the function keys. It was not terribly useful, but it was very expedient for stuff like controlling volume.

I thought previously and how I'd be fine with it, but then realised its only tolerable when I can just completely ignore it and at that point I'd rather the cost go in to a part I do use. The 2021 model improved so many parts.

I rest my finger by the Esc key for some reason (vi use maybe) and every once in a while the screen would suddenly fade to black because it was registering a long key press on the Touch Bar[1] for the screen dim control. After a few times I realized I could customize the Touch Bar to only have a few necessary keys and keep them on the far right.

Just another case of inadvertent button activation for touch screens.

[1] iPad decided this should be capitalized, lol

Those are known as optical switches. And they are horrible.

About touch buttons, I have seen once a lift with touch buttons for controls. For accessibility, the floor were also written in Braille. I thought to myself: "nice, they thought about vision impaired people".

Then, a friend of mine, which has completely lost vision and can read Braille, jokingly said to me when he arrived: "Trying to find the right button, I probably send the lift to all floors!"

That’s funny. And sad. Vision impaired people have really been taken by a rollercoaster with modern tech. First the touch screen which is useless (not sure if that’s the case still?). But then tech companies invested massively in voice interfaces for completely unrelated reasons, which I assume, is a godsend.

> Touch screens are also pretty terrible for older people. Vision and fine motor skills both degenerate. Without tactile feedback, it is hard for older people to determine if they've successfully clicked on something. Gestures can be tough to teach and successfully implement without error.

And I've seen that when people are holding their phones in a living room. The cars are vibrating (normally), and the user is trying to drive, with one hand on the wheel, etc.

I’m not THAT old (although grew up without touchscreens) and touch screens are horrible when I’m in motion in the car. No chance in hell I’m able to hit what I what when there’s even a slightest minor bump. And with the state of USA highways it means - all the time.

Especially, as designers think it’s cool to have tiny buttons on the touch screen.

I am that old, and I don't need to be in motion to hit the issue. Tactile buttons feedback through your finger that your finger is indeed in the correct location, and when you get that positive feedback you click the button.

Touchscreens don't provide this. If your finger comes into contact in the wrong place, the wrong thing happens. So your first contact must be absolutely correct.

Your arm is extended. Your hand/finger partially blocks your view of the button. Your depth perception of that flat plane with fluid reference points is not good. Bang! The wrong app completely opens.

Now you have to spend time dealing with the consequences of that your error, even if you don't feel inclided to try again. Instead of rewinding to re-listen to the last 20 seconds of a podcast because traffic demanded your attention, you are now listening to the radio and have set an alarm for midnight.

I agree with you on the tactile angle, but the Tesla touch screen offers larger font sizes for people with presbyopia which is something that physical controls cannot offer.

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