The Nightmare Bicycle
geoffreylitt.com
geoffreylitt.com
Plus, I can always select whatever levels I want manually on the microwave, and when using a pre-programmed function I can see what the microwave is doing.
I think an example that makes it clear that the author needs to more carefully work out their point is the Honeywell AllergenPlus line of airfilters. For a while, they had three settings, "Allergen", "General Clean" and "Germ" which are merely 3 fan speed settings. This method was so disjointed form reality, the eventually started shipping them with stickers covering it up with "Low", "Medium", and "High" (I forget what the actual order was...).
It's a real life nightmare bicycle, but of course there is no risk of losing intuitive understanding because of instant feedback. The user will quickly figure out which setting is low, which is medium, and which is high based on simply pressing the buttons. A similar thing will happen with the bicycle. People don't actually look at the numbers and select a number, they just shift gears until it "feels" right.
This really needs a better product example, perhaps just AI over search.
As far as I can tell, they control three parameters:
* Where the heat comes from (top, bottom, or both)
* Whether or not ventilation is activated
* The temperature
There is also a dial for temperature, but not for the other two parameters. I am not sure whether every combination is covered by the "program" dial. I am not sure whether or not my understanding is even correct.
I would say it's an 7.5 out of 10 on the nightmare bicycle scale.
Yet one truth that emerged over the years is: The more people understand the underlying principles the easier it is for them to make the technology do what they want.
Good equipment empowers users to understand the underlying principles by using simple abstractions, bad technology tries to obscure underlying principle by using bad abstractions.
If the abstraction made mistakenly tries to simplify a thing more than is reasonably possible, it not only takes agency away from people new to that technology — it can also make it hard or impossible to for people who know the technology on an expert level.
One has modern integrated brake-shifters with two separate parts that can be clicked inwards to shift up and down. There's no feedback on which gear it's on, but I know which part to click to make pedaling harder, and which part to click to make it lighter. At the stops, the shifter just won't move. The drawback is that if I want to know how close I am to the end of the range, I have to look down at the chainrings.
The other bike has un-indexed downtube shifters. These are tiny, frame-mounted levers that are moved smoothly (no clicks) forwards or back and they directly control the derailers which move the chain across gears. This is my favourite interaction pattern for bike gears, because you can put your hand down and feel the position of both levers and immediately know which gear combination you're in. Incredibly practical in heavier traffic to never need to take eyes off the road.
I've since switched to a Microshift 12S mountain bike friction shifter. Quite happy so far. It has click mode and pure friction. With my Shimano Saint derailleur (10s), due to the clutch, it took me some getting used to due to the hand strength needed. A spare friction shifter is also lighter to carry. An unintentional plus point is the ability to move to an 11s (jockey wheels on the Saint derailleurs seems to be able to work with 11s chain) the next time my cassette and chain needs replacing. 11s will give me less dead zone in between each shift.
Vis-a-vis an index shifter, I like it that I now have a way (apart from cadence, gradient and speed data from my bike comp) to know approximately which gear I'm at by just feeling the lever position. With the time I've had with this setup, I'm almost always able to shift whatever gear by muscle memory.
In reality, for my city's (Saigon) traffic, I find myself shifting gears more and hence my hands does get a bit sore. The bumps and uneven drain holes can also cause the friction shifter to shift unintentionally. I could tighten it but it'd at the expense of my hand comfort.
However, in an ultra distance ride (>=200km), there's less gear shifts and hence less of an issue. I'm also able to use both hands to take turns shifting gears which is more important on a super long ride.
Incidentally, I'm surprised that you like unindexed shifters - they're a lot more clumsy than correctly adjusted indexed shifters.
I want relatively short, more water than minimum, medium-gentle agitation, medium RPM spin dry. It has many names.
And yet, the program exists. Did they find a workaround? Or are they selling an empty promise?
The microwave example just doesn't make sense when what you have isn't a single "just push the power button" machine, but a combined microwave/oven for instance. You'll want clear mode management, temperature management when defrosting meat, pre-heating and convection when cooking a whole chicken etc.
Anecdotally, a lot of people don't really understand/care about bicycle gears, and stick it to the heaviest and call it a day (on city bikes it's not that heavy, they can dance when it's tougher, and just get off and push the bike when it's really hard). We've seen the same cycle for cars, where people only caring about going from A to B will enjoy automatic transmissions better.
All in all, I agree single purpose products are great when you can afford one and it does the job. Paradoxically it also helps expand the use cases as the user comes to better understand how it works and how it can be "abused".
The author is saying that in the effort to "simplify" stuff, microwaves now add a potato button and a chicken button, but then you want to cook an eggplant and don't know how.
As a user I just happen to have very little kitchen space, so I ended up with a microwave/oven combination by necessity, and as it does exponentially a lot more than the two dial microwave, it also requires more complex modes and buttons and dials and I'm fine with it, as that's exactly why I paid for it. The "chicken" mode isn't some dumb time/power setting, as mine does the pre-heating, accepts additional watering, and adjusts the temperature curve so it's crisp at the end of the cycle.
Advocating for simple tools is fine IMHO, as long as we understand not everything needs to be overly simple.
PS: perhaps the part I'm missing is that while researching before buying my microwave/oven, I never saw a "dumb" machine that had useless buttons that could be exchanged for just a time/power setting. Each special modes usually have specific tweaks, and going through the manual it was made abundantly clear.
I am one of those that just wants simple clear stuff like a lot of people here mention. Whats more important is the consistency between various products - if I am used to a recipe that requires 15 mins at this setting and this temperature, let it be consistent across all products. Which is never the case, more sophisticated cooks struggle in new environment.
But yes the specific use case of mixed products you mention this won't be enough. I'd say thats fringe part of the market and folks knowing they are getting something special take time to understand the tool.
On consistency...I think it's just not possible. Even for super simple things like blasting something at 500W for 30 sec, we quickly realize that some microwaves ramp up faster than others, and at the same power they don't all diffuse the power evenly (flat floor microwaves are pretty different from the rotating plate ones for instance).
Doing trial and error for any new model feels like a fact of life, and I assume pros are more severe regarding properly knowing how their tool actually behaves, same way we'd benchmark a new computer to get an idea of its actual performance profile with our exact installation.
...Where do you live? This is completely foreign to most of Europe, where I havent seen anyone stuck to one gear (except hipsters on fixies, making a fashion statement), and almost everyone drive manual.
How can it be possible that "lot of people" where you live aren't able to do those very basic things? To the point of being unable to bike correctly (ever tried to start a bike in the highest gear)?
Fixed wheel cycles aren't just for hipsters - there's a fair few cyclists who enthuse about them for teaching cyclists to have a smoother pedalling style which can help with higher cadences. I've only ever used fixed wheels on unicycles (which to be fair could be described as making a fashion statement) as they don't lend themselves to having gears.
Maybe that's why the bike industry went to 1x drivetrains. That, or being able to sell you $250 cassettes where a $20 one used to do.
Obligatory Technology Connections. https://youtube.com/watch?v=UiS27feX8o0
People can learn to deal with adding 1, but it’s still a cognitive encumbrance that loads us down and makes life harder.
Not that I’m advocating for one-based indexing. At this point consistency is more important than whatever the easier solution is.
Off by one errors in general have nothing to do with being 1 or 0-based indexed.
In French off-by-one error is called “the post and fence problem” because there's always one more post than piece of fence (unless your fence makes a loop).
It arises because it's easy to confuse the number of intervals between elements and the number of elements (which is also: do I need to include the bounds or not). 1-based indexing isn't going to help at all in the general case (it will help for the most basic error which is getting the last element of an array with `a[a.length]`, but that's it)
For example what is the index of pixel X,Y in an image buffer? X + Ystride right? Nope! It's X + (Y-1)stride.
What's the range of the Ith block of N elements? [in, in + n)? Nope! It's [(i-1)n+1, in].
I have to deal with that nonsense in Matlab all the time. Nightmare.
If machine code uses zero then assembly inherits that, them C and everything else. Even JS months!
Maybe because they didn't want to "hide the bicycle gears"?
While I understand the CS concepts, I have never really thought about the developer UX before.
Yes you are!! In memory, and conceptually. You're conceptually moving your finger 0 spaces from the start of the apple array.
Yeah that's because the distinction between indexing and counting is pretty much irrelevant to every day use, and to maths where you can just hand-wave syntax. So people are very used to doing it "wrong".
That's what most of the issue with this debate is. Indexing from 1 is wrong, but people are soooo used to it they just can't get over what they think is the "normal" way.
No it's not. Telling the time or measuring something is 0-indexed. But identifying a thing in a list is 1-indexed.
Everywhere else, indexing is just a convention, even in natural language and math.
Design is so often polluted by marketing. The direction of progress from concept to design to marketing to sale should be one way only.
Just do not buy cheap Amazon junk!
About the popcorn button: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Limpr1L8Pss&pp=ygUYcG9wY29ybiB...
But in seriousness don't rely on any auto turn off feature if it failing means a fire!
Low numbers for low speeds, same as car gears.
I have had bikes that did not have numbers, but at least had indicators giving you an approximation where you're at. I sometimes miss that on my road bike when I'm not sure if I should change the gear on the front or not. When you ride enough you get a feel for it, but again not everyone does that.
On a tangent, the popcorn button actually has a purpose on well-designed microwaves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Limpr1L8Pss