[HN Gopher] The benefits of "low tech" user interfaces
___________________________________________________________________
The benefits of "low tech" user interfaces
Author : marban
Score : 343 points
Date : 2022-05-25 09:21 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (uxdesign.cc)
(TXT) w3m dump (uxdesign.cc)
| resters wrote:
| In the case of cars, why can't the UX be a replaceable module so
| that third party options can be chosen?
| omega3 wrote:
| One only needs to look at how professionals operate to find
| already iterated to a close perfection user interfaces. Take a
| professional kitchen at a restaurant and compare it with a gadget
| filled home kitchen.
| tunap wrote:
| My dinosaur 5 Star Range cannot be beat. Despite the large
| knobs, it does everything I want it to do, how I want it done.
| No UX getting in the way to "assist" in deviating me from my
| intended settings.
| thfuran wrote:
| I work on software for professional use and while I'd never say
| our UX is near perfection, we do get a bunch of tickets if
| things change and some process starts taking an extra click or
| two. We're at least pressured to avoid UX regressions and
| needless changes.
| nicbou wrote:
| I had a similar experience with accounting software recently.
| The ugly software is built for someone entering 20 invoices in
| a row, and automates as much of it as it can. The shiny startup
| software was designed by a very skilled designer who never had
| to do accounting.
| dontbenebby wrote:
| Before I transferred to the University of Pittsburgh, I was
| pursuing a minor in graphic design. I could have taken one of the
| last darkroom photography courses offered at La Roche College,
| but chose to take a digital course since I had extensive
| experience in that area dating back to saving snaps on floppies
| at the Duquesne Multicultural Computer Academy in the City of
| Pittsburgh.
|
| 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.
| wiz21c wrote:
| Maybe it just costs less to build LED screen cars than those with
| knobs ?
| etiam wrote:
| Could well be, if nothing else in workforce competence.
|
| 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"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI3ojKxhy-4
| mateo1 wrote:
| Unfortunately that's true. These days it's just cheaper and
| easier to place everything on a screen rather than using
| anything physical. Imagine that voice recognition gets even
| better, then it would be even cheaper to have nothing but a
| speaker and a microphone. Touchscreens and capacitive buttons
| have a number of issues that physical controls don't, but
| (unfortunately?) they're usually cheaper, last longer and are
| much more convenient for the manufacturers so they're not going
| anywhere. Tactile feedback, a fixed spatial position and being
| "always on" are now luxuries.
| [deleted]
| twobitshifter wrote:
| One of the best low-tech interfaces is the honeywell round
| thermostat. Change the dial to point to the temperature you want
| and the internal indicator shows you the current temperature. All
| without requiring any transistors. Go shop for a thermostat, look
| at other options, and be amazed at how complex the layers of
| technology can make things.
| vel0city wrote:
| So how to I set my away temperature? How do I set the return
| temperature? How do I set the sleep temperature? How do I set
| the wake temperature?
|
| 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.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Turn it up and down when you come and go? In my opinion all
| those features are a catastrophe in that your body will end
| up being in your house at the wrong time or your clothing
| will be warmer or hotter than typical or your spouse will,
| and you will want to play with the temp anyways and end up
| fiddling with things to get it right. The learning
| thermostats try to solve this, but it's at great cost and
| complexity and experiences vary and habits change.
| vel0city wrote:
| > In my opinion all those features are a catastrophe in
| that your body will end up being in your house at the wrong
| time
|
| 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.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Curiously, for some people low-tech is not better. I.e. used to
| have an Amana RadarRange which had two knobs - one for power and
| one for time. You turned them until you saw what you wanted on
| the display.
|
| 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.
| natdempk wrote:
| Looking at the dial I feel like if you told them to move it to
| 1:30 or move it to the 30 past the 1, it would be pretty
| obvious? Wouldn't you have the same issue of having to convert
| 1:30 to 90 seconds with the other microwave design? I don't
| understand how the two are different.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| one you just type in the number. The other requires a
| knowledge of counting and ordinality etc. Is 90 seconds
| greater than 45 seconds? Is 9 bigger then 5?
| [deleted]
| WalterBright wrote:
| > such as silk-screened button labels becoming faint after
| extended use
|
| Becoming faint? On my Microsoft keyboard, the letters on the keys
| soon wore off completely. I had to re-learn touch typing.
| Aperocky wrote:
| imo a lot of benefit claimed are not 'low tech', they are just
| the natural result of simple > complex.
|
| The philosophy of simple > complex isn't low-tech or high-tech,
| it just is.
| incahoots wrote:
| Biggest offender are automakers. A giant touch screen that
| replaces physical knobs and switches is incredibly backwards
| thinking.
|
| 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.
| flashingleds wrote:
| It can go both ways of course. The first edition of Norman's
| classic 'design of everyday things' was 1988, and it's
| interesting to read that book today and see how a lot of the hard
| problems he was discussing were completely solved by the advent
| of touchscreen interfaces (specifically, the ability to
| reconfigure the interface according to what tasks are relevant at
| that moment). Done right, touchscreens are a huge boon for
| usability (I mean, look at what the iphone did). Done poorly
| they're a disaster, but that's been true forever with UI design
| regardless of the tools at hand.
|
| (I haven't read the revised edition (2013) of Norman's book, I
| guess he must address touchscreens)
| Frost1x wrote:
| >a lot of the hard problems he was discussing were completely
| solved by the advent of touchscreen interfaces (specifically,
| the ability to reconfigure the interface according to what
| tasks are relevant at that moment). Done right, touchscreens
| are a huge boon for usability (I mean, look at what the iphone
| did).
|
| 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
| blackhaz wrote:
| What are the examples of touchscreens done right besides the
| iPhone which is also on a UX downhill since, probably iPhone 4
| or 5 era?
|
| 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.
| samatman wrote:
| Watches, phones, tablets.
|
| 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.
| eimrine wrote:
| > touchscreens done right besides the iPhone
|
| 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.
| tablespoon wrote:
| IMHO, user interfaces generally are better the more buttons and
| knobs they have (scaled for compactness requirements). Obviously
| some thought must be put into those buttons and knobs, but I've
| _never_ personally ran into a UI that had _too many_.
| danans wrote:
| The Awair Element indoor air quality monitor has an interesting
| low-tech yet information dense physical display.
|
| 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.
| memorable wrote:
| Frick Medium again. Cannot find an archive for this one, so take
| a Scribe instead.
|
| https://archive.ph/YgElI
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Today I was running some errands in my car. The AC was too cold.
| Without taking my eyes off the road, I felt around for the
| temperature knob. My car has large, grippy knobs. It's an off-
| roading focused model and the knobs were made to be usable while
| driving on bumpy roads. I found the temperature knob, I figured
| where it was set with the easy-to-feel tactile indicator, and I
| adjusted it down, all without having to use my eyes. I love tech
| but never want to lose my big, rubbery AC knobs in the car.
| There's enough distracted drivers on the road to watch out for, I
| don't want to be another one.
| mLuby wrote:
| Are after-market retrofits replacing touch screens with low-tech
| controls possible?
| reacharavindh wrote:
| The place where I feel this the most is cars. I drove a Tesla
| Model 3 that belongs to a friend and had used a rented VW Golf
| mark 8. The touch screen and touch sensitive panels with haptic
| feedback were horrible. I now appreciate my VW Golf Mark 7 even
| more. It is glorious to have knobs, physical buttons, and levers
| for all things that needs to be controlled while driving. It's
| intuitive, and I can use them without looking at them(taking
| attention off of the road). I wish and hope that a modern car
| gets this "old fashioned" interface when I am in the market for a
| new car in a few years.
| bombcar wrote:
| Touchscreens look great on spec sheets and to those who buy
| them, not necessarily to those who have to use them.
|
| 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).
| glonq wrote:
| I spent the first several years of my career developing low-tech
| user interfaces for parking and payment kiosks that had little
| more than piezo buttons and HD44780-based text-only LCD's. It
| certainly helped me appreciate that for UX, sometimes "less is
| more".
| [deleted]
| cosmotic wrote:
| This article misses the point of software controls: The designs
| can be changed up until the release of the item, sometimes even
| after the release using post-sales software updates. This allows
| companies to be more agile. The lead time for physical controls
| and custom LCDs is months if not years and costs tens of
| thousands of dollars, where software can be updated in days with
| near-zero cost. Also, most humans are easily wooed by the glitzy
| animations during the pre-sales period and aren't cognizant of
| the problems they suffer later due to bad controls.
|
| Though the author did hit the nail on the head about tactility.
| vortico wrote:
| Reminded me of my favorite article.
| http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...
|
| 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!
| user_7832 wrote:
| Thanks for that article, it was a great read.
| forsythe_ wrote:
| Wow, excellent article. And it sent me down a deep rabbithole
| reading the rest of Bret's blog. Thank you.
| danybittel wrote:
| I think it's not only "low tech". The bigger issue I see, is that
| everything tries to be an Assistant.
|
| 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.
| eimrine wrote:
| > During the recent home device project I mentioned earlier, one
| of the biggest supporters of a touchscreen-based solution was the
| team's marketing specialist.
|
| Why am I not surprised?
| Gigachad wrote:
| I don't buy it tbh. Most home appliances are sufficiently
| complex that physical buttons are not intuitive. Ask someone to
| change the clock on their oven vs on their phone. Most could do
| it on the phone but not the oven. And there are countless more
| practical examples of this issue.
|
| 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.
| watwut wrote:
| The absurd part is the one where I have to set the clock on
| the oven in the first place
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Combining physical buttons for basic flow with a touch
| screen is the best of both imo
|
| 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.
| bandie91 wrote:
| > change the clock on their oven
|
| 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?
| danparsonson wrote:
| > Ask someone to change the clock on their oven vs on their
| phone. Most could do it on the phone but not the oven.
|
| 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.
| Gigachad wrote:
| For the coffee machine, it would be shitty UI if every
| function had a physical button. You don't need a dedicated
| button to run the descale cycle since you do it twice a
| year, but it's also a bit crap to have to pull out a manual
| to work out which order of buttons to press and for how
| long and what all the blinking lights mean. A touch screen
| executes this perfectly. It doesn't have to blink led 2 to
| tell you of an error, it can just show the error on the
| screen.
| danparsonson wrote:
| Yeah a hybrid setup can work well although the decision
| is not necessarily between lights and a touch screen - a
| non-touch display with navigation buttons is also
| perfectly reasonable.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| If one is going to go into the effort and cost to put an SoC
| onboard that can run a touchscreen, one should just have the
| device communicate with the touchscreen computer in your
| pocket instead.
|
| 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.
| Gigachad wrote:
| This does happen on a lot of devices. It's ok for stuff you
| expect to last a few years but anything longer and the app
| stops working before the device does.
|
| I have a bike gps which has some functions as a phone app
| but the phone app no longer works.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yeah, this is a potential downside but also an argument
| for open protocols and specifications for managing and
| controlling these kinds of devices.
| my69thaccount wrote:
| This is an awful idea in practice. For example, an update
| to my Anova precision cooker required I logged in with a
| Facebook account to continue using it.
| mro_name wrote:
| I came to write my official paper letters with vi :hardcopy in
| 70ies RFC typewriter style.
|
| Helps to focus on the content. That's exactly what marketing
| dreads.
| mro_name wrote:
| meanwhile found the template:
| https://darknet.mro.name/pub/brief-dina4.txt
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| I feel like a lot of people have forgotten that before the
| iPhone, touchscreens were widely regarded as a terrible interface
| only suitable for niche applications like kiosks. There were good
| reasons for that, and latency and lack of tactile feedback were
| high on the list. Touchscreens have proved effective in
| situations where you need a highly-flexible interface in a small
| space, but an awful lot of devices (like appliances) have more
| space and don't need the flexibility, so they end up taking all
| of the downsides with none of the benefits.
|
| 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.
| pcurve wrote:
| I agree.
|
| 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.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| Although I'm very much on the side of using more low-tech
| interfaces, it's important to remember that pre-iPhone
| touchscreens were a VERY different beast. Resistive
| touchscreens, in particular, were awful.
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| This is very true. Resistive touchscreens were slower, less
| reliable, and IIRC had coarser position sensing. Since we're
| talking about history, it's also worth noting that early
| opinions on touchscreens tended to assume they would be desk-
| mounted or wall-mounted, which leads to the gorilla arm
| problem.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have always been skeptical of many "new-fangled" interfaces,
| like touchscreens and HUDs.
|
| 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.
|
| [0] https://riftvalleysoftware.com/work/ios-apps/ambiamara/
| sfink wrote:
| This article strangely undersells the advantages of low tech.
| It's true that they're not better for everything, but they have
| advantages well beyond the basic things mentioned.
|
| 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I find it harder to accurately position a physical slider than
| a knob. The reason is pretty obvious once you realize which
| muscles are involved in each movement.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| Well, it depends on the length/circumference. Knobs are
| usually more satisfying to tune, but faders are not only as
| precise, but give better visual feedback and you can move
| multiple at once.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Oh, sliders do provide better visual feedback. But they are
| less imprecise because your gross motor muscles move your
| arm to move the slider, whereas a typical knob uses the
| fine control muscles in your hand.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Oh, it is actually worse.
|
| 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.
| allenu wrote:
| Or worse, those UI affordances may change over time. With the
| swipe down behavior you mentioned, on iOS, I used to just
| swipe down from the center of the top of the iPad to see the
| notification shade. A recent iOS behavior made it so swiping
| down from the center now causes the app window to be dragged.
| Ugh! Now I have to relearn to find a spot slightly to the
| right to pull down to view the shade.
| kingrazor wrote:
| I can't count how often my left or down swipe has been
| interpreted as a left or right swipe on touchscreens
| aimor wrote:
| I remember when my phone updated to Android 10 and soon after I
| received a call and, well, there's a video that shows pretty
| much exactly how things went:
|
| 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.
| tomtung wrote:
| So true. This is one reason why I really miss my Pebble watch
| with its physical buttons, which allowed me to perform a lot of
| operations by touch without looking (e.g.,
| play/pause/forward/rewind for media control). In comparison,
| fiddling with the small touch screen of my Fitbit Versa is such
| a poor user experience.
|
| 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.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Your post is really reassuring... I have all of these problems
| with touchscreens and find them almost unusable... yet I
| thought I was alone, because people seem to love them.
| picture wrote:
| I think it goes to show how people are surprisingly willing
| to settle for sub par experiences. Nearly everyone in the
| united states use terrible paper mate pens that scratch and
| skip, and use composition notebooks with cover that looks
| like tv static, made of center-stapled tissue paper that
| don't open flat.
|
| (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)
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I agree with you but in response to:
|
| _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".
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| That's a bad implementation. Implemented well, a radio volume
| dial allows for predictable fine- and coarse-grained control.
| All of my cars have had good volume knobs that respond
| instantly and predictably, but I'm not surprised that there
| are bad ones.
|
| 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.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Have you used the touchscreen in a 2000's-era Japanese car?
| It's horrific.
| marcus_cemes wrote:
| I guess the "digital but with physical buttons" is the
| middleground. It still gives the designers the ability to
| mess around with acceleration curves that amplify fast
| movements, or to not sample the value fast enough to get
| coherent digital readings. I don't understand why they do
| this. As a university engineering student, I have a great
| love for _linear_ systems, which usually is anything
| analogue. It makes everything easier.
|
| 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.
| sfink wrote:
| I agree! I could rant endlessly about all the bad physical
| interfaces I've used. My house is full of them. All the new
| appliances come with the flat buttons--are they capacitive or
| something?--they may or may not register when you press them,
| that often don't work when poked with a gloved elbow, etc.
| And dials like you describe that change random amounts or
| aren't debounced or whatever. There are probably more
| possible ways for physical things to go wrong than the small
| but common set of problems with touchscreens. It's more that
| they can go more right, too. (Or at least have their problems
| and benefits better matched to a task.)
| closeparen wrote:
| My 2017 Subaru has perfectly nice tactile controls for the
| radio, except that they're disabled when the car is in
| reverse.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| To anyone designing low-tech user interfaces: I'm all for
| something simple but please, oh please, use something with a
| better feedback than the membrane "keyboard" shown in the
| article. Membrane keys are the absolute shittiest piece of shit
| ever produced. I use three everyday: my safe has one. My
| projector's remote control and my LED strip light (I use a LED
| strip to give a "home cinema" feel to the room) has one. The one
| on the safe, thankfully, at least emits a "beep" every time a
| press registers. Doesn't make it great by any means but there's
| that. On the projector there's a delay between any press and the
| projector giving you any feedback, so you don't know if a press
| registered or not.
|
| 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.
| treis wrote:
| > On the projector there's a delay between any press and the
| projector giving you any feedback, so you don't know if a press
| registered or not.
|
| 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.
| joezydeco wrote:
| So your complaint isn't really about the membrane itself but
| the lack of haptic or other feedback that comes with a press.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jopsen wrote:
| Is "low tech" really cheaper?
|
| 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
| :)
| tremon wrote:
| Cheaper, how? Are we looking only at production cost, or total
| lifetime? How much energy does a button use over its lifetime,
| vs a checkbox on a LED screen?
| infinityio wrote:
| In this context, I'd imagine cheaper from an R&D +
| Manufacturing side. But equally this probably is the case -
| if adding a screen requires adding a much more powerful
| microcontroller to drive it, it probably adds a fair bit of
| cost
| Unbeliever69 wrote:
| I was one of the first few Ux designers for a large defense
| contractor that made data-link communication devices for the
| military. Prior to my arrival all the GUIs were done in Matlab.
| Think 80s VCR-level complexity. Needless to say, these GUIs were
| not well received by the boots-on-the-ground soldier that had to
| operate the equipment. Furthermore, they were a complete mystery
| to the top brass who funded these projects.
|
| 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.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wonder how it evolved over time, after you left.
|
| 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.
| orbit7 wrote:
| Interesting read, I certainly think there is a lot to be said for
| minimlism where a system can be controlled with physical
| controls/ buttons without an instruction manual, fancy screens
| and UI are often a complete overkill for a product. The Design of
| Everyday things is an essential read on these topics and
| generally a book I'd recommend to anyone working in tech or
| design.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > When a user interface can get away with only icons in place of
| words, a low-tech user interface can work particularly well.
|
| Icons just mean nobody can use it. Heaven help the poor user who
| loses the manual that has a chart to decode the icons.
| DoubleDerper wrote:
| A certain "smart" speaker company replaced their expensive
| device's single functional button with capacitive touch. The
| product is worse, now less accessible.
| outworlder wrote:
| The main advantage of the modern GUI is when you need to perform
| wildly different tasks on them. Physical controls may not be
| appropriate to every task. This was the pitch when Jobs unveiled
| the iPhone, and it makes sense.
|
| 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.
| igouy wrote:
| "solutionism"
|
| "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...
| layer8 wrote:
| I still wish smartphones had physical PgUp/PgDn buttons. Much
| easier on the thumbs when you do a lot of scrolling.
| is_true wrote:
| Maybe the volume button could be used for this
| layer8 wrote:
| That might be possible on Android. But dedicated buttons
| would be better, to avoid having modes, and because sometimes
| there are use cases where you want to use both functions
| (e.g. scrolling through playlists while trying songs with
| different volume levels).
|
| Electronic consumer devices like Minidisc players and PDAs
| used to often have a multitude of buttons to directly access
| all commonly used functions.
| nelgaard wrote:
| low tech can provide control and persistence.
|
| 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.
| analog31 wrote:
| A few days ago in these very pages, I dissed the UI of an
| oscilloscope. But using one yesterday, I realized an advantage: I
| could operate it with one hand while holding the probe with the
| other. Even software interfaces for instrumentation, that use the
| keyboard and mouse, are physically awkward and your computer has
| to be positioned just right.
|
| 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.
| eddieroger wrote:
| I have a 2017 Honda Civic. That particular model year, they
| chose to remove the volume knob for a capacitive little slider
| thing (in addition to the buttons on the wheel). The very next
| year, they put it back. Turns out it's pretty useful to be able
| to control the volume of your stereo without taking your eyes
| off the road when operating a car. They did a similar thing for
| the air controls, except they left some of them as actual knobs
| and buttons.
|
| Sometimes the old ways are better and have lasted so long for a
| reason.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Turns out it's pretty useful to be able to control the
| volume of your stereo without taking your eyes off the road
| when operating a car.
|
| 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.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| The volume knob is gone as early as the 2015 model, at least
| in the EX-L variant; but the steering wheel buttons are still
| there.
|
| 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.
| jupp0r wrote:
| My favorite example:
|
| Microwave controls. One dial for power and one dial for time is
| all you really need and much better than numpad controls.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I have an LG microwave with a simple touch strip on the front
| for setting the time and it's actually amazing. all the more
| complicated never used features are hidden behind the door and
| not seen until opened. The touch strip is ribbed and clever
| enough to start jumping ahead by whole minutes or more as you
| scroll.
| titzer wrote:
| I just started getting into embedded programming (Arduinos and
| Pi's) and one of the most exciting things is the possibility to
| make physical thing with custom buttons, toggles, and LEDs to do
| a thing. E.g. I prototyped a metronome (for practicing music)
| with an animated LED light bar (out of PVC pipe!) and pushbuttons
| to program it. Thing can be huge and _robust_ , like throw-
| against-the-wall robust. And I like that there are only so many
| buttons and they don't move!
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| As kid I obviously was thrilled by futuristic touchscreen stuff
| but now I can't help but hate that and want all the controls
| analog.
| etiam wrote:
| Does anybody have sources they want to share for getting
| components for classic interfaces like these today?
|
| 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).
| ntoskrnl wrote:
| Digikey and Mouser
| joshvm wrote:
| For hobbyists in the US, Sparkfun or Adafruit are a good start.
| Otherwise go to the big suppliers: Digikey, Farnell and Mouser.
| China (Aliexpress) supplies pretty much everything else. Many
| dropship on eBay and Amazon too, if you want convenience.
|
| 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.
| eucryphia wrote:
| It would make low budget SciFi movies look realistic too
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Depending on how the controls are organized and differentiated
| by size or shape, users might also be able to distinguish between
| and access the controls without needing to look at the user
| interface
|
| I'm reminded of the big red button almost everything in a machine
| shop has.
| acd wrote:
| Physical car buttons and knobs vs touch screens
| nicbou wrote:
| The most important lesson I learned in engineering school: define
| the problem _then_ look for a solution.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| > "A kitchen timer vs. my phone"
|
| 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...
| nicbou wrote:
| It's still nice to see the time left if you're cooking
| things.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >Most people have a solution in mind before they even look at
| the problem, and that solution is usually
|
| "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.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > My microwave has one knob for time, and one knob for
| intensity.
|
| 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.
| strix_varius wrote:
| I'm just curious what you cook in a microwave for 10
| _minutes_.
| danans wrote:
| Large thick skinned squashes with hard flesh like
| butternut, kabocha or spaghetti. Probably not on max heat,
| but on medium so they cook evenly.
| sfink wrote:
| >> My microwave has one knob for time, and one knob for
| intensity.
|
| > 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).
| nicbou wrote:
| I rarely need an exact amount of time. In fact I generally
| leave it with the door ajar and a few minutes on the timer.
|
| 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.
| arky527 wrote:
| Modern cars seem to be moving towards all controls on a touch
| screen somewhere. I suppose this allows for more frequent
| updates, but in my experience it just leads to more bugs and more
| painful factory updates.
|
| 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.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Yeah I hate this. Part of the reason I do not like the interior
| of all Tesla vehicles. I test drove one and asked the salesmen
| what happens if the screen breaks - he told me that it actually
| happened to his Tesla and that because of parts shortages it
| took months and months to get it fixed. When this happens all
| you can do is drive the car and open and close the windows
| essentially - no sunroof, no AC, nothing.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| I'm surprised that Tesla's cars even have window buttons.
| They've eliminated everything else.
| usa-name wrote:
| I think car manufacturers will ultimately move towards voice
| assistants for these sort of tasks.
| adwww wrote:
| Which is useless when you have regional non-us accents, or
| have the windows open, or a crying baby.
| _notathrowaway wrote:
| Thank you, voice recognition systems suck when you have an
| accent or too much background noise.
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| I hope they do that with non-cloud voice recognition
|
| 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.
| woopwoop wrote:
| My toyota Corolla has a touch screen for interacting with
| audio. It has the following delightful features:
|
| - 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.
| d136o wrote:
| Hah our Subaru does this where it defaults to playing the
| radio at some volume whenever you "boot up" the car. I've got
| no idea what station is selected as the boot up station but
| every time I turn on our car it plays static.
|
| How about no sound? How about defaulting to silence? Nope...
| SCNP wrote:
| This is another benefit of truly analog manual controls:
| Memory. Used to be your stereo volume knob was just at a
| certain level; when you turned it on it was at that level.
| Now they're all software controlled. At least some stereo
| equipment maintains this paradigm but I'm with you on the
| phone volume as it's dictated by your phone and the volume
| for one device could be drastically different than another.
| White_Wolf wrote:
| >>> "However the first thing that happens is it begins
| playing audio."
|
| 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.
| olyjohn wrote:
| This is what I used to do to torment my mom when I was a
| kid. Except with the physical knobs she had in her car (in
| the 80s), I could crank the volume without having to turn
| on the car.
| Arrath wrote:
| The wild variability in boot times for the entertainment
| center is what gets me. Sometimes, my bluetooth will start
| playing immediately, other times the car company's logo will
| grace the screen for a good 30 seconds before I can interact
| with it at all. There doesn't seem to be any relation to
| frequency of starting it up, time since the last drive, etc.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Running fsck. We're now in the era of low effort embedded
| systems. Just slap Linux on it and don't bother tuning for
| usability in non-desktop use cases.
| speedgoose wrote:
| I understand your critics against touchscreens and they are
| justified. Your car doesn't have a good touchscreen interface
| from what you say and also from my experience when I drove
| the corollas from the car pool. However it's not because many
| cars are bad that the technology is bad.
|
| A touchscreen from an 20 years old Archos MP3 player is
| extremely bad while an iPad Pro M1 is very good.
| CSSer wrote:
| I don't think it's really about the touchscreen. I think
| very few manufacturers, if any, are putting very much
| thought into this. Apple Carplay, for example, is just a
| jumbo, uber-simplified version of ipadOS/iOS. In my car it
| has a great, high resolution 10" touchscreen but a very
| lackluster experience. It's pretty damning if even Apple, a
| tech company at heart, is doing it poorly. It doesn't
| autoplay audio, store memory of what you were doing when
| last connected, or have any available preferences. "Car" is
| right there in the name but nowhere to be found in the
| experience based on everything drivers have expected from
| vehicles for the better part of a century.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Some tools are just not good for the job.
|
| 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.
| speedgoose wrote:
| Well, analog controls are not very good to control a gps
| map or browse a music collection.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Why do we need screens on everything when we have a
| phone? A mobile computing device.
| speedgoose wrote:
| The last gen Citroen Ami uses the phone. You can check
| how it looks.
| massysett wrote:
| I find that a round knob with a push-button click, when
| coupled with a non-touch screen, is far superior to
| swiping around on a touchscreen to browse a music
| collection.
| burnished wrote:
| I'm wondering if part of that is that the companies
| producing these awful interfaces don't see themselves as
| 'software' companies, so they put these things in but no
| one has the time or passion or interest to make it a
| better experience.
|
| 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.
| CSSer wrote:
| My VW Jetta has Apple Carplay and similar issues abound.
|
| > 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.
| elliottkember wrote:
| I did a car stereo design question during a job interview once.
| "Design your ideal car stereo" was the prompt. I said that all
| I wanted was a bluetooth button and a volume knob. They pressed
| me for details, and I said the volume knob needed to have a
| minimum and maximum threshold. I guess that worked, because I
| got the job.
|
| I ended up giving this exercise to a lot of candidates. About
| 30% said they would project the UI onto the windshield.
| rurp wrote:
| I actually test drove a car last year that projected the
| speedometer onto the windshield in an attempt to make it look
| like it was overlaying the road. It was terrible! Before even
| leaving the parking lot I clarified with the sales rep that
| this "feature" was optional, because there was no way I was
| buying a car with it.
| ratww wrote:
| I really wonder if the possibility of updates alone can make
| software worse. Because you don't have to "get it right" on the
| first try. And the updates always contain something more than
| bug and security fixes, which often help keeping the quality of
| the experience low, despite fixed bugs.
|
| 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.
| SCNP wrote:
| I purposely NEVER connect smart TVs to the internet for this
| reason. I'd like to get a "dumb" TV but the ones in the sizes
| I'd like are prohibitively expensive.
| dmckeon wrote:
| > patches became somewhat slower after update.
|
| 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?
| ratww wrote:
| In this specific case I think it was just incompetence, but
| at the same time, one of the selling points of the device
| was "lasting longer" because it was able to receive
| updates.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| Not to mention that corporates have incentives to downgrade
| the devices the older it gets.
| corrral wrote:
| > I really wonder if the possibility of updates alone can
| make software worse.
|
| 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.
| dontcare007 wrote:
| "Fail fast" in action, to the detriment of drivers
| everywhere.
| gigaflop wrote:
| Many modern AAA titles have day-one patches, and with some
| games pivoting to a 'Live Services' model, additional
| content is often put on an arbitrary 'roadmap'.
|
| 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.
| CliffyA wrote:
| I agree with what you are saying, except that "I AM ERROR"
| isn't actually a bug. The character is intentionally named
| that in Zelda II, even in the original Japanese.
| corrral wrote:
| Huh, TIL. I even had the game back in the day, and had no
| idea that wasn't an actual oversight.
| fzzzy wrote:
| Programmer joke. See my sibling comment to yours.
| fzzzy wrote:
| And "Bagu" is mistranslated; his name is supposed to be
| "Bug".
| sanitycheck wrote:
| Yes. It'll have more bugs to begin with because the software
| team has no hard deadline to meet. Then it'll accumulate more
| bugs over time as "features" are added (while existing bugs
| are ignored). Then after 2-4 years nobody will be working on
| it any more and within 6-8 years it may no longer function at
| all or it may have well known never-to-be-patched security
| holes.
|
| I try to avoid buying tech that can be updated, and tech that
| can connect to the internet in general.
| Animats wrote:
| Screens are not the real issue. The real issue is whether you
| have to look at it to set it.
|
| 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.
| h3mb3 wrote:
| I also imagine this trend is bad from the ergonomics / RSI
| perspective. For generations, we've been using various kinds of
| per-appliance controls, with various shapes, sizes and
| stiffnesses. Since the past 10 years almost all of them have
| been replaced by a flat piece of glass. People are increasingly
| doing only a couple of motions with their hands throughout the
| day without any variety (tap/drag without any tactile
| feedback).
| meristem wrote:
| I recall a Car Talk episode many years ago where the
| discussion about BMW's big knob for multiple functions was
| filled with negative statements. Tactile feedback and
| navigation were issues.
| bombela wrote:
| I have a 20y old BMW with the idrive knob. I find it
| excellent. This is because the knob contains a motor to
| simulate various detent and other virtual stops. So you
| actually have a really fine tactile feedback. You can
| navigate menus without looking the screen.
|
| It can act as a spring, a rotary encoder, a joystick, small
| detent, big detent, etc.
| rambambram wrote:
| Agree! The fine sensitive movements of fingers (or better,
| lack of movement) that are required by touch screens can
| become very annoying. No possibility to rest your finger on a
| button. Accidentally touching somewhere else in the UI. Et
| cetera. These kinds of things are small, but add up pretty
| quickly in a world getting filled with capacitive touch
| screens.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I wonder if there's a list somewhere of "dumb things you need
| to check when looking into a new car"? Most of these issues are
| things that are hard to notice ahead of time or during a test
| drive so it's kind of extra worrying to me.
| izacus wrote:
| > I suppose this allows for more frequent updates, but in my
| experience it just leads to more bugs and more painful factory
| updates.
|
| 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.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| They get the cost of a costly user experience, which isn't
| nothing.
| lostgame wrote:
| >> 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.
| basisword wrote:
| >> 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.
|
| 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.
| m463 wrote:
| I always hope these kinds of situations would lead to a
| market opportunity for someone to come in and do it right...
| but it rarely does.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I think what really is needed is for these displays and
| interfaces to be replaceable like old car stereo decks.
| astrange wrote:
| The display in my car is a double DIN stereo that just
| happens to have a display on the front and a USB port.
| You might still be able to replace it.
|
| It does take way too long to boot up.
| m463 wrote:
| Speaking of car stereos, I've always thought they should
| be rack mount and then they went away completely.
|
| 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.
| Spivak wrote:
| You can't create a market opportunity for something without
| it being a differentiating feature.
|
| 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.
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| Funny you should mention the Honda Civic...
|
| 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.
| Spivak wrote:
| Right but that's a different market force! Customer
| feedback is really effective at redressing provably bad
| UX but it's a lot harder for that same change to happen
| in response to a competing manufacturer because in
| aggregate such a small thing isn't enough to get someone
| to switch away from Honda entirely.
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| I mean, it's the driving cause behind me selling the car
| and moving to a VW...
| zepearl wrote:
| > _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._
|
| 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.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _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_
|
| 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.
| StillBored wrote:
| The US backup camera fiasco was informative, because IIRC
| one of the domestic auto manufactures testified it was
| going to add $800 or some such to the price of a car
| (can't find a link about it). Which back then was still
| like 3x or so the cost of an aftermarket system. The law
| passed anyway, and for years its remained a high priced
| option, until there were lawsuits about the feds failing
| to enforce the law and require all cars to have them.
| There are various links on the web about how even the
| NHTSA estimated it would be ~$40 added to the price of a
| new car, something many found high considering the costs
| of the cameras and how many cars already had LCDs that
| could be repurposed.
|
| Although I suspect the addition of backup cameras has
| given automakers excuses when it comes to rear
| visibility.
| undefinedzero wrote:
| _More_ bugs definitely, but car manufacturers put so much
| effort into QA for the essential features that they really just
| short on never are released broken.
|
| 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.
| agent008t wrote:
| A 3+ year old car still working as intended is an extremely
| low bar for a car.
|
| 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.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > The great benefit of a touch screen is unlimited update
| capabilities
|
| 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.
| Joeri wrote:
| _I still prefer buttons for the tactile feel and feedback,
| but the downsides you listed are pretty much made up._
|
| 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.
| arky527 wrote:
| > _Changing the temperature while driving on a good touch
| interface is trivial and incredibly far from incredibly
| dangerous_
|
| 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.
| usrn wrote:
| Changing the temperature on a touch screen will _always_ suck
| even the UI is completely modeless (imagine that!) On my car
| I can just press my hand against the console without looking
| and feel around for the controls. You _can not_ do this with
| a touch screen no matter how good the interface is.
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| I also find that many of these touchscreens are designed with
| California in mind. Sure, touchscreens are great when it's
| sunny and 22C. But when it's -25 and the car feels like a
| freezer, the touchscreen is sluggish and won't accepted
| gloved inputs, I start swearing and think about selling the
| car.
| ridgered4 wrote:
| A buddy of mine said the touchscreen on his Chevy Cruz (I
| believe) didn't even work in the winter until the car was
| warmed up.
| dontcare007 wrote:
| License agreement screens to use a vehicle you have purchased.
| I despair that our profession has brought this to fruition.
| Plus, 'features' locked behind pay walls. Crazy town.
| wrycoder wrote:
| And agree to accept the nag screen before the car will start.
|
| Soon:
|
| "You need to return the call from your mom before the car
| will start for home." Etc.
| CoryAlexMartin wrote:
| I'm thinking some manufacturers might be catching on to the
| downsides of touchscreen controls. I did a test drive of the
| previous generation Honda Civic, and it had touchscreen climate
| controls. I wound up getting a 2022 Honda Civic which has
| physical dials for all climate controls.
|
| 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
| antisthenes wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| CoryAlexMartin wrote:
| Regardless of how bad it is, it's a step up from
| touchscreen interfaces, which means it actually is
| acceptable by modern vehicle standards.
|
| But I agree that by objective standards, it's unacceptable.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| Agreed. I feel people should start replacing touchscreens with
| physical buttons/dials with small LED screens on them --- their
| functions and behaviours can be programmed to change on demand
| while retaining tactile feedbacks.
| d3sandoval wrote:
| We have a PHEV from Chevy (the Volt) and it has the best
| dashboard ever. Knobs for the stuff you want (A/C, Volume,
| Skip, etc.) And touchscreen for the stuff you don't (GPS,
| Apple/Android Auto, etc.)
| rstupek wrote:
| Teslas have the same knobs and buttons (A/C, volume, skip,
| pause resume) on the steering wheel
| martin_a wrote:
| > using a touchscreen to adjust the temperature while driving
|
| 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 21degC since two years, never felt the need to change it.
| hnbad wrote:
| Multiple times a year, mostly in late spring and autumn, and
| that's infrequent compared to some people I know.
|
| 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).
| kingrazor wrote:
| Constantly.
| bombela wrote:
| Probably because you have an expensive enough car, that
| actually does a good job at regulating the cabine
| temperature.
|
| 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.
| 99_00 wrote:
| >Modern cars seem to be moving towards all controls on a touch
| screen somewhere
|
| 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.
| 30944836 wrote:
| >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.
|
| 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.
| corrral wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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).
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| In my opinion all voice interfaces I have used (with the
| exception of very especialized software like Dragon Naturally
| Speaking) seem to have terrible locale settings for anything
| other than American English.
|
| 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.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| As someone who has a physical condition that makes speaking
| sometimes very unpleasant, the _last_ thing I want in my car
| is a voice-only interface.
|
| Also, cue the skit about the thick scottish-accented guy
| trying to activate a voice-activated elevator...
|
| Buttons, please. And only buttons.
| me_smith wrote:
| Had to look up the skit. Thank you for the laugh.
|
| The link for those wishing to watch and skip a google
| search:
|
| https://youtu.be/NMS2VnDveP8
| Miraste wrote:
| I haven't used Tesla's implementation, but I've suffered
| through Android Auto's voice controls. I've never had to
| retry a physical button four times because it needs a hearing
| aid.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| I've never used a voice recognition app that can tell what
| I'm saying and I'm a native English speaker. I'm not about to
| start speaking differently to make an app happy
| nvrspyx wrote:
| I don't think it's as prevalent as you think. My partner's
| car interface is almost all touch, including the temperature
| controls, but there's no voice interface. Luckily, my vehicle
| has no touch interfaces at all and everything is much more
| reliable than their's, not even including the time when half
| their screen stopped responding to touch.
| 0x0203 wrote:
| > voice interface that can reliably understand commands for
| temperature changes.
|
| 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.
| 30944836 wrote:
| >So what exactly is the benefit of moving to touch screens
| / voice control?
|
| 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.
| nkrisc wrote:
| The touch screens are the only thing keeping me on dino juice
| cars. I want to go electric, but they all have these awful
| touchscreens! I don't want to navigate a menu to change the
| temperature or turn on a seat warmer.
|
| 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.
| potatochup wrote:
| My chevy bolt is a nice mix I find. It has physical buttons
| for: climate controls, cruise control, media volume, media
| channel, lane keep assist, sport mode, gear selection, park
| brake. There are also voice commands, which I use for
| selecting navigation destinations.
|
| 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)
| wcfields wrote:
| I fully agree, the 2019-2021 Bolt [1] has been my gold
| standard for the right combo of touch and tactile. Climate
| and radio preset buttons fully separate and easy to
| see/touch.
|
| 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-...
| jrussino wrote:
| Wow, I'm jealous of the control panel in your first link.
| In contrast, my 2014 Chevy Volt-with-a-"V" has an
| absolutely aweful interface. It's a combination of small,
| laggy touchscreen and a bunch of also-laggy, haphazardly-
| arranged touch-sensitive buttons:
|
| https://www.automotiveaddicts.com/25445/2012-chevrolet-
| volt-...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x73W4jZpkf0
| rob74 wrote:
| I think that's true only as long as the only electric cars
| you have driven are Teslas. The BMW i3 has pretty much
| resisted this tendency. Ok, it's already a pretty old design
| at this point and getting phased out, but it has lots of
| physical buttons (even for the seat warmer!). And I don't
| think electric cars that are variants of existing petrol cars
| (which are more and more common) will eliminate the physical
| controls just because they put an electric engine into the
| car. Or, otherwise said: if you buy an electric car from a
| tech company (or somebody trying too hard to emulate them),
| you get a touchscreen. If you buy an electric car from a car
| company, you get physical controls...
| tomxor wrote:
| Made me check that one out, it's actually not an insane
| price, it competes with most new normal-person petrol
| cars... I mean I still wouldn't buy one new, and that's
| still a bit of a dodgy range, but maybe in ten years there
| will finally be an affordable 2nd hand market and some
| infra to make it reliable. In the mean time I will continue
| to run my petrol car into the ground like a good holistic
| environmentalist.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| Would anyone trust a 2nd hand market for an EV when the
| battery is basically guaranteed to be dead long before
| more affordable ICE vehicles?
| tomxor wrote:
| It's a good point, a 2nd hand market assumes the
| availability of a cost effective battery replacement or
| serious maintenance scheme... it's not exactly on the
| same scale as a cam belt change which is the common todo
| upon acquiring a 2nd hand petrol car.
|
| 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.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > 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.
| speedgoose wrote:
| The old EVs used market is dynamic in Norway.
| digisign wrote:
| They are replaceable, are they not?
| franga2000 wrote:
| I regularly drive a variety of electric cars (renault,
| smart, bmw, ford, VW) and besides the Smart For* series,
| which is cost-down so much that it doesn't even have a
| touchscreen, all of the cars have at least one feature
| available exclusively through the touchscreen. One of the
| most infuriating is Reanult's ZOE, which has really good
| physical controls for absolutely everything, except volume.
| That's the one not-driving-related thing I need to be able
| to adjust while moving! Even the 2008 Scenic dinosaur-
| burner that I stupidly bought during the pandemic has
| better controls than that...
| pnw wrote:
| The Tesla Model S has a physical volume control on the
| steering wheel. I'm not sure about the other Tesla
| models.
| speedgoose wrote:
| The Model 3 and the Model Y has one two. I would expect
| the Model X to have one as well. I'm not sure about the
| old roadster but the lotus interior was not high tech.
| olyjohn wrote:
| The Lotus interior was one of the most glorious interiors
| of all time. Simple, light and somehow it was so
| ergonomic, you can road trip in it and not get sore and
| tired. A true driver-centric design.
| sfink wrote:
| Musk created a battery tech company and used it to power
| giant cellphones on wheels.
|
| I don't want to drive--or negotiate with AI to drive--a
| giant cellphone on wheels.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| > If you buy an electric car from a car company, you get
| physical controls...
|
| Not sure I agree with that. Even Porsche are doing touch
| screens, unfortunately.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Some korean brand was moving to physical buttons again, but I
| can't find which.
| kube-system wrote:
| Hyundai/Kia have had some horrible interfaces lately.
|
| https://youtu.be/EREg2XtohTg?t=7m
| tomtheelder wrote:
| My 2022 Kona EV has an amazing, mostly physical button
| based interface fwiw.
| sosull wrote:
| I think Honda have returned to at least partial physical
| controls for heating, air, and music for the Honda e. But
| it still has a lot of screen.
| thfuran wrote:
| Backup cameras are legally mandated on new us vehicles.
| The screens are not going anywhere so they're going to
| get used for other stuff too.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I don't mind a small screen that isn't involved in common
| cabin features.
|
| 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.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| My backup camera screen is embedded in my reear view
| mirror. You wouldn't know when it's not on. Sure, it's
| small, but sufficient, considering it's not a replacement
| for mirrors and area awareness.
| zwirbl wrote:
| I guess it was Mazda, so Japanese instead of Korean
| https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-
| pur...
|
| Though I don't know if they followed through
| frxx wrote:
| As far as I know they're sticking to it.
| neogodless wrote:
| https://www.autoguide.com/manufacturer/mazda/2022-mazda-
| cx-5...
|
| > 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...
| meristem wrote:
| Between 2019 and 2022 Mazda improved the truly atrocious
| latency linked to screen operations. All operations are
| physical, but you still need menus to find what you want.
| The latency was quite impressive. The 2022 has less
| latency and seemingly different menu trees to go with the
| ultrawide ( but narrow height) screen.
|
| HVAC is screen-independent. So is volume, thankfully.
| baobob wrote:
| Luckily the tide seems to be turning:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/23/opinion/touch-screens-
| car...
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Luckily the tide seems to be turning:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/23/opinion/touch-screens-
| car...
|
| 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.
| _jal wrote:
| > we, the consumers, will continue to buy them.
|
| 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.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > As far as I'm concerned, keep your butt warmers and
| solenoid-driven seat adjustment
|
| My car has these things, controlled by physical buttons
| and knobs. They're nice features and they don't require a
| touchscreen to use.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| ' I'm buying used and IC, because I will not have a touch
| screen'
|
| 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.
| _jal wrote:
| Of course it is a solution. I end up with a car that
| doesn't have a touch screen.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> 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.
| _jal wrote:
| And my point is, humans wear out. They stop driving cars
| and eventually die.
|
| There is a reasonable chance I won't buy another vehicle,
| so I don't care what the rest of the market does.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > 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?
| _jal wrote:
| Why do you feel the need to play conversation-cop?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Why do you feel the need to play conversation-cop?
|
| 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.
| _jal wrote:
| I suppose you now know better than to waste your time
| talking to me in the future, then.
| musesum wrote:
| This! Was fiddling with a Tesla touch screen to do
| something basic. During those few seconds, autopilot
| decided to steer me off the road - with no shoulder - at 80
| MPH (it was during a sunset). Fortunately, I caught it in
| time.
|
| 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.
| digitallyfree wrote:
| Speaking of Teslas, the SpaceX spacecraft also use touch
| screens heavily in the cockpit (maybe it's just something
| the company prefers) and only have a very small button
| panel. This is in comparison to the large array of
| controls normally seen on most aircraft and spacecraft.
| Obviously they state that the technology is well tested
| and that the astronauts train a lot with them, but in my
| mind you simply won't have the muscle memory and response
| you can get with a tactile interface.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Astronauts are passengers though. There is very little
| they can do to control their spacecraft during launch, as
| the flight path is complex and cannot really be flown
| manually. Rockets have always been this way, it's just
| that before they had no choice but to put everything on
| toggle switches.
| foobarian wrote:
| Nit: oil formed way before dinosaurs from simple marine
| organisms.
| nkrisc wrote:
| You mean "dino juice" isn't the scientific term?
| typon wrote:
| How come we find it underground then?
| t-3 wrote:
| Geography and sea levels have changed over the course of
| Earth's history. Perhaps you've heard of things like
| Pangaea, or found fossils while digging in the dirt as a
| child? Many areas now inhabited were below oceans at
| points in the past billions of years.
| hnbad wrote:
| Is this a sincere question? If so: "underground" was
| "above ground" (or sea floor in this case) at the time.
| Additional layers formed and became the new "ground".
| Tectonic shifts moved places up or down (or on top of
| eachother), canals were formed or drained, water
| evaporated or froze, and so on.
|
| 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...
| akeck wrote:
| I believe Mazda has a policy of no touchscreens in their
| vehicles.
| malfist wrote:
| They have touch screens, but it's minimal, pretty much only
| usable in the GPS view.
|
| 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.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| The new Mazdas have no touchscreen and in my opinion it's
| worse.
|
| 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.
| izacus wrote:
| I found no serious issues using Android Auto with my
| Mazda, what kind of things are you doing during your
| drive that are so impossible to do with the rotary
| controller?
|
| 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).
| tanjtanjtanj wrote:
| The 3 2021 Mazda models I test drove had no touch screens
| at all, I believe they included an option between the two
| for a couple years but have now phased out the touch
| screen.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Funny you say that, because a 2018 Mazda3 is what I
| currently drive. It has a screen, a small one, and every
| common cabin control is still a physical button. The only
| exception is the radio, which is software, but can be
| controlled with a knob. But I just leave the radio on the
| same station always so it's not a problem for me.
| jws wrote:
| For a Tesla at least, you can use voice commands for the
| common functions and keep both hands on the wheel.
|
| That said, people I know have a strange resistance to using
| voice commands with their cars and phones.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Also, what if you have the windows open or the roof down?
| Or what if you're using your radio the way it was intended
| to be used?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Two reasons to resist using voice commands
|
| 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]
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8
| malfist wrote:
| Because voice commands have insane latency, require you to
| memorize a certain syntax, and hope the computer processing
| your audio understands you.
|
| 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.
| olyjohn wrote:
| In the US, all cars will have screens now of one sort or
| another. Laws were passed requiring the installation of
| backup cameras in all cars. So, you will never see a new car
| that doesn't come with a screen of some sort. And if it's
| going to be required to have a screen, they're not going to
| make it a single use only for backup cameras.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree with you in general, I do
| think we're going to continue to see touch screens
| dominate, but I thought I'd point out a significant outlier
| to anyone who like the OP doesn't like touch screens: The
| Mazda 3.
|
| 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.
| LocalH wrote:
| This is where I think regulation works, to a degree. Most
| states in the US already ban using handheld devices in a non-
| hands free capacity (which excludes almost every usage except
| for navigation and voice-activated messaging and calling), and
| this should also apply to auto manufacturers with regards to
| touchscreens in cars. The liability would rest with the
| manufacturers, since they are the ones installing the touch
| screens and requiring drivers use them.
| wgx wrote:
| Totally agree. Despite the move to touchscreens in cars over
| the years - they're acually terrible for usability and safety.
| The lack of tactile feedback and the fact that buttons can move
| position and appearance from app-to-app means that they require
| much more cognitive load than physical buttons.
|
| 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...
| gompertz wrote:
| Cadillac driver here (2021 model). I believe it's one of the
| very few new vehicles that have a physical button for every
| feature. Granted there is a lot of buttons, it's very nice you
| don't even have to use the touchscreen ever if you don't want.
| I theorize this could be due to the age demographic of majority
| of their buyers, that they have retained all physical buttons.
| corrral wrote:
| IMO the UI preferences of people (yeah, often older people)
| who are bad with technology are often the best for _most
| folks_ --the rest of us have just learned to work through the
| pain of other interfaces, rather than demanding better. Most
| of the stuff they don't like slows down or confuses me, too,
| it's just not a show-stopper because I know how to get past
| it.
| StillBored wrote:
| Its not just touch screens vs physical controls. Far to many of
| the recent cars with buttons are designed by people who
| apparently never drove the automobile in question. For example,
| AC fan controls were in the past simple sliders, or knobs, you
| could crank it to max when one enters a hot car, then put it at
| the 25% (or whatever speed) without taking your eyes off the
| road, in a matter of a fraction of a second placing, what was
| usually a unique control, in a particular position.
|
| 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.
| zippergz wrote:
| I don't consider more frequent updates to be a good thing,
| either. Yes, of course, I want things to be fixed if they're
| broken. But when automakers take the route of smartphone apps,
| where they're updating once a month or more, changing UI,
| moving things around, adding unnecessary features, it's really
| not what I want in a car. I don't want touch screen control at
| all, but if I must have it, I REALLY want the UI to stay the
| same and the controls to stay in the same place. I don't want
| some random over the air update to be able to break what little
| muscle memory I might have built up to use the touch screen
| interface effectively.
| causi wrote:
| It seems that Star Trek was incredibly prescient when they
| depicted literally every interface as a touchscreen.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| And the reason of course, was because it was super cheap and
| easy to modify.
|
| In the 32nd century, tho, they use programmable matter
| because people like tactile feedback, it turns out.
| Syonyk wrote:
| It's more the case that Star Trek's lack of budget has driven
| the modern world in that direction, because that was clearly
| "the future."
|
| 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._
| Izkata wrote:
| Well, TNG-era and afterwards at least. The original series
| was all knobs and buttons.
|
| (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.)
| waynesonfire wrote:
| It's a cost cutting strategy and it sucks. A screen and
| software is cheap at scale.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I have grown to heavily dislike the whole smartify everything.
|
| 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.
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| 4th (last) gen fighter jets have "MFDs", or multi function
| displays. They're similar to ATMs, there is a set of buttons
| (usually 20) around the display that are assigned to
| different things based on context. They display stuff like:
| Radar contacts A map Received radar signals (e.g. From an
| enemy aircraft) A infrared image from a targeting pod
| Armament status Etc
|
| 4.5th and 5th gen aircraft are touchscreen though, with full
| tiling window managers. They're still highly classified, so
| we're unlikely to get any more info on them until the 6th gen
| in the 2030s.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| > Flatness in phones works because we can use our full
| attention
|
| 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.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I've heard Teslas described as "iPads with Wheels".
| meristem wrote:
| And an iPhone as a computer that can also make calls.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Who makes calls anymore?
| amelius wrote:
| All the laser printers I have used have a low-tech user
| interface, with an LCD screen and a bunch of buttons. The problem
| is that the buttons that the user can press (the "active"
| buttons) are dependent on context. Imho it would be much better
| if laser printers had a smartphone-style interface (touchscreen).
|
| Same for office phones (which have a plethora of buttons e.g. for
| conference calls that are not useful in many contexts).
| nicbou wrote:
| I used a few office printers with touch screens, and they were
| much better.
| infinityio wrote:
| Maybe that's the distinction - if you are making a product that
| needs to do exactly one thing (or category of things), it
| should not have a touchscreen, it should have a button and a
| dial (eg toaster, oven, hob, clock). If you cannot map all
| common uses of the product to a single button press and instead
| rely on context, a touchscreen might be the better option
| tiffanyh wrote:
| I use to have a 2006 Saab. I LOVED how it had mechanical buttons
| for everything on the dash.
|
| 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.
| michaelrpeskin wrote:
| I still daily drive a Classic 900 (1987) and not only is
| everything a real button or knob, but it's all controlled by
| vacuum, not electronics. It's fun to hear the hisses when you
| change the vent settings.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Re: vent
|
| 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.
| michaelrpeskin wrote:
| Yes, it goes from "0" at the bottom to defrost at the top
| and every step in between makes perfect sense. Just twist
| the knob and it works. No thinking.
| motohagiography wrote:
| The comment about the marketing person saying users would feel
| like the lower-tech UX was archaic was interesting because of the
| insight it implied.
|
| 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.
| lucidguppy wrote:
| Humane Interface by J. Raskin had some interesting points about
| how to make low tech interfaces.
|
| 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.
| ratww wrote:
| That's a great point about "modes".
|
| 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.
| couchand wrote:
| That's a great point about looking to music equipment for UX
| ideas. If you want to see what happens when a design team
| puts serious effort into building a satisfying and effective
| interface, look at electronic music devices.
| bombcar wrote:
| Those mixer boards you see are horribly complicated, but
| with the thousands of knobs and buttons most anyone can
| figure out how to mute a microphone in a few minutes or
| less.
|
| 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.
| ratww wrote:
| Good points. Some mechanical version can also change the
| buttons, faders and knobs positions to presets when they
| have automation circuits, this has been a thing since the
| late 70s. So you get the best of both worlds.
|
| 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.
| jccooper wrote:
| While great in the hands of a competent designer, the "low-
| tech" interface gets a bad rap because it easily becomes a maze
| of inscrutable modes and dual- or triple-use buttons in the
| hands of a careless designer.
| h3mb3 wrote:
| Reminds me of modern stoves. All of them have touch controls
| which means every time a friend of mine is presenting me their
| new kitchen, I have no idea how to use the stove. They always say
| "No, no, it's really easy to get used to" but it's still
| frustrating because the touch controls never bring any new
| features to the table. They are just knobs abstracted into
| separated buttons and sliders, of which the latter you are not
| quite sure if you should drag them or just point to the wanted
| value. With a physical knob, the intuition of the laws of physics
| tells you how the knob can be turned.
|
| 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.
| duxup wrote:
| I'm remodeling my kitchen, all my appliances (except the
| microwave) has nice big knobs on them, big display on the oven
| to show the results.
|
| 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 ...
| christophilus wrote:
| Having had one of these, I just want to say: "Never again."
| Mine would turn itself on when you washed it and turn itself
| off when something splattered (like 50% of the time when I
| boiled water).
|
| It made me wonder if anyone actually tested the damn design
| before approval for mass production.
| alxlaz wrote:
| These ideas aren't born in the actual product design teams,
| where "don't put touch control near things that get hot" or
| "no unprotected touch controls on surfaces where spilling can
| occur" are not concepts that need to be explained. The way
| this usually happens is that product management hands down
| the requirement from down top, either on their own or after
| contracting some expensive industrial design agency (i.e. a
| mixed team of engineering and art majors who never had to
| sell, service and _especially_ provide tech support for, any
| of the products whose outside they designed) to help
| "refresh" their product line.
|
| 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.
| synu wrote:
| I get that it's better for the producers if everyone agrees
| to make throwaway appliances that need to be replaced every
| couple years, but how do they prevent someone from entering
| the market and selling high quality equipment that lasts?
| They would have fewer repeat sales, but more of the market
| share presumably.
| alxlaz wrote:
| It's a combination of factors but the gist of it is that
| they're not preventing anyone from doing it -- nobody
| wants to do it because they can't justify it.
|
| 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.
| tobr wrote:
| Often they're also too damn close to the heating elements, so
| you risk burning your fingers when you operate them.
| zikzak wrote:
| And this heat degrades the component. And it is almost
| never worth replacing a control board over buying new.
| There is, of course, no hidden agenda.
| sshlocalhost98 wrote:
| Haha that's true! I am an electrical engineering student, if
| I have to guess it may be due to random electric charges,
| probably grounding was not done properly.
| jraph wrote:
| I know nothing about electricity but water always seems to
| confuse those hotplates... or laptop's touchpads FWIW. (how
| do I know??)
| LaputanMachine wrote:
| I think this is a safety function. You may not be able to
| turn off the stove yourself if something boils over, and the
| buttons get covered in hot liquid.
| paganel wrote:
| I used to always have some kitchen rags around for exactly
| that type of situation, in fact I still have one that I've
| purchased from Ikea. I just wrap my hand/fingers with said
| rag and manipulate that button accordingly (or get a hot
| dish from the stove itself etc).
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| Sounds like these stoves could use an "oh shit" / "Big Red
| Button" that's easily accessible when this happens.
| corobo wrote:
| Is there not the switch on the mains where you are? In
| the UK we have a quick-off* toggle switch for electric
| ovens. Usually near the oven but could be elsewhere in a
| bigger kitchen
|
| 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
| Macha wrote:
| I have a isolation switches near my oven (and also for my
| fridge, and a combined one for my washing machine and
| dryer) here in Ireland, which I believe are required on
| new or newly renovated properties by planning laws, but
| there's nothing asymmetric about the force required, it's
| just a relatively stiff switch whether turning on or off.
| corobo wrote:
| It's possible that the resistance part isn't even a thing
|
| 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
| ryukafalz wrote:
| I've never seen this here in the US. Sounds like a good
| idea!
| ridgered4 wrote:
| Seems like a poor safety feature to have it also turn on
| when you're cleaning.
|
| 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.
| LaputanMachine wrote:
| > Seems like a poor safety feature to have it also turn
| on when you're cleaning.
|
| 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.
| tpmx wrote:
| http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20211230000501
|
| _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._
| gonzo41 wrote:
| In my house, my electric stove has a master isolation switch
| for exactly this purpose.
| brozaman wrote:
| On the other hand they are extremely easy to clean. Just get
| some cloth and ceramic stove cleaner and you're good to go.
|
| 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.
| sethammons wrote:
| Every stove knob I've ever interacted with easily pulls /
| slides off its peg and can be hand washed if it gets too
| dirty. Changing a lightbulb is an order of magnitude
| harder.
| matwood wrote:
| Yeah...when cleaning I take off the knobs and soak them
| while cleaning the rest of the top. Then finish by hand
| washing the knobs and then putting it all back together.
|
| The other thing is you can buy new knobs which can
| update/change/refresh the look of an older cooktop.
| corobo wrote:
| I just used to bash them in the dishwasher with
| everything else
|
| 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
| [deleted]
| pawelk wrote:
| My oven has touch controls on the front that are rendered
| useless as soon as I open it and heat/vapor is released onto
| the front panel. Luckily the touch interface is only for
| secondary features like setting timers, the important ones -
| temperature and mode selection - are physical knobs that can
| be pushed in flush with the front.
|
| From my limited experience with touch operated stoves - these
| would be just as reliably operated by randomly throwing darts
| at a board.
| Macha wrote:
| Also home appliances love to use icons without any seeming
| standardisation. On one oven, the fan icon means fan assisted
| cooking and is basically the one you want 90% of the time, and
| then on another it means turn the fan on without applying heat.
| Also various half open rectangles with squiggly lines which may
| or may not have anything to do with grill modes depending on
| your specoific oven.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| As I've gotten older I've become very anti-icon. Just use
| text!
| tuxie_ wrote:
| While I agree, I assume that the reason behind it is that
| icons don't require translation which allows them to sell
| the equipment worldwide without modifications to the
| interface. Not saying it's a good reason, but I wouldn't be
| surprised if it's just economics behind.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| Text means that you need different versions for different
| international markets, which causes a lot of additional
| SKUs and associated logistics costs.
|
| 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.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > Text means that you need different versions for
| different international markets, which causes a lot of
| additional SKUs and associated logistics costs.
|
| 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.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| Honestly, text in another language is nearly as useful to
| me as inscrutable icons. Maybe even more useful as long
| as it's a romance or Germanic language.
| sshlocalhost98 wrote:
| Yup definitely on your side, it's frustrating to see button
| less interfaces, buttons make many more sense.
| tremon wrote:
| _how to use the stove_
|
| 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.
| fold3 wrote:
| I was looking at new models lately and they have way more
| refined range, you could even do succesful bain-marie and
| butter caramel risk free of burning. Still don't know why
| they won't do a touch knob for quick actuation of the
| temperature (when you wanna make fry rice or things like
| that.)
| Gigachad wrote:
| My parents have one and I think it works really well. There is
| a physical power button, start button, as well as a physical
| knob. For the basic usage, you press power, turn the knob to
| select the mode, press start, then turn the knob to select your
| desired temperature.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| vel0city wrote:
| > the touch controls never bring any new features to the table.
|
| 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.
| jameshart wrote:
| On the other hand, literally last night the physical knob for
| one of my stove burners came off in my hand leaving me having
| to use a pair of pliers to turn it off. So, your mileage may
| vary.
| pahae wrote:
| I'd rather have some physical knob that I can use to turn
| something off, even if I have to bust out the pliers. Good
| luck shutting off some touch control that's on the fritz.
|
| 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.
| couchand wrote:
| But you could put the knob back on, right? I mean, it slides
| off to make it easier to clean or replace, and you just need
| to slide it back on...?
| tunap wrote:
| Or, replace the barrel and molex, or maybe solder a couple
| wires, but where's the fun in that? You could instead
| replace a high dollar board & / or controller(s) to get
| back your otherwise basic functionality.
| eimrine wrote:
| or put a neighbour knob if you have already realised that
| you can dismount and mount them again.
| jameshart wrote:
| In this case, weirdly and confoundingly, no.
| usrn wrote:
| >No, no, it's really easy to get used to
|
| 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.
| XorNot wrote:
| Cleaning is what I spend far more time doing with a stove, and
| is more important, then the very brief period I'm involved in
| setting the temperature during cooking.
|
| So it seems like a fairly good trade-off to me.
| tobr wrote:
| In my experience they're not great for cleaning. They get
| confused when they get wet and start blinking and beeping and
| turning things on and off randomly. A set of well-designed
| physical dials could be made in a way that's easier to keep
| clean.
| crowbahr wrote:
| You can't keep physical dials clean by their nature. They
| have to connect to something, which means you have holes.
| Holes + aerosolized grease = sticky 100% of the time.
|
| 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.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| This is the only reason I don't have a Tesla yet. I want
| physical buttons for almost everything.
| tobr wrote:
| I'm hopeful that we will see less and less gratuitous use of
| "hi-tech" UI in consumer electronics in the near future. It
| seems that many manufacturers still believe consumers think
| blinking LEDs and touchscreens and beeps and chromed plastic
| spaceship shapes are cool. Despite most of us using high
| resolution touchscreens many hours per day.
|
| A good physical knob or button usually feels much more
| luxurious and expensive.
| deskamess wrote:
| Everything seems to be done for looks rather than utility these
| days. Appliances have to 'look good' and 'fit' in the kitchen
| scheme. Knobs are apparently too 'protrudy'.
| pkorzeniewski wrote:
| I despise touch controls in almost everything, from cars to
| home appliance, in my opinion the only reason they're replaced
| physical controls is because it's simply cheaper to make and
| people just got used to them because manufacturers convinced
| them through marketing "it's the future! be modern!". For
| example an induction hob at my wife's parents home - recently
| my mother-in-law couldn't turn it on because some cryptic key
| icon was flashing, I had to look into the manual to find out
| it's a children protection mode that is turned on and off by
| holding the key icon for 3 seconds, I didn't even know you can
| press it and it's so easy in general to accidentally press
| various things when cooking, sometimes you don't even notice
| that you have accidently changed the temperature.
| grayclhn wrote:
| TBH, a "child protection mode" does seem like legitimately
| new functionality, even if it was unwelcome for your in-laws.
| gen3 wrote:
| My parents electric stove with knobs also had a child lock
| on it. Like the rest of the controls, it's also a dial.
| It's just harder to turn
| lloeki wrote:
| You don't even have to touch them, water (even slightest
| amounts), metal, or anything like that can trigger a "press".
| It's like the thing hasn't even been field-tested in an
| actual kitchen.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Touch controls are also cheaper to iterate, soft-update, or
| reuse across models.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| None of my friends say their stove touch buttons are great.
| They are not just unintuitive, most implementations are
| painfully slow.
|
| (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
| marssaxman wrote:
| The best microwave I've ever used lived in the break room at
| my last job. It had one big knob, which worked like a
| standard kitchen timer: you would just twist it right until
| it pointed at the amount of time you want, then let it tick
| back down to the left until cooking was done. Want more? Just
| twist it right a little more, and let it keep ticking.
|
| I have no idea why domestic microwaves come with a maze of
| buttons when such _vastly_ superior knob technology exists.
| Macha wrote:
| Yeah, I've got a cheapo microwave, but honestly it's UI is
| pretty good as appliances go.
|
| 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.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Samsung Solo Microwaves are one knob for time + start
| immediately. One knob for power (that you use once a year):
| https://www.samsung.com/uk/microwave-ovens/solo/mw3000am-
| ms2...
|
| They iterate over the design bits (black knobs on black
| microwave -> silver knobs on black microwave -> current
| design), but the microwave remains the same
| dsr_ wrote:
| Commercial heavy-duty microwaves and the cheapest plastic
| microwaves share the same interface: two dials. One is time,
| the other is power cycle. Sometimes it's just one dial for
| time.
| cinntaile wrote:
| This is why I buy the cheapest ones. They don't break and
| their buttons are intuitive, I don't need a Bachelor's in
| microwave UI to use one.
| bschwindHN wrote:
| > two dials. One is time, the other is power cycle
|
| 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.
| vel0city wrote:
| Personally I really like the sensor modes of my
| microwave. For most of my leftovers, I can toss the
| plate/bowl in the microwave, hit REHEAT, and it figures
| it out. If it thinks I need to stir/rotate, it'll beep at
| me to do so while its cooking. Seems a lot simpler as a
| user than thinking about how long to cook it, what power
| level, etc.
| unwind wrote:
| Get a Whirlpool with Jet Start [1], it's a big-ish button
| that does exactly that. Easily the nunber 1 used button on
| our microwave (which, unfortunately, has loads more buttons).
|
| 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...
| zelos wrote:
| My microwave pretty much has that - press start and it sets
| the timer to 1 minute and starts. Then spin the dial to add
| time while it's cooking.
| xnx wrote:
| I find it even better when they just have a dial
| Zak wrote:
| Last time I had to buy a microwave, I intentionally sought
| out one with two knobs: time and power. It would be very hard
| to improve on the UX that provides.
| jraph wrote:
| I was at a friends' and they had touch buttons on the hotplate.
| Nothing really hard to understand, but it would not register
| touches with my index finger. After fighting, I figured I would
| try to use my thumb and _that_ worked.
|
| One vote for the physical buttons. If you want to act quickly,
| tactile buttons are really annoying.
| neoberg wrote:
| Lick your finger and then try. It usually helps.
| RickHull wrote:
| Your hosts love that
| TT-392 wrote:
| Pretty sure this is often a cost saving measure, capacitive
| buttons can be less expensive than knobs, especially if they
| have to be waterproof.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| If there is an analog bar, you know about where you are in the
| whole range. If there is just a number, you often have no idea
| how good or bad it really is.
| CivBase wrote:
| > Many consumers judge product qualities based on superficial
| impressions and studies have shown that these impressions can
| cause users to perceive a product as less usable than it actually
| is.
|
| 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.
| Zachsa999 wrote:
| Project Idea: low tech consumer goods website. Rate ovens
| microwaves washing mach ines etc by low tech high quality.
| jansan wrote:
| OT: I have never before read the word "aughts" and had to look it
| up. Turns out this describes the first decade of the 21st century
| (or of any century?), i.e. the years 2000 to 2009. The British
| seem to use the word "noughties".
| 2143 wrote:
| I too learnt of "noughties" recently. Never heard "aughts"
| before.
|
| 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.
| jansan wrote:
| Here is some advanced stuff from Monty PythonAs Flying
| Circus:
|
| "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
| guessbest wrote:
| There are "low tech" interfaces are on handheld ham radios and
| can be pretty annoying to have to read the manual to change basic
| settings, like from step from 2.5k to 25k or somewhere in
| between. A touch screen would make handheld transceivers so much
| easier to use especially considering the number of features in
| it.
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