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Yeah, this whole article strikes me as one of the "I don't fully understand modern technology so I wistfully recall the predecessor technology that I do underst
by scottLobster 9y ago
Yeah, this whole article strikes me as one of the "I don't fully understand modern technology so I wistfully recall the predecessor technology that I do understand" variety.
There's a lot of these going around these days, and while it's easy to dismiss them when they try to argue on the merits there is a certain value to them from a design perspective. Old-school analog systems were (to the user) tangible, comprehensible, predictable and repeatable in ways that digital systems often fail to match. You push a button and the device does a thing. You push that button 20 years later, still does the same thing. The response is also tactile and immediate, having a specific feel, sound and smell. Much the same reasons us CS nerds glorify mechanical keyboards.
I think a lot of apps/user facing products could improve from attempting to emulate analog systems more closely. People want a piece of software that they can use for 20 years without being thrown to the ground when the UX does a triple-360 in the next upgrade because someone thought it was "bad design". In the tech world we seem to gravitate towards this relentless, iterative, constantly changing march to perceived glory when perhaps shifting the balance back the other direction could be helpful.