4 ms·

When my youngest daughter was still a toddler, she would try to swipe on our 32" bedroom TV that was more or less at her height. What I'm trying to say is that

by ericol 8y ago

When my youngest daughter was still a toddler, she would try to swipe on our 32" bedroom TV that was more or less at her height. What I'm trying to say is that your mileage might vary. I think it all depends on their experiences. If something looks like a button and they try to push it, is because in real life buttons have a certain look and feel. But I'm pretty certain that if you teach them at an early age to discern what does what in a flat UI, they'll have no problem switching from one UI to the other (I actually learned _from her_ that in the Android YT app you can swipe those pesky lower right corner videos to make them go away). And we're still to try flat in real life ;)

chrismorgan 8y ago
> And we're still to try flat in real life Plenty of appliances have electronic buttons, which are close to flat (though definitely not flat) and commonly paired with a flat visual style on top of them. They work pretty well, in that context. And now plenty of appliances have capacitive controls, which are in my experience normally a disaster and literally never good (I exclude situations where a screen is involved; those are hit and miss). To take an example, microwaves: almost without fail, I find that the newer it is, the harder it is to use—though the old dials were only easier to use in certain ways, lacking precision. I now have one with a capacitive touch surface, and it’s very hard to use unless the room is brightly lit, at which point is’s merely quite painful unless I want to turn it on for exactly 30 seconds. Decide for yourself whether these things are “real life”.
- virgil_disgr4ce 8y ago
  With you on capacitive controls (other than touchscreens). Very often terrible, useless garbage from a UX perspective. From other perspectives they're great: can be cleaned perfectly and easily, and has no potential for mechanical failure. But none of that matters if they just aren't useable X-)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- seandougall 8y ago
  My brand new (just arrived today!) stove has these capacitive buttons, and in terms of visual style it does indeed function perfectly; it's entirely clear which parts of the interface are buttons, even though most of them have only unadorned text. But I think that analogy falls short in one major way, which is that these buttons are logically grouped and evenly spaced across a surface that consists of _nothing but_ buttons. If there's silkscreened text there, you can press it and do something. The visual display of information happens in an LED display set aside in a well-defined area, so things to look at and things to press are 100% clearly delineated. In a desktop/mobile/web app, where content and interactive elements are interspersed, you lose that obvious context clue. That inevitably adds cognitive load, even if the interface is still technically usable.
  - samatman 8y ago
    An additional problem for capacitative buttons in the kitchen is that my fingers are often moist or even wet, and this is a disaster when it comes time to punch cap. buttons. Not only do they not work, no only do they sometimes trigger adjacent controls, but to get function back I now have to dry both my hands and the control surface. I will never purchase a kitchen device with capacitative controls, but I run into them enough when traveling to experience this frequently. It's a mess.
    - solarkraft 8y ago
      This is bad, but then again they will be easier to clean.
      - samatman 8y ago
        The old paradigm of sealing a rubber dome button under an unbroken sheet of plastic worked just fine, my folks had a microwave for 20 years that worked that way with no switch failures.
- Double_a_92 8y ago
  The problem with e.g. microwaves is that with digital controls it's easy to give the user too many complicated options. All I want is to set the timer and the power, not some extra mode to specifically thaw fish...
  - sjwright 8y ago
    I agree wholeheartedly but I will say my new LG microwave is pretty good. It lets you close the door, twist a knob and press start. All the complexity of weird preset modes is condensed down to a few essentials. You can dial up a frozen bread defrost setting, but it's done in a way that keeps the interface simple for everyday use. The buttons are capacitive but they're very responsive and it's easy to wipe down. https://www.lg.com/au/microwave-ovens/lg-MS4266OBS https://www.lg.com/au/microwave-ovens/lg-MS4266OBS
    - chrismorgan 8y ago
      Such knobs are fairly lousy in this way: they lack a start and end point. This is a standard failing of modern things: it’s easier to implement generically useful functionality this way, but it’s objectively inferior in most concrete cases. (Another example: ebooks with unanchored scrolling instead of physical books with pagination where you can feel how far you are through the book. You have no reference point.) Old microwaves had a clear, directional knob with a start point, an end point, and markings for the values they represented. Barring the question of precision (which could be more or less solved with a more strikingly non-linear dial), that’s positively superb. My ideal microwave has only the following controls: such a dial (you could do some pretty fancy active magnetic design on it to improve it and make it precise, over the old knobs), probably another dial or slider (I’m open to trying it out) for power level, and that’s it. I’d be willing to discuss a +30s start button which moved the knob into the right place for you, and some sort of digital timer for potentially easier reading from a distance. No start button or stop button or open button, because the door opening and closing is better than the old microwaves. Now it is possible for an unanchored knob to be good; I have in mind a tuning knob from a fairly expensive radio from fifty or more years ago, where they had clearly put a lot of effort into its friction profile. But I’ve never seen such a thing in the digital age, only ever in the analogue world. (Hmm… I wonder whether sound boards count. They may be an exception.) In the digital age, knobs are normally just glorified less/more buttons with very coarse quantisation. My microwave is similar to yours, but a cheaper model, with most notably a capacitive touch strip instead of the knob; it’s awful.
buboard 8y ago
Depth perception contours and borders are instantly recognizable by our visual system, even toddlers. Learning to read letters fast comes much later in life so i would say it's probably much more difficult to teach little children
amluto 8y ago
In modern flat UIs, it seems fashionable to have clickable things that are not visually distinguishable at all. As a silly example, I just opened the Google Maps app. Basically everything is clickable or swipable, but there is no visual consistency whatsoever. I suppose “everything is a control” is a viable model, but it breaks down if you want to show content, too.

by ericol 8y ago

chrismorgan 8y ago

> And we're still to try flat in real life Plenty of appliances have electronic buttons, which are close to flat (though definitely not flat) and commonly paired with a flat visual style on top of them. They work pretty well, in that context. And now plenty of appliances have capacitive controls, which are in my experience normally a disaster and literally never good (I exclude situations where a screen is involved; those are hit and miss). To take an example, microwaves: almost without fail, I find that the newer it is, the harder it is to use—though the old dials were only easier to use in certain ways, lacking precision. I now have one with a capacitive touch surface, and it’s very hard to use unless the room is brightly lit, at which point is’s merely quite painful unless I want to turn it on for exactly 30 seconds. Decide for yourself whether these things are “real life”.

virgil_disgr4ce 8y ago
With you on capacitive controls (other than touchscreens). Very often terrible, useless garbage from a UX perspective. From other perspectives they're great: can be cleaned perfectly and easily, and has no potential for mechanical failure. But none of that matters if they just aren't useable X-)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
seandougall 8y ago
My brand new (just arrived today!) stove has these capacitive buttons, and in terms of visual style it does indeed function perfectly; it's entirely clear which parts of the interface are buttons, even though most of them have only unadorned text. But I think that analogy falls short in one major way, which is that these buttons are logically grouped and evenly spaced across a surface that consists of _nothing but_ buttons. If there's silkscreened text there, you can press it and do something. The visual display of information happens in an LED display set aside in a well-defined area, so things to look at and things to press are 100% clearly delineated. In a desktop/mobile/web app, where content and interactive elements are interspersed, you lose that obvious context clue. That inevitably adds cognitive load, even if the interface is still technically usable.
- samatman 8y ago
  An additional problem for capacitative buttons in the kitchen is that my fingers are often moist or even wet, and this is a disaster when it comes time to punch cap. buttons. Not only do they not work, no only do they sometimes trigger adjacent controls, but to get function back I now have to dry both my hands and the control surface. I will never purchase a kitchen device with capacitative controls, but I run into them enough when traveling to experience this frequently. It's a mess.
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    This is bad, but then again they will be easier to clean.
    - samatman 8y ago
      The old paradigm of sealing a rubber dome button under an unbroken sheet of plastic worked just fine, my folks had a microwave for 20 years that worked that way with no switch failures.
Double_a_92 8y ago
The problem with e.g. microwaves is that with digital controls it's easy to give the user too many complicated options. All I want is to set the timer and the power, not some extra mode to specifically thaw fish...
- sjwright 8y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly but I will say my new LG microwave is pretty good. It lets you close the door, twist a knob and press start. All the complexity of weird preset modes is condensed down to a few essentials. You can dial up a frozen bread defrost setting, but it's done in a way that keeps the interface simple for everyday use. The buttons are capacitive but they're very responsive and it's easy to wipe down. https://www.lg.com/au/microwave-ovens/lg-MS4266OBS https://www.lg.com/au/microwave-ovens/lg-MS4266OBS
  - chrismorgan 8y ago
    Such knobs are fairly lousy in this way: they lack a start and end point. This is a standard failing of modern things: it’s easier to implement generically useful functionality this way, but it’s objectively inferior in most concrete cases. (Another example: ebooks with unanchored scrolling instead of physical books with pagination where you can feel how far you are through the book. You have no reference point.) Old microwaves had a clear, directional knob with a start point, an end point, and markings for the values they represented. Barring the question of precision (which could be more or less solved with a more strikingly non-linear dial), that’s positively superb. My ideal microwave has only the following controls: such a dial (you could do some pretty fancy active magnetic design on it to improve it and make it precise, over the old knobs), probably another dial or slider (I’m open to trying it out) for power level, and that’s it. I’d be willing to discuss a +30s start button which moved the knob into the right place for you, and some sort of digital timer for potentially easier reading from a distance. No start button or stop button or open button, because the door opening and closing is better than the old microwaves. Now it is possible for an unanchored knob to be good; I have in mind a tuning knob from a fairly expensive radio from fifty or more years ago, where they had clearly put a lot of effort into its friction profile. But I’ve never seen such a thing in the digital age, only ever in the analogue world. (Hmm… I wonder whether sound boards count. They may be an exception.) In the digital age, knobs are normally just glorified less/more buttons with very coarse quantisation. My microwave is similar to yours, but a cheaper model, with most notably a capacitive touch strip instead of the knob; it’s awful.

buboard 8y ago

Depth perception contours and borders are instantly recognizable by our visual system, even toddlers. Learning to read letters fast comes much later in life so i would say it's probably much more difficult to teach little children

amluto 8y ago

In modern flat UIs, it seems fashionable to have clickable things that are not visually distinguishable at all. As a silly example, I just opened the Google Maps app. Basically everything is clickable or swipable, but there is no visual consistency whatsoever. I suppose “everything is a control” is a viable model, but it breaks down if you want to show content, too.