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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
by 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 agoAn 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 agoThis is bad, but then again they will be easier to clean.
- samatman 8y agoThe 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.