4 ms·

Your argument doesn’t make sense to me. Why would you do any of that WHILE DRIVING?? That’s both dangerous and foolish. As for key presses to navigate a menu y

Your argument doesn’t make sense to me. Why would you do any of that WHILE DRIVING?? That’s both dangerous and foolish. As for key presses to navigate a menu you would be surprised how quickly a human memorized exactly how many times to press what buttons to get to where they want to go. In my current car I know that if I press Home, down x3, and OK I will end up in the Media menu. I can do all this without taking mu eyes off the road (or even thinking about it much after a year+ with this vehicle.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Incidentally, that was the aspect of old feature phones I most miss today. I could operate them without looking by muscle memory - and it worked because the UI was fixed, but more importantly, it was soft-real time: the delays were predictable and you could learn them too. Today's touch devices tend to lag completely randomly.
- theon144 7y ago
  >it was soft-real time: the delays were predictable and you could learn them too. Wow, well put! This is definitely something that we lost with the current gen of interfaces, and this articulation didn't occur to me. Losing keypresses or clicks/touches at random, unpredictable freezes and/or delays on interactions, all this contributes to a general sense of unreliability and not being able to infer the state of the device. Consistency is actually a much more important metric than just plain latency.
- snaky 7y ago
  There were green-and-black text UIs that allowed receptionist at hotel check you in blazingly fast, keeping an eye contact with you. No mouse, just keyboard shortcuts.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Yup. These are a source of a frequent disagreement between myself and some UI/UX folks. I believe interfaces like these were/are superior to modern ones, precisely because they allow one to work efficiently.
diminoten 7y ago
I think it's an easy cop out to say, "Doing literally anything other than focusing exclusively on the task of driving is not worth talking about." The reality is, people will be adjusting their radios while they drive. They will be looking for open restaurants, changing their destination, and a number of other things while driving, and pretending like they're not worth accommodating ignores some very fundamental principles on the topic of economics.
NamTaf 7y ago
People do, because they can. It doesn't matter whether they should or not. When you design something, you don't design for ideal use, you design to eliminate risky misuse. This is a core axiom of user interface design. It's not good enough to just slap a warning disclaimer on it, as the designer, you're still liable. I would have my engineering licence revoked if I ignored possible avenues of misuse, could design them out but didn't, and then ended up in court because they misused it and someone died. This isn't a hypothetical, this is how it works in the non-software world where engineering decisions can routinely kill people.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Incidentally, that was the aspect of old feature phones I most miss today. I could operate them without looking by muscle memory - and it worked because the UI was fixed, but more importantly, it was soft-real time: the delays were predictable and you could learn them too. Today's touch devices tend to lag completely randomly.

theon144 7y ago
>it was soft-real time: the delays were predictable and you could learn them too. Wow, well put! This is definitely something that we lost with the current gen of interfaces, and this articulation didn't occur to me. Losing keypresses or clicks/touches at random, unpredictable freezes and/or delays on interactions, all this contributes to a general sense of unreliability and not being able to infer the state of the device. Consistency is actually a much more important metric than just plain latency.
snaky 7y ago
There were green-and-black text UIs that allowed receptionist at hotel check you in blazingly fast, keeping an eye contact with you. No mouse, just keyboard shortcuts.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Yup. These are a source of a frequent disagreement between myself and some UI/UX folks. I believe interfaces like these were/are superior to modern ones, precisely because they allow one to work efficiently.

diminoten 7y ago

I think it's an easy cop out to say, "Doing literally anything other than focusing exclusively on the task of driving is not worth talking about." The reality is, people will be adjusting their radios while they drive. They will be looking for open restaurants, changing their destination, and a number of other things while driving, and pretending like they're not worth accommodating ignores some very fundamental principles on the topic of economics.

NamTaf 7y ago

People do, because they can. It doesn't matter whether they should or not. When you design something, you don't design for ideal use, you design to eliminate risky misuse. This is a core axiom of user interface design. It's not good enough to just slap a warning disclaimer on it, as the designer, you're still liable. I would have my engineering licence revoked if I ignored possible avenues of misuse, could design them out but didn't, and then ended up in court because they misused it and someone died. This isn't a hypothetical, this is how it works in the non-software world where engineering decisions can routinely kill people.