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> hide all the more complicated and lesser-used settings out of the way! Why? Just looking at more stuff makes you nervous? Ever been to a library? Ever cooked

> hide all the more complicated and lesser-used settings out of the way! Why? Just looking at more stuff makes you nervous? Ever been to a library? Ever cooked a meal? Ever walked outside your house? The world is full of complex "UI". This is a total bullshit minimalism case designers make to satiate their own personal taste. I would like to see data that proves that "seeing" more stuff impedes the ability to operate something. Hiding stuff is detrimental, I would argue. The hierarchy of menus is equally as complicated as a dashboard of logically laid out "containers", each box decidated to a specific group of functions. It is exactly the same! Your vision system scans through the top level hierachy (Climate Control, Radio, Vehicle Settings, Navigation), then focusing in on individual controls (akin to sub-menu items). The benefits are massive - immediate control, haptics feedback, muscle memory, etc. Negatives a minor and can be addressed - cost, reliability and durability (wearing off labels for example). The problem is - if you look at ALPS catalog of encoders, they are rapidly going up in prices because automotive manufacturers are ditching them and they don't have enough volume to sustain production and keep costs down. If we had invested in this industry, we would have kept the costs down too. The sad thing is, they are discontinuining a lot of physical controls. > Do you really think that putting your grandmother into a car that resembled that F-15 cockpit would be a safer option? What happens if she forgets where the button is to, say, turn on the A/C compressor? Is she going to read every single label while cruising down the highway at 75 mph? Actually yes. Thank god we have knobs and buttons left for A/C controls. Why didn't hide that in the menus? Apart from a few cars, most cars have physical controls for climate and radio. Grandma's kitchen is probably 10x complicated than car UI. She does just fine.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
> I would like to see data that proves that "seeing" more stuff impedes the ability to operate something. Edward Tufte made a career out of writing books that essentially argue this for data design: information density is good. Low information density means you're wasting people's time. Our visual systems are extremely good at creating and navigating hierarchies, at rapidly switching between levels of detail, and at actively filtering irrelevant information. You don't have to hide stuff, you just have to make the user determine it's irrelevant for the task at hand, and their brain will just filter it out. (See also: banner blindness.)
- avalys 6y ago
  Quick, look at a picture of the F-15 cockpit, and find the switch to set the LANTIRN pod from Day mode to Night mode. Now imagine you’re in a car and you can’t take your eyes off the road for more than a few seconds. Airplanes are much easier than cars in that regard - once you’re airborne there’s not much to hit!
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    We're comparing it to cars with touchscreens, and I guarantee you that the first time I find that switch (parked in the garage), I'll remember where it is later. With a touchscreen, I'll always have to look. Also, neither a car nor a fighter jet assumes an untrained operator. We can't forget that you get a few dozen hours of practical training before you're allowed to drive unsupervised, and that's more than enough to familiarize yourself with the user interface. So the question boils down to: does the interface facilitate operating without looking at it, or not? Physical buttons do. Non-shit touchscreen UIs could, but they don't exist. Touchscreens used in practice don't.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > Quick, look at a picture of the F-15 cockpit, and find the switch to set the LANTIRN pod from Day mode to Night mode. Now imagine you’re in a car and you can’t take your eyes off the road for more than a few seconds. That sounds easy: if it's your car, so you'll soon familiarize yourself with where the physical controls are, so you won't need to take your eyes of the road for more than a moment (if you need to at all). If it's not your car, a physical switch is no worse than a touchscreen. Navigating a screen forces you to take your eyes of the road for an extended period of time, since you need to use them to target your touch to the right part of the screen, even if you're already familiar with the UI. In short: for controls that may be used while driving, physical controls are at a minimum no worse than a touchscreen and typically much better. The only place where screens have an advantage is for extremely rarely used controls, like configuration settings. Even then, I'd argue that physical controls (like the F-15's castle button) are better for controlling the screen than using a touchscreen, since they allow a user to memorize key-press sequences. Touchscreens really only make sense on extremely small devices like smartphones.
avalys 6y ago
“Seeing more stuff” makes it harder to find the one thing you want without taking your eyes off the road. A touchscreen or similar interface in a car allows you to maintain a minimal set of buttons and controls for access to essential functionality while driving, while keeping the complex and infrequently-used stuff hidden in the touchscreen for access while stopped (when you have as much time as you need to search through the interface finding the thing you want). I agree that putting controls which you need to use while driving behind a touchscreen is not an optimal choice.
httpsterio 6y ago
I'm sorry but this is basic UX 101. If you have everytbibg laid out like in the jet cockpit, it's going to take a heavy toll on the user's cognitive and decision making becomes more slow and cumbersome. The reason this type of user interface exists in fighter jets is simply because the situation requires it. It only works as well as it does because the pilots undergo thousands of hours of training to familiarise themselves with the interface. The only reason everything is laid out into single function button and knobs is not because it provides a better experience, it's because pilots are in a unique position where their lives might depend on decisions and actions performed in a fraction of a second. It's not really a concept that is transferable to other types of interfaces and shouldn't be glorified as good UX either. Pilot errors are far too common which is directly related to the complexity and cognitive load imposed by the aircraft interfaces. These are well documented on several scientific publications. Look up Hossini and Kahneman (some of his stuff has been proved wrong but mainly his motivation ideas).

TeMPOraL 6y ago

> I would like to see data that proves that "seeing" more stuff impedes the ability to operate something. Edward Tufte made a career out of writing books that essentially argue this for data design: information density is good. Low information density means you're wasting people's time. Our visual systems are extremely good at creating and navigating hierarchies, at rapidly switching between levels of detail, and at actively filtering irrelevant information. You don't have to hide stuff, you just have to make the user determine it's irrelevant for the task at hand, and their brain will just filter it out. (See also: banner blindness.)

avalys 6y ago
Quick, look at a picture of the F-15 cockpit, and find the switch to set the LANTIRN pod from Day mode to Night mode. Now imagine you’re in a car and you can’t take your eyes off the road for more than a few seconds. Airplanes are much easier than cars in that regard - once you’re airborne there’s not much to hit!
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  We're comparing it to cars with touchscreens, and I guarantee you that the first time I find that switch (parked in the garage), I'll remember where it is later. With a touchscreen, I'll always have to look. Also, neither a car nor a fighter jet assumes an untrained operator. We can't forget that you get a few dozen hours of practical training before you're allowed to drive unsupervised, and that's more than enough to familiarize yourself with the user interface. So the question boils down to: does the interface facilitate operating without looking at it, or not? Physical buttons do. Non-shit touchscreen UIs could, but they don't exist. Touchscreens used in practice don't.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Quick, look at a picture of the F-15 cockpit, and find the switch to set the LANTIRN pod from Day mode to Night mode. Now imagine you’re in a car and you can’t take your eyes off the road for more than a few seconds. That sounds easy: if it's your car, so you'll soon familiarize yourself with where the physical controls are, so you won't need to take your eyes of the road for more than a moment (if you need to at all). If it's not your car, a physical switch is no worse than a touchscreen. Navigating a screen forces you to take your eyes of the road for an extended period of time, since you need to use them to target your touch to the right part of the screen, even if you're already familiar with the UI. In short: for controls that may be used while driving, physical controls are at a minimum no worse than a touchscreen and typically much better. The only place where screens have an advantage is for extremely rarely used controls, like configuration settings. Even then, I'd argue that physical controls (like the F-15's castle button) are better for controlling the screen than using a touchscreen, since they allow a user to memorize key-press sequences. Touchscreens really only make sense on extremely small devices like smartphones.

avalys 6y ago

“Seeing more stuff” makes it harder to find the one thing you want without taking your eyes off the road. A touchscreen or similar interface in a car allows you to maintain a minimal set of buttons and controls for access to essential functionality while driving, while keeping the complex and infrequently-used stuff hidden in the touchscreen for access while stopped (when you have as much time as you need to search through the interface finding the thing you want). I agree that putting controls which you need to use while driving behind a touchscreen is not an optimal choice.

httpsterio 6y ago

I'm sorry but this is basic UX 101. If you have everytbibg laid out like in the jet cockpit, it's going to take a heavy toll on the user's cognitive and decision making becomes more slow and cumbersome. The reason this type of user interface exists in fighter jets is simply because the situation requires it. It only works as well as it does because the pilots undergo thousands of hours of training to familiarise themselves with the interface. The only reason everything is laid out into single function button and knobs is not because it provides a better experience, it's because pilots are in a unique position where their lives might depend on decisions and actions performed in a fraction of a second. It's not really a concept that is transferable to other types of interfaces and shouldn't be glorified as good UX either. Pilot errors are far too common which is directly related to the complexity and cognitive load imposed by the aircraft interfaces. These are well documented on several scientific publications. Look up Hossini and Kahneman (some of his stuff has been proved wrong but mainly his motivation ideas).