29 ms·

The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

407 points by thm 4y ago

qwerty456127 4y ago
As kid I obviously was thrilled by futuristic touchscreen stuff but now I can't help but hate that and want all the controls analog.
eimrine 4y ago
> During the recent home device project I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest supporters of a touchscreen-based solution was the team’s marketing specialist. Why am I not surprised?
- mro_name 4y ago
  I came to write my official paper letters with vi :hardcopy in 70ies RFC typewriter style. Helps to focus on the content. That's exactly what marketing dreads.
  - mro_name 4y ago
    meanwhile found the template: https://darknet.mro.name/pub/brief-dina4.txt https://darknet.mro.name/pub/brief-dina4.txt
- Gigachad 4y ago
  I don't buy it tbh. Most home appliances are sufficiently complex that physical buttons are not intuitive. Ask someone to change the clock on their oven vs on their phone. Most could do it on the phone but not the oven. And there are countless more practical examples of this issue. My Breville coffee machine only has buttons and knobs, which works fine for the basic flow since everything has a dedicated button. But once you want to do something like run a cleaning cycle you will have to read the manual every time because there is nothing intuitive about holding double shot + single shot and then power for 3 seconds. Or holding program and then power to open temperature adjust then clicking one of the buttons to set a temp which isn't labeled and needs the manual to decipher. While on the touch screen model, the basic flow might be slightly less nice, but the most complex flows are also reduced to about the same complexity and can be intuitively worked out while using the device. Combining physical buttons for basic flow with a touch screen is the best of both imo. I have used some ovens which use a normal knob like it would on an older oven, but if you want to do something like start a self clean cycle or adjust steaming, its done via the touch screen.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    > Combining physical buttons for basic flow with a touch screen is the best of both imo This. But if I have to choose, then I'll have physical buttons over a touch screen. Why? Because I use the "basic flow" every damn day. Whereas I only need to set the clock every few months.
  - bandie91 4y ago
    > change the clock on their oven it's really easy. grab the clock. turn the hands to the desired position. optionally wind it up. put back on the oven. the only thing i dont understand why would anybody put his clock on the oven?
    - Too 4y ago
      How else would you know if the clock on the micro is not correct if you don't have the oven to use as reference?
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    If one is going to go into the effort and cost to put an SoC onboard that can run a touchscreen, one should just have the device communicate with the touchscreen computer in your pocket instead. Common basic functions: knobs dials switches. Extended functions: there's an app for that, or suffer through modal button changes like you describe. Save on BOM costs, less points of failure, and does not require an SoC with display controller and a software stack running a (usually janky and slow and non-standard) UI.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      This does happen on a lot of devices. It’s ok for stuff you expect to last a few years but anything longer and the app stops working before the device does. I have a bike gps which has some functions as a phone app but the phone app no longer works.
      - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
acd 4y ago
Physical car buttons and knobs vs touch screens
arky527 4y ago
Modern cars seem to be moving towards all controls on a touch screen somewhere. I suppose this allows for more frequent updates, but in my experience it just leads to more bugs and more painful factory updates. Not to mention using a touchscreen to adjust the temperature while driving is incredibly dangerous compared to a dial you can feel for without taking your eyes off the road.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  I have grown to heavily dislike the whole smartify everything. Haptic feedback is a core part of how humans process the world, and to remove it in favor of more frequent updates seems like a naive decision at best. Flatness in phones works because we can use our full attention - which is also why car accidents happen when people use it while driving.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Mordisquitos 4y ago
    > Flatness in phones works because we can use our full attention I very much agree with you, and would like to add that flatness in phones is a feature because today phones are pocket computers, and computers should be able to provide any arbitrary UI to function as such. Cars on the other hand are not a computer nor are they intended to function as one. The fact that modern cars expose part of their on-board computer to the driver is no excuse to treat any capability that may be handled by said computer as something exclusively accessible via a touchscreen UI, especially when its something that is expected to be interacted with while driving (audio playback control, climate control, windscreen wipers, etc.). A touchscreen is fine for features that should not be done while driving and did not exist or were not easily accessible prior to the ubiquity of touchscreens in cars. For all intents and purposes those are computer features. However, subjecting anything that was previously available via mechanical interaction to it is an unacceptable regression.
    - DonHopkins 4y ago
lucidguppy 4y ago
Humane Interface by J. Raskin had some interesting points about how to make low tech interfaces. You need essentially eliminate "modes" - like the clock/set time/radio mode buttons on your alarm clock. I'm not saying he's right - but he's worth reading.
- ratww 4y ago
  That's a great point about "modes". Even 40 years people already joked about the alarm clock you mentioned: everyone knew how to use VCRs, but the damn clock was never adjusted. Since it was neither intuitive, nor something a user would memorize how to do, most VCRs just sat there saying 12:00 or 00:00 forever. For the alarm clock, of course, we had to learn since it was its main function. I see this in music equipment a lot, too. To program something with modes you need significantly more time than something with just knobs. And the performance possibilities are also much limited as soon as you bring in menu-diving.
  - couchand 4y ago
    That's a great point about looking to music equipment for UX ideas. If you want to see what happens when a design team puts serious effort into building a satisfying and effective interface, look at electronic music devices.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Those mixer boards you see are horribly complicated, but with the thousands of knobs and buttons most anyone can figure out how to mute a microphone in a few minutes or less. The touchscreen versions can be more complicated - but since they also have the ability to change the knobs to presets they may be more useful to actual sound engineers.
      - ratww 4y ago
        Good points. Some mechanical version can also change the buttons, faders and knobs positions to presets when they have automation circuits, this has been a thing since the late 70s. So you get the best of both worlds. One important aspect is that with tactile controls one barely needs presets, though, except for recall. Mixing done from scratch is quite fast, even when compared to presets, so I would argue that there is a significant tradeoff when going digital.
s4i 4y ago
Reminds me of modern stoves. All of them have touch controls which means every time a friend of mine is presenting me their new kitchen, I have no idea how to use the stove. They always say "No, no, it's really easy to get used to" but it's still frustrating because the touch controls never bring any new features to the table. They are just knobs abstracted into separated buttons and sliders, of which the latter you are not quite sure if you should drag them or just point to the wanted value. With a physical knob, the intuition of the laws of physics tells you how the knob can be turned. They are easier to clean for sure but I can't believe the current "click this, slide that" UX is the best the manufacturers could come up with.
- XorNot 4y ago
  Cleaning is what I spend far more time doing with a stove, and is more important, then the very brief period I'm involved in setting the temperature during cooking. So it seems like a fairly good trade-off to me.
  - tobr 4y ago
    In my experience they’re not great for cleaning. They get confused when they get wet and start blinking and beeping and turning things on and off randomly. A set of well-designed physical dials could be made in a way that’s easier to keep clean.
    - crowbahr 4y ago
      You can't keep physical dials clean by their nature. They have to connect to something, which means you have holes. Holes + aerosolized grease = sticky 100% of the time. There's no way around it. I do my best to clean under the knobs of my stove but they don't come off. Don't even get me started about how much of an ass pain burners are. When I'm not renting I'll definitely install an induction system. If I never deal with cleaning burners, and knobs again it'll be too soon.
- christophilus 4y ago
  Having had one of these, I just want to say: “Never again.” Mine would turn itself on when you washed it and turn itself off when something splattered (like 50% of the time when I boiled water). It made me wonder if anyone actually tested the damn design before approval for mass production.
_trampeltier 4y ago
If there is an analog bar, you know about where you are in the whole range. If there is just a number, you often have no idea how good or bad it really is.
jansan 4y ago
OT: I have never before read the word "aughts" and had to look it up. Turns out this describes the first decade of the 21st century (or of any century?), i.e. the years 2000 to 2009. The British seem to use the word "noughties".
- 2143 4y ago
  I too learnt of "noughties" recently. Never heard "aughts" before. But then again, English isn't my first language. Now that I think about it, I've heard people here say, for example, "1 nought 1", "1 nought 2", "1 nought 3" etc for 101, 102, 103, and so on. Of course, I always thought they said "1 'not' 1", and not "1 'nought' 1", and didn't ponder too much into it, even though neither of them made sense to me.
  - jansan 4y ago
    Here is some advanced stuff from Monty PythonÄs Flying Circus: "Good afternoon and welcome to Lords on the second day of the first test. So far today we've had five hours batting from England and already they're nought for nought. Cowdrey is not out nought. Naughton is not in. Knott is in and is nought for not out. Naughton of Northants got a nasty knock on the nut in the nets last night but it's nothing of note. Next in is Nat Newton of Notts. Not Nutring - Nutting's at nine, er, Nutring knocked neatie nighty knock knock..." Here at timestamp 0:32 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6dl8og https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6dl8og
flashingleds 4y ago
It can go both ways of course. The first edition of Norman’s classic ‘design of everyday things’ was 1988, and it’s interesting to read that book today and see how a lot of the hard problems he was discussing were completely solved by the advent of touchscreen interfaces (specifically, the ability to reconfigure the interface according to what tasks are relevant at that moment). Done right, touchscreens are a huge boon for usability (I mean, look at what the iphone did). Done poorly they’re a disaster, but that’s been true forever with UI design regardless of the tools at hand. (I haven’t read the revised edition (2013) of Norman’s book, I guess he must address touchscreens)
- blackhaz 4y ago
  What are the examples of touchscreens done right besides the iPhone which is also on a UX downhill since, probably iPhone 4 or 5 era? Cars? Motherfucking abysmal. ATMs? How many times we tried to press a button realizing you're missing it completely because there's a 3-inch think screen? Laptops? Only those who like fingerprints. Cameras? I think if you are seriously using it, you prefer tactile. Signature pads? This should not even exist. Vending machines? I think they're more confusing with buttons jumping on screen and changing their labels than without. Handheld video games? Still rely on buttons. I wish designers would not try to stick them in everything. They're only good for small handheld devices to cram lots of functions in, and they're always a UX compromise. They can only improve the number of functions you can squeeze in a device.
  - eimrine 4y ago
    > touchscreens done right besides the iPhone I prefer devices with qwerty to be honest, and if you already have a qwerty input plus sensor "joystick" w/ pressable button under it - I am talking about Blackberry - you quickly realize that you don't need sensor input except of for apps w/o proper support of joystick and webpages w/ GDPR. > Signature pads? This should not even exist. Drawing pads? > I wish designers would not try to stick them in everything. I wish designers and MARKETINGers stop to place them in anything, except of mentioned higher. > Vending machines? I think they're more confusing with buttons jumping on screen and changing their labels than without I have a vending machine from Porsche auto salon and buttons doesn't jump. Sensor is needed for adding kind of luxury mood if you already have a display which is needed for jumping Porsche logo.
omega3 4y ago
One only needs to look at how professionals operate to find already iterated to a close perfection user interfaces. Take a professional kitchen at a restaurant and compare it with a gadget filled home kitchen.
- tunap 4y ago
  My dinosaur 5 Star Range cannot be beat. Despite the large knobs, it does everything I want it to do, how I want it done. No UX getting in the way to "assist" in deviating me from my intended settings.
- thfuran 4y ago
  I work on software for professional use and while I'd never say our UX is near perfection, we do get a bunch of tickets if things change and some process starts taking an extra click or two. We're at least pressured to avoid UX regressions and needless changes.
- nicbou 4y ago
  I had a similar experience with accounting software recently. The ugly software is built for someone entering 20 invoices in a row, and automates as much of it as it can. The shiny startup software was designed by a very skilled designer who never had to do accounting.
- MajorBee 4y ago
  That's not always the right way to go either. A professional using a particular device on the daily will be proficient in its usage regardless of how terrible the user interface, simply on the basis of how often they use the thing. On the other hand, how quickly an amateur can pick up a device and start using it will be heavily dependent on how intuitive and instructive the interface is. These two can often be conflicting, though not always. For a product that has a lot of "amateur" users (many home appliances), a touch screen can often be the right paradigm to choose. A classic example of this is the situation where an experienced cashier on an "analog" system can just fly through the buttons and complete transactions in no time, while at the same time a rookie would take that much more time to ramp up, figure out, and internalize the various button mappings. A darker interpretation of this would be that the system is optimization for fungible workers, where swapping out one cashier at will for another has negligible impact on productivity.
wiz21c 4y ago
Maybe it just costs less to build LED screen cars than those with knobs ?
- etiam 4y ago
  Could well be, if nothing else in workforce competence. I like to claim the development the last few decades seems to be going from specialized tools that performed their task beautifully to generic tools that performed that task (or some semblance thereof) at all. Case in point: "Desktop evolution" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI3ojKxhy-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI3ojKxhy-4
- mateo1 4y ago
  Unfortunately that's true. These days it's just cheaper and easier to place everything on a screen rather than using anything physical. Imagine that voice recognition gets even better, then it would be even cheaper to have nothing but a speaker and a microphone. Touchscreens and capacitive buttons have a number of issues that physical controls don't, but (unfortunately?) they're usually cheaper, last longer and are much more convenient for the manufacturers so they're not going anywhere. Tactile feedback, a fixed spatial position and being "always on" are now luxuries.
vortico 4y ago
Reminded me of my favorite article. http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/ http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi... I'm willing to pay extra to avoid touch screens in my cars, washing machines, door locks, and personal computers. I can't be the only one!
- user_7832 4y ago
  Thanks for that article, it was a great read.
- forsythe_ 4y ago
  Wow, excellent article. And it sent me down a deep rabbithole reading the rest of Bret's blog. Thank you.
dontbenebby 4y ago
Before I transferred to the University of Pittsburgh, I was pursuing a minor in graphic design. I could have taken one of the last darkroom photography courses offered at La Roche College, but chose to take a digital course since I had extensive experience in that area dating back to saving snaps on floppies at the Duquesne Multicultural Computer Academy in the City of Pittsburgh. I agree with you WRT tactile interfaces, the only reason things like the iPhone work are a combination of text prediction and over-reliance on rare ingredients like rare earth minerals to make that super strong glass and super thin, long lasting batteries. (China controls a lot of those mines now, because Obama was a weak leader who handed Africqa and SE Asia over to totalitatians.) I hate how many things were taken digital rapidly, classic example being I read about Nordic countries ditching AM/FM radio. It is cool and good to be able to buy a twenty dollar radio and set of rechargable double AAs, and then have access to news via folks like NPR + some classical or whatever to flood a room with noise when you need to go full cyberpunk at the library, but the library was closed due to COVID. I can't tell if the generation after millenials are all what that hentai loving sci fi guy from boing boing warned us about: unable to use the command line or understand the value of general purpose computing, but on my end I'm about to go stand outside with a sign and a cup rather than waste energy and resources standing up a website, writing out a bunch of "creative nonfiction", and then having folks pretend that if they send me something like "Monero" (that might be secure in a technial sense, but is literally sold only in one physical location in my city.) (A long time ago, I considered being a designer, but that's subjective, and it seems like the field is structured so they mostly invent ways to steal ideas from the technical folks who make it possible for them to have the serenity first to think up cute designs.) So many designers forget that "low tech" designs were planned after years or generations of iteration and shouldn't be changed lightly -- that might be a load bearing lorus ipsum ;) (For context, the reason you're getting this type of reply is that around 2010 I offered to work for a major FFRDC codeing up custom forensics tools that would be more usable so they wouldn't need to pay millions for training and licenses, but I never even got a reply to my email despite being referred to that person by someone who founded an entire conference on my area of research. Then again, we were also discussing whether I should join the FBI at the time. (My take was they hadn't figured out how to navigate the conflict of interest between the counter intelligence mission and the criminal division, just like the NSA hadn't figured out how to navigate offense and defense or the secret service never learned to navigate the dual mission of offense and defense) Later on, at Defcon an SS agent (using THAT acronym on purpose) told me if you want to know what it's like to be in the secret service, go stand in a suit on your front lawn in 80% humiudity for twelve hours, but to be fair I didn't check if I could apply and ONLY focus on things like counterfeiting, since I've made it clear for over a decade I won't kill the president, but I'll absolutely pull out my phone and arch my eyebrows at the corpse as I take a photo if someone else does. This poster paid 150 dollars on a nonprofit salary to go see Obama gaslight him on encryption after. This is like the fall of the USSR. Post better. Be Better. TL;DR: Great article, thanks for sharing Marban. I agree that low tech interfaces are cool and good.
memorable 4y ago
Frick Medium again. Cannot find an archive for this one, so take a Scribe instead. https://archive.ph/YgElI https://archive.ph/YgElI
reacharavindh 4y ago
The place where I feel this the most is cars. I drove a Tesla Model 3 that belongs to a friend and had used a rented VW Golf mark 8. The touch screen and touch sensitive panels with haptic feedback were horrible. I now appreciate my VW Golf Mark 7 even more. It is glorious to have knobs, physical buttons, and levers for all things that needs to be controlled while driving. It's intuitive, and I can use them without looking at them(taking attention off of the road). I wish and hope that a modern car gets this "old fashioned" interface when I am in the market for a new car in a few years.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Touchscreens look great on spec sheets and to those who buy them, not necessarily to those who have to use them. And those that buy them are loathe to admit they suck until after they've sold it off (because admitting it sucks means admitting you made a bad purchase).
TacticalCoder 4y ago
To anyone designing low-tech user interfaces: I'm all for something simple but please, oh please, use something with a better feedback than the membrane "keyboard" shown in the article. Membrane keys are the absolute shittiest piece of shit ever produced. I use three everyday: my safe has one. My projector's remote control and my LED strip light (I use a LED strip to give a "home cinema" feel to the room) has one. The one on the safe, thankfully, at least emits a "beep" every time a press registers. Doesn't make it great by any means but there's that. On the projector there's a delay between any press and the projector giving you any feedback, so you don't know if a press registered or not. I do honestly think, and I'm not a big smartphone fan, that a virtual keyboard on s smartphone's screen with haptic feeback (where the phone vibrates a bit when you "press" a key) is infinitely better than membrane keyboards. Now I'm not saying everything should be replaced with screens+haptic feedback: what I'm saying is membrane keyboard are the worst piece of shit man ever invented. On the other hand my alarm system has buttons (zero screen): one button, one function. And the feedback on these buttons is perfect. It's bliss. Same in my ultra high end, but thankfully nine years old, car: one button, one function. And when you press that button you know it's been pressed. Perfection. (I say "thankfully nine years old" because the very same car brand/model now uses screens everywhere instead of buttons). So you can have two exactly identical looking user interface and, without trying, it's impossible to tell if it's a complete piece of shit or not (well, these membranes things: you kinda spot them from a mile): you need to actually press the buttons to know. Membranes are the opposite of perfect user experience: they're mediocre turds.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- joezydeco 4y ago
  So your complaint isn't really about the membrane itself but the lack of haptic or other feedback that comes with a press. I worked on controls with one company and their solution was to put a membrane overlay on the panel but place low-travel physical buttons behind it. You had the advantages of a membrane overlay (sealed from dust/moisture, better artwork on top) and the higher reliability of the button. And if the overlay tore or wore off the system still worked.
orbit7 4y ago
Interesting read, I certainly think there is a lot to be said for minimlism where a system can be controlled with physical controls/ buttons without an instruction manual, fancy screens and UI are often a complete overkill for a product. The Design of Everyday things is an essential read on these topics and generally a book I'd recommend to anyone working in tech or design.
resters 4y ago
In the case of cars, why can't the UX be a replaceable module so that third party options can be chosen?
danybittel 4y ago
I think it's not only "low tech". The bigger issue I see, is that everything tries to be an Assistant. For example, the Oculus Quest, there's a on / off button fine, easy to understand. Except, it magically turns itself on if it assumes, you may use it, and turns itself off if not used anymore. Unfortunately that is often not correct, so you start counter acting, holding it carefully so the sensor does not react and double checking if it turned off or just on again, when switching it off. Congratulation, they made a simple on / off switch unintuitive. I see this pattern everywhere. It seems ux designers are trying to hard to be clever. Just give us a Tool, that does one thing and always acts the same. If it doesn't make sense, let the user learn from it's mistake.
analog31 4y ago
A few days ago in these very pages, I dissed the UI of an oscilloscope. But using one yesterday, I realized an advantage: I could operate it with one hand while holding the probe with the other. Even software interfaces for instrumentation, that use the keyboard and mouse, are physically awkward and your computer has to be positioned just right. A couple more advantages: * A small interface makes small things small. A voltmeter doesn't need to be as big as a computer, and there are lots of gadgets that are smaller. * One-foot operation, such as the page turning pedals that musicians are now using for their sheet music.
- eddieroger 4y ago
  I have a 2017 Honda Civic. That particular model year, they chose to remove the volume knob for a capacitive little slider thing (in addition to the buttons on the wheel). The very next year, they put it back. Turns out it's pretty useful to be able to control the volume of your stereo without taking your eyes off the road when operating a car. They did a similar thing for the air controls, except they left some of them as actual knobs and buttons. Sometimes the old ways are better and have lasted so long for a reason.
  - thomastjeffery 4y ago
    The volume knob is gone as early as the 2015 model, at least in the EX-L variant; but the steering wheel buttons are still there. If I didn't have physical buttons on the steering wheel to press, I wouldn't bother using the stereo at all. Driving is the absolute worst environment for touch screens. Not only am I unable to look at where I am touching at the same moment I want to touch, the whole car is moving unpredictably in relation to my finger.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    > Turns out it's pretty useful to be able to control the volume of your stereo without taking your eyes off the road when operating a car. I do agree the volume slider is a terrible choice of interface, but TBF there is a tactile, physical volume control on your car within reach of your hands while they're on the wheel. There is a volume adjustment on your steering wheel, so theoretically you shouldn't even have to use the volume control on the stereo while you're driving.
etiam 4y ago
Does anybody have sources they want to share for getting components for classic interfaces like these today? I'd imagine production has plummeted since the glory days, but there ought to be stock of some things around still and people salvaging nice parts? I don't do any hardware work worth mentioning, but I hope to get around to amending that soon, and I'd find it attractive to use interfaces appropriate to the task (which, as people here have noted, will mean the ones on topic in a very substantial share of the cases).
- ntoskrnl 4y ago
  Digikey and Mouser
- joshvm 4y ago
  For hobbyists in the US, Sparkfun or Adafruit are a good start. Otherwise go to the big suppliers: Digikey, Farnell and Mouser. China (Aliexpress) supplies pretty much everything else. Many dropship on eBay and Amazon too, if you want convenience. You shouldn't need to salvage unless you really want some vintage pot knob or slider that you can't find elsewhere. Industrial hardware usually needs to be tactile (eg operated with gloves). Some modern stuff is better anyway, like mono OLED displays which are far more readable than LCDs.
  - etiam 4y ago
    Thanks! That's very helpful, and I'm glad to learn availability today is much better than I had imagined.
jopsen 4y ago
Is "low tech" really cheaper? Curious, because I thought the reason nobody did buttons anymore was that printing a pattern on a touch capacitive surface was dirty cheap. Whereas I assume tactile buttons require a lot work when mounting/building the product. Am I wrong? I guess an 8 digit display is still cheaper than a touch screen :)
- tremon 4y ago
  Cheaper, how? Are we looking only at production cost, or total lifetime? How much energy does a button use over its lifetime, vs a checkbox on a LED screen?
  - infinityio 4y ago
    In this context, I'd imagine cheaper from an R&D + Manufacturing side. But equally this probably is the case - if adding a screen requires adding a much more powerful microcontroller to drive it, it probably adds a fair bit of cost
amelius 4y ago
All the laser printers I have used have a low-tech user interface, with an LCD screen and a bunch of buttons. The problem is that the buttons that the user can press (the "active" buttons) are dependent on context. Imho it would be much better if laser printers had a smartphone-style interface (touchscreen). Same for office phones (which have a plethora of buttons e.g. for conference calls that are not useful in many contexts).
- nicbou 4y ago
  I used a few office printers with touch screens, and they were much better.
- infinityio 4y ago
  Maybe that's the distinction - if you are making a product that needs to do exactly one thing (or category of things), it should not have a touchscreen, it should have a button and a dial (eg toaster, oven, hob, clock). If you cannot map all common uses of the product to a single button press and instead rely on context, a touchscreen might be the better option
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tablespoon 4y ago
IMHO, user interfaces generally are better the more buttons and knobs they have (scaled for compactness requirements). Obviously some thought must be put into those buttons and knobs, but I've never personally ran into a UI that had too many.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
I have always been skeptical of many "new-fangled" interfaces, like touchscreens and HUDs. I know that, many years ago, cars started to display speed and tach displays as digital, and that was fairly quickly reversed, because people kept seeing their speed as a jumble of characters (look at digital displays that change rapidly). I know that a number of auto manufacturers are starting to ditch touchscreen, for knobs. I've found that haptic feedback is helpful. I use it (as well as a "retro-style" LED display) in my latest little timer app[0]. The earlier versions of that app were a lot more complex, and I ended up removing a great deal of the flexibility. So far, people have given me good feedback on the new "Fisher-Price" interface. [0] https://riftvalleysoftware.com/work/ios-apps/ambiamara/ https://riftvalleysoftware.com/work/ios-apps/ambiamara/
nicbou 4y ago
The most important lesson I learned in engineering school: define the problem then look for a solution. Most people have a solution in mind before they even look at the problem, and that solution is usually "build an app", or "slap a screen on it". With bureaucracy, it's "put the form on the internet". There are a few low tech devices I much prefer: - A kitchen timer vs. my phone. I don't need to unlock the phone and navigate to the timer app. I just twist the knob until I see the desired number. Hell, it's probably set to 3 minutes already, because I mostly use it to make tea. - My microwave has one knob for time, and one knob for intensity. Best microwave interface ever. It doesn't tell time, so I never need to adjust it. I had microwaves so complicated that I turned to social networks for help. - Stoves. I refuse to buy a stove without knobs. I have hated every stove without knobs I've ever used. Touch-sensitive buttons don't work with oven mitts, but get triggered by a wet rag, steam and spilled spaghetti sauce. - Car infotainment. Each knob controls one thing. It's always in the same place, and I can find it while keeping my eyes on the road. - Wired audio. This device is paired to the device it's physically connected to.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- the_snooze 4y ago
  >Most people have a solution in mind before they even look at the problem, and that solution is usually "put it on the blockchain" But to your point, you're absolutely right. If you want to actually deliver valuable solutions, you need to have a good understanding of what unmet need you're trying to address. Otherwise you end up with a bad problem-solution match, and you waste everyone's time. Too often, technically minded people put too much emphasis on what's novel instead of what's valuable.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  > My microwave has one knob for time, and one knob for intensity. I don't think a knob is the optimal interface for time. In microwaves you need to input both low values of ~10s and very high values of ~600s with good precision on both cases. Sure, a logarithmic knob will give you that, but I don't think it's what you would expect. For power it's good. It's even a much better interface for the power level than the usual. But then, anything is a much better interface than the usual microwave power level one. > Wired audio. This device is paired to the device it's physically connected to. There used to exist those wireless speakers with two pieces, one you physically connected to the audio output on the device, the other had the speaker. The transmission was analog and sucked due to noise, but it was much more reliable and had less lag than bluetooth. For some reason, instead of fixing it into a digital transmission, everybody just stopped manufacturing the device.
CivBase 4y ago
> Many consumers judge product qualities based on superficial impressions and studies have shown that these impressions can cause users to perceive a product as less usable than it actually is. I'm genuinely amazed that touch screens are still seen as "high tech" by so many people. They've been common for a decade and most people should be very familiar with their flaws. They're harder to use, more susceptible to defects, provide little or no feedback, and add expense to the product. The only real advantage touch screens have is that they are dynamic, so you can cram multiple interfaces into a small physical footprint - at the cost of only being able to display interface at a time. And I guess you could theoretically update the interface after sale... but I don't know if I've ever seen that done in practice other than to fix bugs.
mLuby 4y ago
Are after-market retrofits replacing touch screens with low-tech controls possible?
Zachsa999 4y ago
Project Idea: low tech consumer goods website. Rate ovens microwaves washing mach ines etc by low tech high quality.
incahoots 4y ago
Biggest offender are automakers. A giant touch screen that replaces physical knobs and switches is incredibly backwards thinking. The ability to make quick changes to HVAC, radio, or heating/cooling settings is now requiring drivers to take their eyes off the road to drag a greasy finger across a virtual dial, it's pretty inane all things considered.
DoubleDerper 4y ago
A certain "smart" speaker company replaced their expensive device's single functional button with capacitive touch. The product is worse, now less accessible.
danans 4y ago
The Awair Element indoor air quality monitor has an interesting low-tech yet information dense physical display. It's a low resolution matrix of LEDs behind a plastic facade that displays current air quality measurements pretty simply but effectively. It's a clever design choice for many reasons, not just because it lowers the BOM of the device, but because people already have enough computer/phone/TV high resolution displays in their living spaces, and in contrast the Awair looks somewhat elegant in contrast. There are some reasonable critiques regarding the accuracy or effectiveness of these consumer indoor air monitors, but I get far more questions about the Awair than I do about any other devices I have. Some of that is its novelty, but some of it also is the minimal UX.
jupp0r 4y ago
My favorite example: Microwave controls. One dial for power and one dial for time is all you really need and much better than numpad controls.
- twobitshifter 4y ago
  I have an LG microwave with a simple touch strip on the front for setting the time and it’s actually amazing. all the more complicated never used features are hidden behind the door and not seen until opened. The touch strip is ribbed and clever enough to start jumping ahead by whole minutes or more as you scroll.
guessbest 4y ago
There are "low tech" interfaces are on handheld ham radios and can be pretty annoying to have to read the manual to change basic settings, like from step from 2.5k to 25k or somewhere in between. A touch screen would make handheld transceivers so much easier to use especially considering the number of features in it.
Aperocky 4y ago
imo a lot of benefit claimed are not 'low tech', they are just the natural result of simple > complex. The philosophy of simple > complex isn't low-tech or high-tech, it just is.
tiffanyh 4y ago
I use to have a 2006 Saab. I LOVED how it had mechanical buttons for everything on the dash. http://images.gtcarlot.com/pictures/48277419.jpg http://images.gtcarlot.com/pictures/48277419.jpg It's no surprise given that Saab has a history in aerospace. I totally get why car manufacturers are moving to essentially a big iPad as a replacement for the overall dash (it's like when the iPhone came out and people loved their Blackberry keyboards), but from a function vs form perspective - buttons are way easier.
- michaelrpeskin 4y ago
  I still daily drive a Classic 900 (1987) and not only is everything a real button or knob, but it's all controlled by vacuum, not electronics. It's fun to hear the hisses when you change the vent settings.
  - tiffanyh 4y ago
    Re: vent I still think the HVAC vent knob on my Saab was the most innovate knob I've ever seen and nothing compares today. It allowed you to redirect the air in a fluid full 360 degree (semi-circular) position seamlessly. All other cars it's 2 separate horizontal and vertical controls.
    - michaelrpeskin 4y ago
      Yes, it goes from "0" at the bottom to defrost at the top and every step in between makes perfect sense. Just twist the knob and it works. No thinking.
glonq 4y ago
I spent the first several years of my career developing low-tech user interfaces for parking and payment kiosks that had little more than piezo buttons and HD44780-based text-only LCD's. It certainly helped me appreciate that for UX, sometimes "less is more".
titzer 4y ago
I just started getting into embedded programming (Arduinos and Pi's) and one of the most exciting things is the possibility to make physical thing with custom buttons, toggles, and LEDs to do a thing. E.g. I prototyped a metronome (for practicing music) with an animated LED light bar (out of PVC pipe!) and pushbuttons to program it. Thing can be huge and robust, like throw-against-the-wall robust. And I like that there are only so many buttons and they don't move!
twobitshifter 4y ago
One of the best low-tech interfaces is the honeywell round thermostat. Change the dial to point to the temperature you want and the internal indicator shows you the current temperature. All without requiring any transistors. Go shop for a thermostat, look at other options, and be amazed at how complex the layers of technology can make things.
- vel0city 4y ago
  So how to I set my away temperature? How do I set the return temperature? How do I set the sleep temperature? How do I set the wake temperature? How can I make it change based on my schedule, as I'm home most of the day on the weekends while I'm often out during the week? Seems like its not that great of a UI given the requirements I have.
  - twobitshifter 4y ago
    Turn it up and down when you come and go? In my opinion all those features are a catastrophe in that your body will end up being in your house at the wrong time or your clothing will be warmer or hotter than typical or your spouse will, and you will want to play with the temp anyways and end up fiddling with things to get it right. The learning thermostats try to solve this, but it’s at great cost and complexity and experiences vary and habits change.
    - vel0city 4y ago
      > In my opinion all those features are a catastrophe in that your body will end up being in your house at the wrong time You're trading sometimes being in the house at the wrong time to every day being in the house at the wrong time. Then your other statement doesn't matter if its programmable or not, if you're constantly in disagreement of what the thermostat should be you're going to be fiddling with it regardless of if its programmed or not. I realize people's experiences vary greatly, but that's kind of my point about looking at the basic Honeywell thermostat and declaring its a great user experience. To me, its a terrible user experience and far worse than my basic 7 day 4 stage programmable thermostat which I touch once a season and otherwise let it be. In the end I save energy, reduce my bill, have on average a more comfortable house, and I rarely have to interact with the thermostat.
motohagiography 4y ago
The comment about the marketing person saying users would feel like the lower-tech UX was archaic was interesting because of the insight it implied. The value a product expresses really is the product. The user has to feel something about it. A medical device in a hospital setting used by nurses on patients needs to express professional sophistication to the patient and reliability to the RN. The simple LCD display makes sense for expressing something purpose-built, e.g. for a doctor doing a test, but for the RN, who does most of the care and patient interaction, things like rapport, trust, and familiarity go a lot further, hence asking for a touch screen. Once as a PM on a security product, I entered into the UX development with the perspective of producing a consumer product that just told you the thing you needed to know, believing that the value we were providing was from our ML analytics back end we had invested so much in. What came back from enterprise sales was, "we want more widgets on the screen, can you just make it look like it's doing something?" My reaction was, "find smarter customers," which of course was the the most uniquely and profoundly wrong response in almost every way at once. After going out on some sales calls, what customers wanted was our data. They didn't care about our huge ML pipeline with a calm and decisive consumer oriented UX, because in their environment, having smooth products was not what made them express power to their own stakeholders - they expressed their own value by showing whizzing screens of data. What they really wanted in hindsight was a private telemetry and surveillance API for fleet devices, like a more featureful MDM, but scriptable so they could demonstrate their own value - and not an ML model that did that for them. A low tech command line or API was the real product they wanted. Customers who did like it were enterprise managers who wanted to show they were hip to silicon valley driven tech change. I'd wonder if we could make a radial web chart of the values a customer really has and the result would indicate the design language elements the UX of a product should have. You'd have to figure out what things like "powerful" mean to your customers, and what would equip them to become that through using your product. Other sub values are things like authoritative, safe, precision, virtuotic, calm, belonging, competent, inventive, hidden depth, compliant and aligned, elevated, the exception, etc. Based on these, I'd design a product UX around a stack ranked set of values like these. Makes me think there is a future in new kinds of input devices though.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
igouy 4y ago
“solutionism” "Touch Screens in Cars Solve a Problem We Didn't Have" Jay Caspian Kang, NYT May 23 2022 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/23/opinion/touch-screens-cars.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/23/opinion/touch-screens-car...
layer8 4y ago
I still wish smartphones had physical PgUp/PgDn buttons. Much easier on the thumbs when you do a lot of scrolling.
- is_true 4y ago
  Maybe the volume button could be used for this
  - layer8 4y ago
    That might be possible on Android. But dedicated buttons would be better, to avoid having modes, and because sometimes there are use cases where you want to use both functions (e.g. scrolling through playlists while trying songs with different volume levels). Electronic consumer devices like Minidisc players and PDAs used to often have a multitude of buttons to directly access all commonly used functions.
dehrmann 4y ago
> Depending on how the controls are organized and differentiated by size or shape, users might also be able to distinguish between and access the controls without needing to look at the user interface I'm reminded of the big red button almost everything in a machine shop has.
AdamH12113 4y ago
I feel like a lot of people have forgotten that before the iPhone, touchscreens were widely regarded as a terrible interface only suitable for niche applications like kiosks. There were good reasons for that, and latency and lack of tactile feedback were high on the list. Touchscreens have proved effective in situations where you need a highly-flexible interface in a small space, but an awful lot of devices (like appliances) have more space and don't need the flexibility, so they end up taking all of the downsides with none of the benefits. A lot of designers (or marketers) seem to be trying to copy the look and feel of Apple devices without understanding the factors that led to their design.
- pcurve 4y ago
  I agree. I get why the trade off is worthwhile on smartphone. But I hate the push in automotive application. Yes, I'd like a big screen for navigation, but don't replace HVAC controls. It's not just about touch screen. There is overuse of capacitive buttons in cars. And it is all about dollars.
- tomtheelder 4y ago
  Although I'm very much on the side of using more low-tech interfaces, it's important to remember that pre-iPhone touchscreens were a VERY different beast. Resistive touchscreens, in particular, were awful.
  - AdamH12113 4y ago
    This is very true. Resistive touchscreens were slower, less reliable, and IIRC had coarser position sensing. Since we're talking about history, it's also worth noting that early opinions on touchscreens tended to assume they would be desk-mounted or wall-mounted, which leads to the gorilla arm problem.
sfink 4y ago
This article strangely undersells the advantages of low tech. It's true that they're not better for everything, but they have advantages well beyond the basic things mentioned. A tactile button has far fewer accuracy issues with positioning: if you can feel the button, you won't start pressing 2/3 off and then get further and further off until you're triggering something else, as happens all the time on touchscreens. A knob provides a richer communication path between your brain and the device. With touchscreens, you can basically just poke and swipe, with some unintuitive nuances like long press or multi-fingered gestures. With a knob, you're using separate muscles and so can associate muscle memory based on the size, texture, and granularity of "click" feedback as you turn. We also have the ability to finely modulate the rate of twisting something—compare that to tapping frantically on a touchscreen left/right icon to control a quantity. Knobs don't share space in our muscle memory with buttons. To some extent, different knobs and different buttons are distinguishable too. Physical sliders are good for fine-grained control, but are also good at just smashing them all the way to min or max. When I try that on a touchscreen control, it might not make it all the way to the extreme, or my angle is wrong (no physical constraint to keep my hand/finger in place!) and it doesn't register at all because I veered off of the control. Even when I'm looking at the screen already, using a directional pad means I'll always gradually get further and further off until it stops registering. Either because my attention is on a different part of the screen, or because my fingers are in the way of seeing the displayed pad. Not a problem with a physical stick or knob.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  Oh, it is actually worse. The amount of times when I swiped down from the top (to open the notification shade or whatever it is called now or to refresh the page), the UI shows pulling down the thing fully... and when backs off. I repeat the gesture, but again it goes all the way down and retracts back and nothing happens. And of course when I don't need that, I just swipe down to go top of the page - it thinks what I actually want to refresh the page. Many comments were lost that way.
  - allenu 4y ago
    Or worse, those UI affordances may change over time. With the swipe down behavior you mentioned, on iOS, I used to just swipe down from the center of the top of the iPad to see the notification shade. A recent iOS behavior made it so swiping down from the center now causes the app window to be dragged. Ugh! Now I have to relearn to find a spot slightly to the right to pull down to view the shade.
outworlder 4y ago
The main advantage of the modern GUI is when you need to perform wildly different tasks on them. Physical controls may not be appropriate to every task. This was the pitch when Jobs unveiled the iPhone, and it makes sense. However, if you have a device with a single function, there's no need for that. Your physical controls will always match the device's function. Use those.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
cosmotic 4y ago
This article misses the point of software controls: The designs can be changed up until the release of the item, sometimes even after the release using post-sales software updates. This allows companies to be more agile. The lead time for physical controls and custom LCDs is months if not years and costs tens of thousands of dollars, where software can be updated in days with near-zero cost. Also, most humans are easily wooed by the glitzy animations during the pre-sales period and aren't cognizant of the problems they suffer later due to bad controls. Though the author did hit the nail on the head about tactility.
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Curiously, for some people low-tech is not better. I.e. used to have an Amana RadarRange which had two knobs - one for power and one for time. You turned them until you saw what you wanted on the display. But my pre-reading children couldn't operate it. I'd say "nuke it for a minute and a half" and they'd twist the knob and ask "Is that enough? Which way should I turn it?" See they couldn't do the math to know if 45 seconds was more or less than a minute and a half. If it'd been buttons I could have said "Press 90 seconds" or whatever and they could do that. Later when we got a different microwave they had a better time.
- natdempk 4y ago
  Looking at the dial I feel like if you told them to move it to 1:30 or move it to the 30 past the 1, it would be pretty obvious? Wouldn't you have the same issue of having to convert 1:30 to 90 seconds with the other microwave design? I don't understand how the two are different.
  - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
    one you just type in the number. The other requires a knowledge of counting and ordinality etc. Is 90 seconds greater than 45 seconds? Is 9 bigger then 5?
kylehotchkiss 4y ago
Today I was running some errands in my car. The AC was too cold. Without taking my eyes off the road, I felt around for the temperature knob. My car has large, grippy knobs. It's an off-roading focused model and the knobs were made to be usable while driving on bumpy roads. I found the temperature knob, I figured where it was set with the easy-to-feel tactile indicator, and I adjusted it down, all without having to use my eyes. I love tech but never want to lose my big, rubbery AC knobs in the car. There's enough distracted drivers on the road to watch out for, I don't want to be another one.
- vel0city 4y ago
  > Today I was running some errands in my car. The AC was too cold. This literally never happens on any of my cars. I'd rather not have to be distracted with an uncomfortable car in the middle of driving and then have to feel around navigating a few different knobs and buttons to make my car comfortable, my car should just automatically be comfortable. > There's enough distracted drivers on the road to watch out for You were more distracted having to think about the climate, take your hand off the wheel, feel around for the knobs, and adjust them properly than someone using automatic climate control where they just never have to make that adjustment in the first place.
Unbeliever69 4y ago
I was one of the first few Ux designers for a large defense contractor that made data-link communication devices for the military. Prior to my arrival all the GUIs were done in Matlab. Think 80s VCR-level complexity. Needless to say, these GUIs were not well received by the boots-on-the-ground soldier that had to operate the equipment. Furthermore, they were a complete mystery to the top brass who funded these projects. When I arrived, some groups in the organization had begun to refactor these Matlab interfaces into WPF applications with slick new updates to the widgets, but it was really lipstick on a pig. After listening to all the stakeholders and users our proposal was to develop a skeuomorphic radio interface (green box with a bunch of dials and frequency display). Only the critical controls were featured on the radio face. All of the configuration options were buried. Now, I get all the eye-rolling when it comes to skeuomorphism as a fad, but it really resonated with our target audience and their superiors. This "Virtual Radio" soon became the defacto style for all communication devices throughout the organization. Because of the animation capabilities of VPF we were able to mimic both the look and feel of the various analog radio controls. It was super realistic. More importantly it allowed us to more easily communicate our designs to a broad audience, including: soldiers, contractors, technicians, and top brass. It has been nearly a decade since I left the company. I hope that this design has gone away. Not because it was ineffective (or trendy), but rather these communication systems needed to evolve to be self-configuring and self-operating, requiring little if any interaction by a soldier other than monitoring. After all, the best interface is one that doesn't need to exist.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I wonder how it evolved over time, after you left. Most soldiers are in their early to mid 20's, right? They might have never encountered an analog radio at this point! On the other hand, those old physical UIs did have a certain intuitiveness to them that might just be easy to learn, even if it isn't familiar.
nelgaard 4y ago
low tech can provide control and persistence. I want a real hardware volume dial on my phones and laptops. Mostly so that I can turn them down and be sure that that I will not embarrass myself by making noises at events where silence is expected. And I miss DIP switches. It is just brilliant that you could configure it once and for all. E.g. I have smoke detectors that could all be linked together by pressing some buttons in a weird ritual, but when you change a battery they forget and run down the battery in no time trying in vain to sync.
WalterBright 4y ago
> such as silk-screened button labels becoming faint after extended use Becoming faint? On my Microsoft keyboard, the letters on the keys soon wore off completely. I had to re-learn touch typing.
WalterBright 4y ago
> When a user interface can get away with only icons in place of words, a low-tech user interface can work particularly well. Icons just mean nobody can use it. Heaven help the poor user who loses the manual that has a chart to decode the icons.
eucryphia 4y ago
It would make low budget SciFi movies look realistic too
mc4ndr3 4y ago
I detest touch screens. The feedback, durability, reliability, discoverability, and general focus of an application can often be maximized by selecting more traditional hardware user interface components. The ROC curve for gesture based volume controls peaks at false positives and again at false negatives.
civilized 4y ago
Car touch screen UI engineer is the third worst job, right behind 737 MAX MCAS designer and the guys who faked Volkswagen emissions.

407 points by thm 4y ago

As kid I obviously was thrilled by futuristic touchscreen stuff but now I can't help but hate that and want all the controls analog.

eimrine 4y ago

> During the recent home device project I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest supporters of a touchscreen-based solution was the team’s marketing specialist. Why am I not surprised?

mro_name 4y ago
I came to write my official paper letters with vi :hardcopy in 70ies RFC typewriter style. Helps to focus on the content. That's exactly what marketing dreads.
- mro_name 4y ago
  meanwhile found the template: https://darknet.mro.name/pub/brief-dina4.txt https://darknet.mro.name/pub/brief-dina4.txt
Gigachad 4y ago
I don't buy it tbh. Most home appliances are sufficiently complex that physical buttons are not intuitive. Ask someone to change the clock on their oven vs on their phone. Most could do it on the phone but not the oven. And there are countless more practical examples of this issue. My Breville coffee machine only has buttons and knobs, which works fine for the basic flow since everything has a dedicated button. But once you want to do something like run a cleaning cycle you will have to read the manual every time because there is nothing intuitive about holding double shot + single shot and then power for 3 seconds. Or holding program and then power to open temperature adjust then clicking one of the buttons to set a temp which isn't labeled and needs the manual to decipher. While on the touch screen model, the basic flow might be slightly less nice, but the most complex flows are also reduced to about the same complexity and can be intuitively worked out while using the device. Combining physical buttons for basic flow with a touch screen is the best of both imo. I have used some ovens which use a normal knob like it would on an older oven, but if you want to do something like start a self clean cycle or adjust steaming, its done via the touch screen.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  > Combining physical buttons for basic flow with a touch screen is the best of both imo This. But if I have to choose, then I'll have physical buttons over a touch screen. Why? Because I use the "basic flow" every damn day. Whereas I only need to set the clock every few months.
- bandie91 4y ago
  > change the clock on their oven it's really easy. grab the clock. turn the hands to the desired position. optionally wind it up. put back on the oven. the only thing i dont understand why would anybody put his clock on the oven?
  - Too 4y ago
    How else would you know if the clock on the micro is not correct if you don't have the oven to use as reference?
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  If one is going to go into the effort and cost to put an SoC onboard that can run a touchscreen, one should just have the device communicate with the touchscreen computer in your pocket instead. Common basic functions: knobs dials switches. Extended functions: there's an app for that, or suffer through modal button changes like you describe. Save on BOM costs, less points of failure, and does not require an SoC with display controller and a software stack running a (usually janky and slow and non-standard) UI.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    This does happen on a lot of devices. It’s ok for stuff you expect to last a few years but anything longer and the app stops working before the device does. I have a bike gps which has some functions as a phone app but the phone app no longer works.
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago

acd 4y ago

Physical car buttons and knobs vs touch screens

arky527 4y ago

Modern cars seem to be moving towards all controls on a touch screen somewhere. I suppose this allows for more frequent updates, but in my experience it just leads to more bugs and more painful factory updates. Not to mention using a touchscreen to adjust the temperature while driving is incredibly dangerous compared to a dial you can feel for without taking your eyes off the road.

PartiallyTyped 4y ago
I have grown to heavily dislike the whole smartify everything. Haptic feedback is a core part of how humans process the world, and to remove it in favor of more frequent updates seems like a naive decision at best. Flatness in phones works because we can use our full attention - which is also why car accidents happen when people use it while driving.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Mordisquitos 4y ago
  > Flatness in phones works because we can use our full attention I very much agree with you, and would like to add that flatness in phones is a feature because today phones are pocket computers, and computers should be able to provide any arbitrary UI to function as such. Cars on the other hand are not a computer nor are they intended to function as one. The fact that modern cars expose part of their on-board computer to the driver is no excuse to treat any capability that may be handled by said computer as something exclusively accessible via a touchscreen UI, especially when its something that is expected to be interacted with while driving (audio playback control, climate control, windscreen wipers, etc.). A touchscreen is fine for features that should not be done while driving and did not exist or were not easily accessible prior to the ubiquity of touchscreens in cars. For all intents and purposes those are computer features. However, subjecting anything that was previously available via mechanical interaction to it is an unacceptable regression.
  - DonHopkins 4y ago

lucidguppy 4y ago

Humane Interface by J. Raskin had some interesting points about how to make low tech interfaces. You need essentially eliminate "modes" - like the clock/set time/radio mode buttons on your alarm clock. I'm not saying he's right - but he's worth reading.

ratww 4y ago
That's a great point about "modes". Even 40 years people already joked about the alarm clock you mentioned: everyone knew how to use VCRs, but the damn clock was never adjusted. Since it was neither intuitive, nor something a user would memorize how to do, most VCRs just sat there saying 12:00 or 00:00 forever. For the alarm clock, of course, we had to learn since it was its main function. I see this in music equipment a lot, too. To program something with modes you need significantly more time than something with just knobs. And the performance possibilities are also much limited as soon as you bring in menu-diving.
- couchand 4y ago
  That's a great point about looking to music equipment for UX ideas. If you want to see what happens when a design team puts serious effort into building a satisfying and effective interface, look at electronic music devices.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Those mixer boards you see are horribly complicated, but with the thousands of knobs and buttons most anyone can figure out how to mute a microphone in a few minutes or less. The touchscreen versions can be more complicated - but since they also have the ability to change the knobs to presets they may be more useful to actual sound engineers.
    - ratww 4y ago
      Good points. Some mechanical version can also change the buttons, faders and knobs positions to presets when they have automation circuits, this has been a thing since the late 70s. So you get the best of both worlds. One important aspect is that with tactile controls one barely needs presets, though, except for recall. Mixing done from scratch is quite fast, even when compared to presets, so I would argue that there is a significant tradeoff when going digital.

s4i 4y ago

Reminds me of modern stoves. All of them have touch controls which means every time a friend of mine is presenting me their new kitchen, I have no idea how to use the stove. They always say "No, no, it's really easy to get used to" but it's still frustrating because the touch controls never bring any new features to the table. They are just knobs abstracted into separated buttons and sliders, of which the latter you are not quite sure if you should drag them or just point to the wanted value. With a physical knob, the intuition of the laws of physics tells you how the knob can be turned. They are easier to clean for sure but I can't believe the current "click this, slide that" UX is the best the manufacturers could come up with.

XorNot 4y ago
Cleaning is what I spend far more time doing with a stove, and is more important, then the very brief period I'm involved in setting the temperature during cooking. So it seems like a fairly good trade-off to me.
- tobr 4y ago
  In my experience they’re not great for cleaning. They get confused when they get wet and start blinking and beeping and turning things on and off randomly. A set of well-designed physical dials could be made in a way that’s easier to keep clean.
  - crowbahr 4y ago
    You can't keep physical dials clean by their nature. They have to connect to something, which means you have holes. Holes + aerosolized grease = sticky 100% of the time. There's no way around it. I do my best to clean under the knobs of my stove but they don't come off. Don't even get me started about how much of an ass pain burners are. When I'm not renting I'll definitely install an induction system. If I never deal with cleaning burners, and knobs again it'll be too soon.
christophilus 4y ago
Having had one of these, I just want to say: “Never again.” Mine would turn itself on when you washed it and turn itself off when something splattered (like 50% of the time when I boiled water). It made me wonder if anyone actually tested the damn design before approval for mass production.

_trampeltier 4y ago

If there is an analog bar, you know about where you are in the whole range. If there is just a number, you often have no idea how good or bad it really is.

jansan 4y ago

OT: I have never before read the word "aughts" and had to look it up. Turns out this describes the first decade of the 21st century (or of any century?), i.e. the years 2000 to 2009. The British seem to use the word "noughties".

2143 4y ago
I too learnt of "noughties" recently. Never heard "aughts" before. But then again, English isn't my first language. Now that I think about it, I've heard people here say, for example, "1 nought 1", "1 nought 2", "1 nought 3" etc for 101, 102, 103, and so on. Of course, I always thought they said "1 'not' 1", and not "1 'nought' 1", and didn't ponder too much into it, even though neither of them made sense to me.
- jansan 4y ago
  Here is some advanced stuff from Monty PythonÄs Flying Circus: "Good afternoon and welcome to Lords on the second day of the first test. So far today we've had five hours batting from England and already they're nought for nought. Cowdrey is not out nought. Naughton is not in. Knott is in and is nought for not out. Naughton of Northants got a nasty knock on the nut in the nets last night but it's nothing of note. Next in is Nat Newton of Notts. Not Nutring - Nutting's at nine, er, Nutring knocked neatie nighty knock knock..." Here at timestamp 0:32 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6dl8og https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6dl8og

flashingleds 4y ago

It can go both ways of course. The first edition of Norman’s classic ‘design of everyday things’ was 1988, and it’s interesting to read that book today and see how a lot of the hard problems he was discussing were completely solved by the advent of touchscreen interfaces (specifically, the ability to reconfigure the interface according to what tasks are relevant at that moment). Done right, touchscreens are a huge boon for usability (I mean, look at what the iphone did). Done poorly they’re a disaster, but that’s been true forever with UI design regardless of the tools at hand. (I haven’t read the revised edition (2013) of Norman’s book, I guess he must address touchscreens)

blackhaz 4y ago
What are the examples of touchscreens done right besides the iPhone which is also on a UX downhill since, probably iPhone 4 or 5 era? Cars? Motherfucking abysmal. ATMs? How many times we tried to press a button realizing you're missing it completely because there's a 3-inch think screen? Laptops? Only those who like fingerprints. Cameras? I think if you are seriously using it, you prefer tactile. Signature pads? This should not even exist. Vending machines? I think they're more confusing with buttons jumping on screen and changing their labels than without. Handheld video games? Still rely on buttons. I wish designers would not try to stick them in everything. They're only good for small handheld devices to cram lots of functions in, and they're always a UX compromise. They can only improve the number of functions you can squeeze in a device.
- eimrine 4y ago
  > touchscreens done right besides the iPhone I prefer devices with qwerty to be honest, and if you already have a qwerty input plus sensor "joystick" w/ pressable button under it - I am talking about Blackberry - you quickly realize that you don't need sensor input except of for apps w/o proper support of joystick and webpages w/ GDPR. > Signature pads? This should not even exist. Drawing pads? > I wish designers would not try to stick them in everything. I wish designers and MARKETINGers stop to place them in anything, except of mentioned higher. > Vending machines? I think they're more confusing with buttons jumping on screen and changing their labels than without I have a vending machine from Porsche auto salon and buttons doesn't jump. Sensor is needed for adding kind of luxury mood if you already have a display which is needed for jumping Porsche logo.

omega3 4y ago

One only needs to look at how professionals operate to find already iterated to a close perfection user interfaces. Take a professional kitchen at a restaurant and compare it with a gadget filled home kitchen.

tunap 4y ago
My dinosaur 5 Star Range cannot be beat. Despite the large knobs, it does everything I want it to do, how I want it done. No UX getting in the way to "assist" in deviating me from my intended settings.
thfuran 4y ago
I work on software for professional use and while I'd never say our UX is near perfection, we do get a bunch of tickets if things change and some process starts taking an extra click or two. We're at least pressured to avoid UX regressions and needless changes.
nicbou 4y ago
I had a similar experience with accounting software recently. The ugly software is built for someone entering 20 invoices in a row, and automates as much of it as it can. The shiny startup software was designed by a very skilled designer who never had to do accounting.
MajorBee 4y ago
That's not always the right way to go either. A professional using a particular device on the daily will be proficient in its usage regardless of how terrible the user interface, simply on the basis of how often they use the thing. On the other hand, how quickly an amateur can pick up a device and start using it will be heavily dependent on how intuitive and instructive the interface is. These two can often be conflicting, though not always. For a product that has a lot of "amateur" users (many home appliances), a touch screen can often be the right paradigm to choose. A classic example of this is the situation where an experienced cashier on an "analog" system can just fly through the buttons and complete transactions in no time, while at the same time a rookie would take that much more time to ramp up, figure out, and internalize the various button mappings. A darker interpretation of this would be that the system is optimization for fungible workers, where swapping out one cashier at will for another has negligible impact on productivity.

wiz21c 4y ago

Maybe it just costs less to build LED screen cars than those with knobs ?

etiam 4y ago
Could well be, if nothing else in workforce competence. I like to claim the development the last few decades seems to be going from specialized tools that performed their task beautifully to generic tools that performed that task (or some semblance thereof) at all. Case in point: "Desktop evolution" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI3ojKxhy-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI3ojKxhy-4
mateo1 4y ago
Unfortunately that's true. These days it's just cheaper and easier to place everything on a screen rather than using anything physical. Imagine that voice recognition gets even better, then it would be even cheaper to have nothing but a speaker and a microphone. Touchscreens and capacitive buttons have a number of issues that physical controls don't, but (unfortunately?) they're usually cheaper, last longer and are much more convenient for the manufacturers so they're not going anywhere. Tactile feedback, a fixed spatial position and being "always on" are now luxuries.

vortico 4y ago

Reminded me of my favorite article. http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/ http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi... I'm willing to pay extra to avoid touch screens in my cars, washing machines, door locks, and personal computers. I can't be the only one!

user_7832 4y ago
Thanks for that article, it was a great read.
forsythe_ 4y ago
Wow, excellent article. And it sent me down a deep rabbithole reading the rest of Bret's blog. Thank you.

dontbenebby 4y ago

Before I transferred to the University of Pittsburgh, I was pursuing a minor in graphic design. I could have taken one of the last darkroom photography courses offered at La Roche College, but chose to take a digital course since I had extensive experience in that area dating back to saving snaps on floppies at the Duquesne Multicultural Computer Academy in the City of Pittsburgh. I agree with you WRT tactile interfaces, the only reason things like the iPhone work are a combination of text prediction and over-reliance on rare ingredients like rare earth minerals to make that super strong glass and super thin, long lasting batteries. (China controls a lot of those mines now, because Obama was a weak leader who handed Africqa and SE Asia over to totalitatians.) I hate how many things were taken digital rapidly, classic example being I read about Nordic countries ditching AM/FM radio. It is cool and good to be able to buy a twenty dollar radio and set of rechargable double AAs, and then have access to news via folks like NPR + some classical or whatever to flood a room with noise when you need to go full cyberpunk at the library, but the library was closed due to COVID. I can't tell if the generation after millenials are all what that hentai loving sci fi guy from boing boing warned us about: unable to use the command line or understand the value of general purpose computing, but on my end I'm about to go stand outside with a sign and a cup rather than waste energy and resources standing up a website, writing out a bunch of "creative nonfiction", and then having folks pretend that if they send me something like "Monero" (that might be secure in a technial sense, but is literally sold only in one physical location in my city.) (A long time ago, I considered being a designer, but that's subjective, and it seems like the field is structured so they mostly invent ways to steal ideas from the technical folks who make it possible for them to have the serenity first to think up cute designs.) So many designers forget that "low tech" designs were planned after years or generations of iteration and shouldn't be changed lightly -- that might be a load bearing lorus ipsum ;) (For context, the reason you're getting this type of reply is that around 2010 I offered to work for a major FFRDC codeing up custom forensics tools that would be more usable so they wouldn't need to pay millions for training and licenses, but I never even got a reply to my email despite being referred to that person by someone who founded an entire conference on my area of research. Then again, we were also discussing whether I should join the FBI at the time. (My take was they hadn't figured out how to navigate the conflict of interest between the counter intelligence mission and the criminal division, just like the NSA hadn't figured out how to navigate offense and defense or the secret service never learned to navigate the dual mission of offense and defense) Later on, at Defcon an SS agent (using THAT acronym on purpose) told me if you want to know what it's like to be in the secret service, go stand in a suit on your front lawn in 80% humiudity for twelve hours, but to be fair I didn't check if I could apply and ONLY focus on things like counterfeiting, since I've made it clear for over a decade I won't kill the president, but I'll absolutely pull out my phone and arch my eyebrows at the corpse as I take a photo if someone else does. This poster paid 150 dollars on a nonprofit salary to go see Obama gaslight him on encryption after. This is like the fall of the USSR. Post better. Be Better. TL;DR: Great article, thanks for sharing Marban. I agree that low tech interfaces are cool and good.

memorable 4y ago

Frick Medium again. Cannot find an archive for this one, so take a Scribe instead. https://archive.ph/YgElI https://archive.ph/YgElI

reacharavindh 4y ago

The place where I feel this the most is cars. I drove a Tesla Model 3 that belongs to a friend and had used a rented VW Golf mark 8. The touch screen and touch sensitive panels with haptic feedback were horrible. I now appreciate my VW Golf Mark 7 even more. It is glorious to have knobs, physical buttons, and levers for all things that needs to be controlled while driving. It's intuitive, and I can use them without looking at them(taking attention off of the road). I wish and hope that a modern car gets this "old fashioned" interface when I am in the market for a new car in a few years.

bombcar 4y ago
Touchscreens look great on spec sheets and to those who buy them, not necessarily to those who have to use them. And those that buy them are loathe to admit they suck until after they've sold it off (because admitting it sucks means admitting you made a bad purchase).

TacticalCoder 4y ago

To anyone designing low-tech user interfaces: I'm all for something simple but please, oh please, use something with a better feedback than the membrane "keyboard" shown in the article. Membrane keys are the absolute shittiest piece of shit ever produced. I use three everyday: my safe has one. My projector's remote control and my LED strip light (I use a LED strip to give a "home cinema" feel to the room) has one. The one on the safe, thankfully, at least emits a "beep" every time a press registers. Doesn't make it great by any means but there's that. On the projector there's a delay between any press and the projector giving you any feedback, so you don't know if a press registered or not. I do honestly think, and I'm not a big smartphone fan, that a virtual keyboard on s smartphone's screen with haptic feeback (where the phone vibrates a bit when you "press" a key) is infinitely better than membrane keyboards. Now I'm not saying everything should be replaced with screens+haptic feedback: what I'm saying is membrane keyboard are the worst piece of shit man ever invented. On the other hand my alarm system has buttons (zero screen): one button, one function. And the feedback on these buttons is perfect. It's bliss. Same in my ultra high end, but thankfully nine years old, car: one button, one function. And when you press that button you know it's been pressed. Perfection. (I say "thankfully nine years old" because the very same car brand/model now uses screens everywhere instead of buttons). So you can have two exactly identical looking user interface and, without trying, it's impossible to tell if it's a complete piece of shit or not (well, these membranes things: you kinda spot them from a mile): you need to actually press the buttons to know. Membranes are the opposite of perfect user experience: they're mediocre turds.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
joezydeco 4y ago
So your complaint isn't really about the membrane itself but the lack of haptic or other feedback that comes with a press. I worked on controls with one company and their solution was to put a membrane overlay on the panel but place low-travel physical buttons behind it. You had the advantages of a membrane overlay (sealed from dust/moisture, better artwork on top) and the higher reliability of the button. And if the overlay tore or wore off the system still worked.

orbit7 4y ago

Interesting read, I certainly think there is a lot to be said for minimlism where a system can be controlled with physical controls/ buttons without an instruction manual, fancy screens and UI are often a complete overkill for a product. The Design of Everyday things is an essential read on these topics and generally a book I'd recommend to anyone working in tech or design.

resters 4y ago

In the case of cars, why can't the UX be a replaceable module so that third party options can be chosen?

danybittel 4y ago

I think it's not only "low tech". The bigger issue I see, is that everything tries to be an Assistant. For example, the Oculus Quest, there's a on / off button fine, easy to understand. Except, it magically turns itself on if it assumes, you may use it, and turns itself off if not used anymore. Unfortunately that is often not correct, so you start counter acting, holding it carefully so the sensor does not react and double checking if it turned off or just on again, when switching it off. Congratulation, they made a simple on / off switch unintuitive. I see this pattern everywhere. It seems ux designers are trying to hard to be clever. Just give us a Tool, that does one thing and always acts the same. If it doesn't make sense, let the user learn from it's mistake.

analog31 4y ago

A few days ago in these very pages, I dissed the UI of an oscilloscope. But using one yesterday, I realized an advantage: I could operate it with one hand while holding the probe with the other. Even software interfaces for instrumentation, that use the keyboard and mouse, are physically awkward and your computer has to be positioned just right. A couple more advantages: * A small interface makes small things small. A voltmeter doesn't need to be as big as a computer, and there are lots of gadgets that are smaller. * One-foot operation, such as the page turning pedals that musicians are now using for their sheet music.

eddieroger 4y ago
I have a 2017 Honda Civic. That particular model year, they chose to remove the volume knob for a capacitive little slider thing (in addition to the buttons on the wheel). The very next year, they put it back. Turns out it's pretty useful to be able to control the volume of your stereo without taking your eyes off the road when operating a car. They did a similar thing for the air controls, except they left some of them as actual knobs and buttons. Sometimes the old ways are better and have lasted so long for a reason.
- thomastjeffery 4y ago
  The volume knob is gone as early as the 2015 model, at least in the EX-L variant; but the steering wheel buttons are still there. If I didn't have physical buttons on the steering wheel to press, I wouldn't bother using the stereo at all. Driving is the absolute worst environment for touch screens. Not only am I unable to look at where I am touching at the same moment I want to touch, the whole car is moving unpredictably in relation to my finger.
- vel0city 4y ago
  > Turns out it's pretty useful to be able to control the volume of your stereo without taking your eyes off the road when operating a car. I do agree the volume slider is a terrible choice of interface, but TBF there is a tactile, physical volume control on your car within reach of your hands while they're on the wheel. There is a volume adjustment on your steering wheel, so theoretically you shouldn't even have to use the volume control on the stereo while you're driving.

etiam 4y ago

Does anybody have sources they want to share for getting components for classic interfaces like these today? I'd imagine production has plummeted since the glory days, but there ought to be stock of some things around still and people salvaging nice parts? I don't do any hardware work worth mentioning, but I hope to get around to amending that soon, and I'd find it attractive to use interfaces appropriate to the task (which, as people here have noted, will mean the ones on topic in a very substantial share of the cases).

ntoskrnl 4y ago
Digikey and Mouser
joshvm 4y ago
For hobbyists in the US, Sparkfun or Adafruit are a good start. Otherwise go to the big suppliers: Digikey, Farnell and Mouser. China (Aliexpress) supplies pretty much everything else. Many dropship on eBay and Amazon too, if you want convenience. You shouldn't need to salvage unless you really want some vintage pot knob or slider that you can't find elsewhere. Industrial hardware usually needs to be tactile (eg operated with gloves). Some modern stuff is better anyway, like mono OLED displays which are far more readable than LCDs.
- etiam 4y ago
  Thanks! That's very helpful, and I'm glad to learn availability today is much better than I had imagined.

jopsen 4y ago

Is "low tech" really cheaper? Curious, because I thought the reason nobody did buttons anymore was that printing a pattern on a touch capacitive surface was dirty cheap. Whereas I assume tactile buttons require a lot work when mounting/building the product. Am I wrong? I guess an 8 digit display is still cheaper than a touch screen :)

tremon 4y ago
Cheaper, how? Are we looking only at production cost, or total lifetime? How much energy does a button use over its lifetime, vs a checkbox on a LED screen?
- infinityio 4y ago
  In this context, I'd imagine cheaper from an R&D + Manufacturing side. But equally this probably is the case - if adding a screen requires adding a much more powerful microcontroller to drive it, it probably adds a fair bit of cost

amelius 4y ago

All the laser printers I have used have a low-tech user interface, with an LCD screen and a bunch of buttons. The problem is that the buttons that the user can press (the "active" buttons) are dependent on context. Imho it would be much better if laser printers had a smartphone-style interface (touchscreen). Same for office phones (which have a plethora of buttons e.g. for conference calls that are not useful in many contexts).

nicbou 4y ago
I used a few office printers with touch screens, and they were much better.
infinityio 4y ago
Maybe that's the distinction - if you are making a product that needs to do exactly one thing (or category of things), it should not have a touchscreen, it should have a button and a dial (eg toaster, oven, hob, clock). If you cannot map all common uses of the product to a single button press and instead rely on context, a touchscreen might be the better option

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tablespoon 4y ago

IMHO, user interfaces generally are better the more buttons and knobs they have (scaled for compactness requirements). Obviously some thought must be put into those buttons and knobs, but I've never personally ran into a UI that had too many.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

I have always been skeptical of many "new-fangled" interfaces, like touchscreens and HUDs. I know that, many years ago, cars started to display speed and tach displays as digital, and that was fairly quickly reversed, because people kept seeing their speed as a jumble of characters (look at digital displays that change rapidly). I know that a number of auto manufacturers are starting to ditch touchscreen, for knobs. I've found that haptic feedback is helpful. I use it (as well as a "retro-style" LED display) in my latest little timer app[0]. The earlier versions of that app were a lot more complex, and I ended up removing a great deal of the flexibility. So far, people have given me good feedback on the new "Fisher-Price" interface. [0] https://riftvalleysoftware.com/work/ios-apps/ambiamara/ https://riftvalleysoftware.com/work/ios-apps/ambiamara/

nicbou 4y ago

The most important lesson I learned in engineering school: define the problem then look for a solution. Most people have a solution in mind before they even look at the problem, and that solution is usually "build an app", or "slap a screen on it". With bureaucracy, it's "put the form on the internet". There are a few low tech devices I much prefer: - A kitchen timer vs. my phone. I don't need to unlock the phone and navigate to the timer app. I just twist the knob until I see the desired number. Hell, it's probably set to 3 minutes already, because I mostly use it to make tea. - My microwave has one knob for time, and one knob for intensity. Best microwave interface ever. It doesn't tell time, so I never need to adjust it. I had microwaves so complicated that I turned to social networks for help. - Stoves. I refuse to buy a stove without knobs. I have hated every stove without knobs I've ever used. Touch-sensitive buttons don't work with oven mitts, but get triggered by a wet rag, steam and spilled spaghetti sauce. - Car infotainment. Each knob controls one thing. It's always in the same place, and I can find it while keeping my eyes on the road. - Wired audio. This device is paired to the device it's physically connected to.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
the_snooze 4y ago
>Most people have a solution in mind before they even look at the problem, and that solution is usually "put it on the blockchain" But to your point, you're absolutely right. If you want to actually deliver valuable solutions, you need to have a good understanding of what unmet need you're trying to address. Otherwise you end up with a bad problem-solution match, and you waste everyone's time. Too often, technically minded people put too much emphasis on what's novel instead of what's valuable.
marcosdumay 4y ago
> My microwave has one knob for time, and one knob for intensity. I don't think a knob is the optimal interface for time. In microwaves you need to input both low values of ~10s and very high values of ~600s with good precision on both cases. Sure, a logarithmic knob will give you that, but I don't think it's what you would expect. For power it's good. It's even a much better interface for the power level than the usual. But then, anything is a much better interface than the usual microwave power level one. > Wired audio. This device is paired to the device it's physically connected to. There used to exist those wireless speakers with two pieces, one you physically connected to the audio output on the device, the other had the speaker. The transmission was analog and sucked due to noise, but it was much more reliable and had less lag than bluetooth. For some reason, instead of fixing it into a digital transmission, everybody just stopped manufacturing the device.

CivBase 4y ago

> Many consumers judge product qualities based on superficial impressions and studies have shown that these impressions can cause users to perceive a product as less usable than it actually is. I'm genuinely amazed that touch screens are still seen as "high tech" by so many people. They've been common for a decade and most people should be very familiar with their flaws. They're harder to use, more susceptible to defects, provide little or no feedback, and add expense to the product. The only real advantage touch screens have is that they are dynamic, so you can cram multiple interfaces into a small physical footprint - at the cost of only being able to display interface at a time. And I guess you could theoretically update the interface after sale... but I don't know if I've ever seen that done in practice other than to fix bugs.

mLuby 4y ago

Are after-market retrofits replacing touch screens with low-tech controls possible?

Zachsa999 4y ago

Project Idea: low tech consumer goods website. Rate ovens microwaves washing mach ines etc by low tech high quality.

incahoots 4y ago

Biggest offender are automakers. A giant touch screen that replaces physical knobs and switches is incredibly backwards thinking. The ability to make quick changes to HVAC, radio, or heating/cooling settings is now requiring drivers to take their eyes off the road to drag a greasy finger across a virtual dial, it's pretty inane all things considered.

DoubleDerper 4y ago

A certain "smart" speaker company replaced their expensive device's single functional button with capacitive touch. The product is worse, now less accessible.

danans 4y ago

The Awair Element indoor air quality monitor has an interesting low-tech yet information dense physical display. It's a low resolution matrix of LEDs behind a plastic facade that displays current air quality measurements pretty simply but effectively. It's a clever design choice for many reasons, not just because it lowers the BOM of the device, but because people already have enough computer/phone/TV high resolution displays in their living spaces, and in contrast the Awair looks somewhat elegant in contrast. There are some reasonable critiques regarding the accuracy or effectiveness of these consumer indoor air monitors, but I get far more questions about the Awair than I do about any other devices I have. Some of that is its novelty, but some of it also is the minimal UX.

jupp0r 4y ago

My favorite example: Microwave controls. One dial for power and one dial for time is all you really need and much better than numpad controls.

twobitshifter 4y ago
I have an LG microwave with a simple touch strip on the front for setting the time and it’s actually amazing. all the more complicated never used features are hidden behind the door and not seen until opened. The touch strip is ribbed and clever enough to start jumping ahead by whole minutes or more as you scroll.

guessbest 4y ago

There are "low tech" interfaces are on handheld ham radios and can be pretty annoying to have to read the manual to change basic settings, like from step from 2.5k to 25k or somewhere in between. A touch screen would make handheld transceivers so much easier to use especially considering the number of features in it.

Aperocky 4y ago

imo a lot of benefit claimed are not 'low tech', they are just the natural result of simple > complex. The philosophy of simple > complex isn't low-tech or high-tech, it just is.

tiffanyh 4y ago

I use to have a 2006 Saab. I LOVED how it had mechanical buttons for everything on the dash. http://images.gtcarlot.com/pictures/48277419.jpg http://images.gtcarlot.com/pictures/48277419.jpg It's no surprise given that Saab has a history in aerospace. I totally get why car manufacturers are moving to essentially a big iPad as a replacement for the overall dash (it's like when the iPhone came out and people loved their Blackberry keyboards), but from a function vs form perspective - buttons are way easier.

michaelrpeskin 4y ago
I still daily drive a Classic 900 (1987) and not only is everything a real button or knob, but it's all controlled by vacuum, not electronics. It's fun to hear the hisses when you change the vent settings.
- tiffanyh 4y ago
  Re: vent I still think the HVAC vent knob on my Saab was the most innovate knob I've ever seen and nothing compares today. It allowed you to redirect the air in a fluid full 360 degree (semi-circular) position seamlessly. All other cars it's 2 separate horizontal and vertical controls.
  - michaelrpeskin 4y ago
    Yes, it goes from "0" at the bottom to defrost at the top and every step in between makes perfect sense. Just twist the knob and it works. No thinking.

glonq 4y ago

I spent the first several years of my career developing low-tech user interfaces for parking and payment kiosks that had little more than piezo buttons and HD44780-based text-only LCD's. It certainly helped me appreciate that for UX, sometimes "less is more".

titzer 4y ago

I just started getting into embedded programming (Arduinos and Pi's) and one of the most exciting things is the possibility to make physical thing with custom buttons, toggles, and LEDs to do a thing. E.g. I prototyped a metronome (for practicing music) with an animated LED light bar (out of PVC pipe!) and pushbuttons to program it. Thing can be huge and robust, like throw-against-the-wall robust. And I like that there are only so many buttons and they don't move!

twobitshifter 4y ago

One of the best low-tech interfaces is the honeywell round thermostat. Change the dial to point to the temperature you want and the internal indicator shows you the current temperature. All without requiring any transistors. Go shop for a thermostat, look at other options, and be amazed at how complex the layers of technology can make things.

vel0city 4y ago
So how to I set my away temperature? How do I set the return temperature? How do I set the sleep temperature? How do I set the wake temperature? How can I make it change based on my schedule, as I'm home most of the day on the weekends while I'm often out during the week? Seems like its not that great of a UI given the requirements I have.
- twobitshifter 4y ago
  Turn it up and down when you come and go? In my opinion all those features are a catastrophe in that your body will end up being in your house at the wrong time or your clothing will be warmer or hotter than typical or your spouse will, and you will want to play with the temp anyways and end up fiddling with things to get it right. The learning thermostats try to solve this, but it’s at great cost and complexity and experiences vary and habits change.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    > In my opinion all those features are a catastrophe in that your body will end up being in your house at the wrong time You're trading sometimes being in the house at the wrong time to every day being in the house at the wrong time. Then your other statement doesn't matter if its programmable or not, if you're constantly in disagreement of what the thermostat should be you're going to be fiddling with it regardless of if its programmed or not. I realize people's experiences vary greatly, but that's kind of my point about looking at the basic Honeywell thermostat and declaring its a great user experience. To me, its a terrible user experience and far worse than my basic 7 day 4 stage programmable thermostat which I touch once a season and otherwise let it be. In the end I save energy, reduce my bill, have on average a more comfortable house, and I rarely have to interact with the thermostat.

motohagiography 4y ago

The comment about the marketing person saying users would feel like the lower-tech UX was archaic was interesting because of the insight it implied. The value a product expresses really is the product. The user has to feel something about it. A medical device in a hospital setting used by nurses on patients needs to express professional sophistication to the patient and reliability to the RN. The simple LCD display makes sense for expressing something purpose-built, e.g. for a doctor doing a test, but for the RN, who does most of the care and patient interaction, things like rapport, trust, and familiarity go a lot further, hence asking for a touch screen. Once as a PM on a security product, I entered into the UX development with the perspective of producing a consumer product that just told you the thing you needed to know, believing that the value we were providing was from our ML analytics back end we had invested so much in. What came back from enterprise sales was, "we want more widgets on the screen, can you just make it look like it's doing something?" My reaction was, "find smarter customers," which of course was the the most uniquely and profoundly wrong response in almost every way at once. After going out on some sales calls, what customers wanted was our data. They didn't care about our huge ML pipeline with a calm and decisive consumer oriented UX, because in their environment, having smooth products was not what made them express power to their own stakeholders - they expressed their own value by showing whizzing screens of data. What they really wanted in hindsight was a private telemetry and surveillance API for fleet devices, like a more featureful MDM, but scriptable so they could demonstrate their own value - and not an ML model that did that for them. A low tech command line or API was the real product they wanted. Customers who did like it were enterprise managers who wanted to show they were hip to silicon valley driven tech change. I'd wonder if we could make a radial web chart of the values a customer really has and the result would indicate the design language elements the UX of a product should have. You'd have to figure out what things like "powerful" mean to your customers, and what would equip them to become that through using your product. Other sub values are things like authoritative, safe, precision, virtuotic, calm, belonging, competent, inventive, hidden depth, compliant and aligned, elevated, the exception, etc. Based on these, I'd design a product UX around a stack ranked set of values like these. Makes me think there is a future in new kinds of input devices though.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

igouy 4y ago

“solutionism” "Touch Screens in Cars Solve a Problem We Didn't Have" Jay Caspian Kang, NYT May 23 2022 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/23/opinion/touch-screens-cars.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/23/opinion/touch-screens-car...

layer8 4y ago

I still wish smartphones had physical PgUp/PgDn buttons. Much easier on the thumbs when you do a lot of scrolling.

is_true 4y ago
Maybe the volume button could be used for this
- layer8 4y ago
  That might be possible on Android. But dedicated buttons would be better, to avoid having modes, and because sometimes there are use cases where you want to use both functions (e.g. scrolling through playlists while trying songs with different volume levels). Electronic consumer devices like Minidisc players and PDAs used to often have a multitude of buttons to directly access all commonly used functions.

dehrmann 4y ago

> Depending on how the controls are organized and differentiated by size or shape, users might also be able to distinguish between and access the controls without needing to look at the user interface I'm reminded of the big red button almost everything in a machine shop has.

AdamH12113 4y ago

I feel like a lot of people have forgotten that before the iPhone, touchscreens were widely regarded as a terrible interface only suitable for niche applications like kiosks. There were good reasons for that, and latency and lack of tactile feedback were high on the list. Touchscreens have proved effective in situations where you need a highly-flexible interface in a small space, but an awful lot of devices (like appliances) have more space and don't need the flexibility, so they end up taking all of the downsides with none of the benefits. A lot of designers (or marketers) seem to be trying to copy the look and feel of Apple devices without understanding the factors that led to their design.

pcurve 4y ago
I agree. I get why the trade off is worthwhile on smartphone. But I hate the push in automotive application. Yes, I'd like a big screen for navigation, but don't replace HVAC controls. It's not just about touch screen. There is overuse of capacitive buttons in cars. And it is all about dollars.
tomtheelder 4y ago
Although I'm very much on the side of using more low-tech interfaces, it's important to remember that pre-iPhone touchscreens were a VERY different beast. Resistive touchscreens, in particular, were awful.
- AdamH12113 4y ago
  This is very true. Resistive touchscreens were slower, less reliable, and IIRC had coarser position sensing. Since we're talking about history, it's also worth noting that early opinions on touchscreens tended to assume they would be desk-mounted or wall-mounted, which leads to the gorilla arm problem.

sfink 4y ago

This article strangely undersells the advantages of low tech. It's true that they're not better for everything, but they have advantages well beyond the basic things mentioned. A tactile button has far fewer accuracy issues with positioning: if you can feel the button, you won't start pressing 2/3 off and then get further and further off until you're triggering something else, as happens all the time on touchscreens. A knob provides a richer communication path between your brain and the device. With touchscreens, you can basically just poke and swipe, with some unintuitive nuances like long press or multi-fingered gestures. With a knob, you're using separate muscles and so can associate muscle memory based on the size, texture, and granularity of "click" feedback as you turn. We also have the ability to finely modulate the rate of twisting something—compare that to tapping frantically on a touchscreen left/right icon to control a quantity. Knobs don't share space in our muscle memory with buttons. To some extent, different knobs and different buttons are distinguishable too. Physical sliders are good for fine-grained control, but are also good at just smashing them all the way to min or max. When I try that on a touchscreen control, it might not make it all the way to the extreme, or my angle is wrong (no physical constraint to keep my hand/finger in place!) and it doesn't register at all because I veered off of the control. Even when I'm looking at the screen already, using a directional pad means I'll always gradually get further and further off until it stops registering. Either because my attention is on a different part of the screen, or because my fingers are in the way of seeing the displayed pad. Not a problem with a physical stick or knob.

justsomehnguy 4y ago
Oh, it is actually worse. The amount of times when I swiped down from the top (to open the notification shade or whatever it is called now or to refresh the page), the UI shows pulling down the thing fully... and when backs off. I repeat the gesture, but again it goes all the way down and retracts back and nothing happens. And of course when I don't need that, I just swipe down to go top of the page - it thinks what I actually want to refresh the page. Many comments were lost that way.
- allenu 4y ago
  Or worse, those UI affordances may change over time. With the swipe down behavior you mentioned, on iOS, I used to just swipe down from the center of the top of the iPad to see the notification shade. A recent iOS behavior made it so swiping down from the center now causes the app window to be dragged. Ugh! Now I have to relearn to find a spot slightly to the right to pull down to view the shade.

outworlder 4y ago

The main advantage of the modern GUI is when you need to perform wildly different tasks on them. Physical controls may not be appropriate to every task. This was the pitch when Jobs unveiled the iPhone, and it makes sense. However, if you have a device with a single function, there's no need for that. Your physical controls will always match the device's function. Use those.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

cosmotic 4y ago

This article misses the point of software controls: The designs can be changed up until the release of the item, sometimes even after the release using post-sales software updates. This allows companies to be more agile. The lead time for physical controls and custom LCDs is months if not years and costs tens of thousands of dollars, where software can be updated in days with near-zero cost. Also, most humans are easily wooed by the glitzy animations during the pre-sales period and aren't cognizant of the problems they suffer later due to bad controls. Though the author did hit the nail on the head about tactility.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

Curiously, for some people low-tech is not better. I.e. used to have an Amana RadarRange which had two knobs - one for power and one for time. You turned them until you saw what you wanted on the display. But my pre-reading children couldn't operate it. I'd say "nuke it for a minute and a half" and they'd twist the knob and ask "Is that enough? Which way should I turn it?" See they couldn't do the math to know if 45 seconds was more or less than a minute and a half. If it'd been buttons I could have said "Press 90 seconds" or whatever and they could do that. Later when we got a different microwave they had a better time.

natdempk 4y ago
Looking at the dial I feel like if you told them to move it to 1:30 or move it to the 30 past the 1, it would be pretty obvious? Wouldn't you have the same issue of having to convert 1:30 to 90 seconds with the other microwave design? I don't understand how the two are different.
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  one you just type in the number. The other requires a knowledge of counting and ordinality etc. Is 90 seconds greater than 45 seconds? Is 9 bigger then 5?

kylehotchkiss 4y ago

Today I was running some errands in my car. The AC was too cold. Without taking my eyes off the road, I felt around for the temperature knob. My car has large, grippy knobs. It's an off-roading focused model and the knobs were made to be usable while driving on bumpy roads. I found the temperature knob, I figured where it was set with the easy-to-feel tactile indicator, and I adjusted it down, all without having to use my eyes. I love tech but never want to lose my big, rubbery AC knobs in the car. There's enough distracted drivers on the road to watch out for, I don't want to be another one.

vel0city 4y ago
> Today I was running some errands in my car. The AC was too cold. This literally never happens on any of my cars. I'd rather not have to be distracted with an uncomfortable car in the middle of driving and then have to feel around navigating a few different knobs and buttons to make my car comfortable, my car should just automatically be comfortable. > There's enough distracted drivers on the road to watch out for You were more distracted having to think about the climate, take your hand off the wheel, feel around for the knobs, and adjust them properly than someone using automatic climate control where they just never have to make that adjustment in the first place.

Unbeliever69 4y ago

I was one of the first few Ux designers for a large defense contractor that made data-link communication devices for the military. Prior to my arrival all the GUIs were done in Matlab. Think 80s VCR-level complexity. Needless to say, these GUIs were not well received by the boots-on-the-ground soldier that had to operate the equipment. Furthermore, they were a complete mystery to the top brass who funded these projects. When I arrived, some groups in the organization had begun to refactor these Matlab interfaces into WPF applications with slick new updates to the widgets, but it was really lipstick on a pig. After listening to all the stakeholders and users our proposal was to develop a skeuomorphic radio interface (green box with a bunch of dials and frequency display). Only the critical controls were featured on the radio face. All of the configuration options were buried. Now, I get all the eye-rolling when it comes to skeuomorphism as a fad, but it really resonated with our target audience and their superiors. This "Virtual Radio" soon became the defacto style for all communication devices throughout the organization. Because of the animation capabilities of VPF we were able to mimic both the look and feel of the various analog radio controls. It was super realistic. More importantly it allowed us to more easily communicate our designs to a broad audience, including: soldiers, contractors, technicians, and top brass. It has been nearly a decade since I left the company. I hope that this design has gone away. Not because it was ineffective (or trendy), but rather these communication systems needed to evolve to be self-configuring and self-operating, requiring little if any interaction by a soldier other than monitoring. After all, the best interface is one that doesn't need to exist.

bee_rider 4y ago
I wonder how it evolved over time, after you left. Most soldiers are in their early to mid 20's, right? They might have never encountered an analog radio at this point! On the other hand, those old physical UIs did have a certain intuitiveness to them that might just be easy to learn, even if it isn't familiar.

nelgaard 4y ago

low tech can provide control and persistence. I want a real hardware volume dial on my phones and laptops. Mostly so that I can turn them down and be sure that that I will not embarrass myself by making noises at events where silence is expected. And I miss DIP switches. It is just brilliant that you could configure it once and for all. E.g. I have smoke detectors that could all be linked together by pressing some buttons in a weird ritual, but when you change a battery they forget and run down the battery in no time trying in vain to sync.

WalterBright 4y ago

> such as silk-screened button labels becoming faint after extended use Becoming faint? On my Microsoft keyboard, the letters on the keys soon wore off completely. I had to re-learn touch typing.

WalterBright 4y ago

> When a user interface can get away with only icons in place of words, a low-tech user interface can work particularly well. Icons just mean nobody can use it. Heaven help the poor user who loses the manual that has a chart to decode the icons.

eucryphia 4y ago

It would make low budget SciFi movies look realistic too

mc4ndr3 4y ago

I detest touch screens. The feedback, durability, reliability, discoverability, and general focus of an application can often be maximized by selecting more traditional hardware user interface components. The ROC curve for gesture based volume controls peaks at false positives and again at false negatives.

civilized 4y ago

Car touch screen UI engineer is the third worst job, right behind 737 MAX MCAS designer and the guys who faked Volkswagen emissions.