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I can't help but think that the success of the iPhone and iPad has caused a big step back in usability among devices that try to copy them. Two similar example

by mrshoe 15y ago

I can't help but think that the success of the iPhone and iPad has caused a big step back in usability among devices that try to copy them. Two similar examples: Garmin's newer aircraft GPS units have touch screens instead of knobs and buttons. The iPad has proven very popular among pilots. I can see why Garmin would decide that "touch is the future." But, while I'm flying an airplane, for my money I'd rather have knobs to grab and twist, and buttons to push and feel. Tesla's new Model S uses one huge touch screen for its in-dash interface. Surely, if you want to change your music's volume or turn on air conditioning while driving, it's harder to hit touch targets that are Pictures Under Glass than to grab and twist a knob.

pedalpete 15y ago
I would counter those sentiments with the ZuneHD experience. Most people haven't used one, but touch isn't vision focused. With the Zune in my pocket, I can unlock, skip a track, stop, play, change the volume (on the screen, not a rocker on the side). I can also try to shuffle/unshuffle, but that isn't as easy. I was actually amazed that Apple completely missed the ability to use touch when you weren't looking at the device.
- jodrellblank 15y ago
  They didn't completely miss it - go to settings, general, accessibility, and you can enable voiceover which reads anything you touch out loud and makes you double click to activate, so you can navigate without sight. It's terrible if you want a hardware button to skip a track, but it's usable for basically any iOS app with standard UI controls - including web browsing - which a hardware button isn't. I've never seen a Zune in person - do you just mean it has lots of buttons for all those tasks, or how does the touch interaction work on it without individual hardware buttons?
  - whatusername 15y ago
    The Apple earphones that come with the iphone/ipod have hardware to skip a track. Single Click Pause, Double click skip forward, triple click skip back.
  - pedalpete 15y ago
    No the ZuneHD doesn't have buttons for those interactions, and the ability to read out whatever I touch is more of an aid than an true interaction element. My ideal is that we shouldn't always be aiming for items on the screen to interact with. We've traded hardware buttons for software buttons, even though the ability to recognize things like swipe now exist and are much more natural. With a button, I have to hit that exact spot. With more natural movements, like swiping, I am creating an action over a more general area. I don't have to be so exact, and therefore, I often don't need to look at the screen at all. On the ZuneHD, it works like this, swipe right to left on the screen is skipe forward a track, swipe left to right is back. Swipe up is volume up, swipe down is volume down. Hold the right side is fast forward, hold the left side is rewind. tap the center is play/pause, tap bottom left corner is shuffle/unshuffle (though this is a visual button, it is fairly easy to hit without looking at the screen). Unlocking a ZuneHD is the same as a WP7 (though many people haven't seen those either). You just swipe up on the lock screen and it unlocks. With all of these interactions (excluding shuffle), you aren't aiming for a button, just a general area on the screen. In comparison with the iPod Touch/iPhone, to unlock, you are targeting a fairly specific area at the bottom of the screen. Easy to miss the swipe area if you aren't looking. On WP7 the whole screen is the swipe area. As long as you start at the bottom, and swipe up. Same with skipping tracks, on iPod Touch, it is a forward button on screen. You have to hit the specific spot. With the ZuneHD, you just swipe across the middle-ish area of the screen, and it will go forward the track. You aren't aiming at a specific item to interact with. It is all a very natural feeling. This was one of my big disappointments with the iPod Touch. After the original iPod was such an amazing design for navigating and playing music, Apple told us about this great new touch interface and how we could swipe our fingers across the screen to interact, and how it was all so natural. But the swipe interaction was only on coverflow, which is somewhat useless. They missed the opportunity to make swipe a key navigation element in iOS. I feel the same way about iOS apps today. Why do I have a back button at the top of the app. The back button slides a panel from left to right and shows me the previous content. Why am I aiming for a target at the top left (rarely comfortable if you are holding the phone in your right hand), rather than swiping across the screen and sliding the panel?
    - nchlswu 15y ago
      I was never sold on the idea of swipe becoming pervasive. That being said, I'm not sure if a 'natural feeling' interaction for the sake of convenience is necessarily the best. The swipe interaction isn't the most intuitive interaction for new users navigating around screens or other digital content and Apple seems to have used it for content that's derived itself from physical content or pages, such as books or images. If Apple were to use swipes as OS wide navigational gestures, it would preclude the use of swipes in app-specific contexts
- ineedtosleep 15y ago
  Agreed. This is something I was actually surprised at when I first got the HD, being a diehard physical button fanatic (had an iRiver H320, and fat Zune previously) I couldn't stand the idea of switching over to a touch interface, but I had to when my fat Zune died. Fast forward a week or two after getting the HD, I was able to control the device almost as fast as the origin Zune in my car (without looking at it). It just felt somewhat natural, the way the placed the buttons. Didn't put too much thought on whether or not the positioning was partially intended for quick use.
  - pedalpete 15y ago
    Out of curiosity, because of your HD experience, did you get a WP7? I did, and though I like it, I don't think most of the apps have that same natural feel for navigation that the HD was able to acheive.
tsunamifury 15y ago
Two counterpoints: 1) "targets" are a part of tactile interfaces, in touch interfaces we may shed the need for accurate targets (i.e. gestures can be made anywhere on a screen) 2) Confidence that comes from the physical response from tactile systems may just be an anachronism after a decade or two of built up trust in touchscreen systems
- kirillzubovsky 15y ago
  So, Ipads for navigation displays in a cockpit - great idea. But, would you really like your pilot to trust that an airplane is descending because Siri said it was? Don't think so.
  - redler 15y ago
    You're being snarky about Siri for some reason. But what you describe is in fact similar to the Ground Proximity Warning System, a feature of modern aircraft. When the computer announces "pull up! pull up! terrain!" you can be certain the pilot pays heed. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_proximity_warning_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_proximity_warning_system
- nchlswu 15y ago
  We may shed the need for accurate targets, but I would imagine there would be atleast a need for feedback that is not demonstrated in the 'vision.' But that leads to your second point. There's been anecdotal evidence that young children can just figure these interfaces out and I'm wondering if it's true that the confidence may come from learning and built up trust. I'm doubtful that the built up trust can account for 100% of the confidence. Touch based interfaces are largely form-less designs. There are an infinite amount of affordances offered by a touch screen. As it stands now, all of these affordances are defined by the visual appearance and lack the 'resolution' so to speak, that a physical form can provide.
josscrowcroft 15y ago
This is very interesting, and relevant since I just found out the air traffic control display at the local airport in my hometown has been replaced with, to quote one guy, "a big ipad" They're up in the air about it because now, instead of knobs and switches, informed by paper maps and pencils, they've got this fancy, 'high-tech' touch screen display - 3x5 feet of shiny glass. There was a minor storm in a teacup about it, because it leads to a much greater potential for accidents, bad landings and congestion (it's a very busy airport)- but because it cost millions, nobody can go back to good ol' pencil, paper and brain.
prawn 15y ago
I appreciate your point and prefer physical controls when driving, but obviously one major advantage of the described approach is that the same space can be used to control different things - e.g., swap out the sat-nav area for air-con controls, put up weather or traffic reports if the music is switched off, etc.
- cageface 15y ago
  That's the tradeoff of touch interfaces in a nutshell. They're jacks of all trades, masters of none. This is why musicians, for example, are still willing to shell out many thousands of dollars for a real synthesizer or drum machine even though a standard PC and generic midi keyboard can make all the same sounds. For some tasks, it's worth paying the heavy premium for a dedicated physical interface.

by mrshoe 15y ago

pedalpete 15y ago

I would counter those sentiments with the ZuneHD experience. Most people haven't used one, but touch isn't vision focused. With the Zune in my pocket, I can unlock, skip a track, stop, play, change the volume (on the screen, not a rocker on the side). I can also try to shuffle/unshuffle, but that isn't as easy. I was actually amazed that Apple completely missed the ability to use touch when you weren't looking at the device.

jodrellblank 15y ago
They didn't completely miss it - go to settings, general, accessibility, and you can enable voiceover which reads anything you touch out loud and makes you double click to activate, so you can navigate without sight. It's terrible if you want a hardware button to skip a track, but it's usable for basically any iOS app with standard UI controls - including web browsing - which a hardware button isn't. I've never seen a Zune in person - do you just mean it has lots of buttons for all those tasks, or how does the touch interaction work on it without individual hardware buttons?
- whatusername 15y ago
  The Apple earphones that come with the iphone/ipod have hardware to skip a track. Single Click Pause, Double click skip forward, triple click skip back.
- pedalpete 15y ago
  No the ZuneHD doesn't have buttons for those interactions, and the ability to read out whatever I touch is more of an aid than an true interaction element. My ideal is that we shouldn't always be aiming for items on the screen to interact with. We've traded hardware buttons for software buttons, even though the ability to recognize things like swipe now exist and are much more natural. With a button, I have to hit that exact spot. With more natural movements, like swiping, I am creating an action over a more general area. I don't have to be so exact, and therefore, I often don't need to look at the screen at all. On the ZuneHD, it works like this, swipe right to left on the screen is skipe forward a track, swipe left to right is back. Swipe up is volume up, swipe down is volume down. Hold the right side is fast forward, hold the left side is rewind. tap the center is play/pause, tap bottom left corner is shuffle/unshuffle (though this is a visual button, it is fairly easy to hit without looking at the screen). Unlocking a ZuneHD is the same as a WP7 (though many people haven't seen those either). You just swipe up on the lock screen and it unlocks. With all of these interactions (excluding shuffle), you aren't aiming for a button, just a general area on the screen. In comparison with the iPod Touch/iPhone, to unlock, you are targeting a fairly specific area at the bottom of the screen. Easy to miss the swipe area if you aren't looking. On WP7 the whole screen is the swipe area. As long as you start at the bottom, and swipe up. Same with skipping tracks, on iPod Touch, it is a forward button on screen. You have to hit the specific spot. With the ZuneHD, you just swipe across the middle-ish area of the screen, and it will go forward the track. You aren't aiming at a specific item to interact with. It is all a very natural feeling. This was one of my big disappointments with the iPod Touch. After the original iPod was such an amazing design for navigating and playing music, Apple told us about this great new touch interface and how we could swipe our fingers across the screen to interact, and how it was all so natural. But the swipe interaction was only on coverflow, which is somewhat useless. They missed the opportunity to make swipe a key navigation element in iOS. I feel the same way about iOS apps today. Why do I have a back button at the top of the app. The back button slides a panel from left to right and shows me the previous content. Why am I aiming for a target at the top left (rarely comfortable if you are holding the phone in your right hand), rather than swiping across the screen and sliding the panel?
  - nchlswu 15y ago
    I was never sold on the idea of swipe becoming pervasive. That being said, I'm not sure if a 'natural feeling' interaction for the sake of convenience is necessarily the best. The swipe interaction isn't the most intuitive interaction for new users navigating around screens or other digital content and Apple seems to have used it for content that's derived itself from physical content or pages, such as books or images. If Apple were to use swipes as OS wide navigational gestures, it would preclude the use of swipes in app-specific contexts
ineedtosleep 15y ago
Agreed. This is something I was actually surprised at when I first got the HD, being a diehard physical button fanatic (had an iRiver H320, and fat Zune previously) I couldn't stand the idea of switching over to a touch interface, but I had to when my fat Zune died. Fast forward a week or two after getting the HD, I was able to control the device almost as fast as the origin Zune in my car (without looking at it). It just felt somewhat natural, the way the placed the buttons. Didn't put too much thought on whether or not the positioning was partially intended for quick use.
- pedalpete 15y ago
  Out of curiosity, because of your HD experience, did you get a WP7? I did, and though I like it, I don't think most of the apps have that same natural feel for navigation that the HD was able to acheive.

tsunamifury 15y ago

Two counterpoints: 1) "targets" are a part of tactile interfaces, in touch interfaces we may shed the need for accurate targets (i.e. gestures can be made anywhere on a screen) 2) Confidence that comes from the physical response from tactile systems may just be an anachronism after a decade or two of built up trust in touchscreen systems

kirillzubovsky 15y ago
So, Ipads for navigation displays in a cockpit - great idea. But, would you really like your pilot to trust that an airplane is descending because Siri said it was? Don't think so.
- redler 15y ago
  You're being snarky about Siri for some reason. But what you describe is in fact similar to the Ground Proximity Warning System, a feature of modern aircraft. When the computer announces "pull up! pull up! terrain!" you can be certain the pilot pays heed. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_proximity_warning_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_proximity_warning_system
nchlswu 15y ago
We may shed the need for accurate targets, but I would imagine there would be atleast a need for feedback that is not demonstrated in the 'vision.' But that leads to your second point. There's been anecdotal evidence that young children can just figure these interfaces out and I'm wondering if it's true that the confidence may come from learning and built up trust. I'm doubtful that the built up trust can account for 100% of the confidence. Touch based interfaces are largely form-less designs. There are an infinite amount of affordances offered by a touch screen. As it stands now, all of these affordances are defined by the visual appearance and lack the 'resolution' so to speak, that a physical form can provide.

josscrowcroft 15y ago

This is very interesting, and relevant since I just found out the air traffic control display at the local airport in my hometown has been replaced with, to quote one guy, "a big ipad" They're up in the air about it because now, instead of knobs and switches, informed by paper maps and pencils, they've got this fancy, 'high-tech' touch screen display - 3x5 feet of shiny glass. There was a minor storm in a teacup about it, because it leads to a much greater potential for accidents, bad landings and congestion (it's a very busy airport)- but because it cost millions, nobody can go back to good ol' pencil, paper and brain.

prawn 15y ago

I appreciate your point and prefer physical controls when driving, but obviously one major advantage of the described approach is that the same space can be used to control different things - e.g., swap out the sat-nav area for air-con controls, put up weather or traffic reports if the music is switched off, etc.

cageface 15y ago
That's the tradeoff of touch interfaces in a nutshell. They're jacks of all trades, masters of none. This is why musicians, for example, are still willing to shell out many thousands of dollars for a real synthesizer or drum machine even though a standard PC and generic midi keyboard can make all the same sounds. For some tasks, it's worth paying the heavy premium for a dedicated physical interface.