4 ms·

Pro Tip: So do ER Doctors and Insurance Companies. What would be best is something along the lines of a hybrid aircraft controls. See F/A-18 Hornet cockpit. Ba

Pro Tip: So do ER Doctors and Insurance Companies. What would be best is something along the lines of a hybrid aircraft controls. See F/A-18 Hornet cockpit. Basically tactile buttons around the perimeter (maybe just side or bottom for consumer), but the options can change. Also for consumers, touchscreen should be a value-add to tactile controls, with hardware buttons as primary. So you could touch-scroll with a finger, but you could also just hit pagedwn tactile button.

cameldrv 4y ago
A lot of small aircraft controls have moved to touchscreens, and they're terrible, especially in turbulence.
- roeles 4y ago
  On gliders it's common to have buttons on top of the stick. There are <enter> and <escape> like buttons and a 4-way button emulating the arrow keys. Using these to navigate menus still demands a whole lot attention. It just isn't very predictable.
  - Arrath 4y ago
    I drove a friend's Audi and it had the best input method possible, down on the center console next to the gear shift there was a little nub joystick that allowed 8 way movement on the map, the collar of the nub rotated to cycle around the menus, and you pushed it down to click. There was a back button next to it on the console. This actually made me consider an Audi, except for the fact that by the time I drove it this was an older model, and that input had long been superseded by a pure touchscreen.
- omoikane 4y ago
  Airbus A380 has a keyboard, I am not sure if that's common on other planes: https://www.google.com/search?q=airbus+a380+keyboard&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=airbus+a380+keyboard&tbm=isc... Maybe that's the endgame -- dedicated buttons for commonly used functions, keyboards for everything else.
- FridayoLeary 4y ago
  Isn't it the job of the faa to regulate every conceivable safety issue out of existence? Why did they let touchscreen controls through the net?
  - tjohns 4y ago
    Because they're not really a safety issue in an aircraft. When you're in cruise flight, things happen slowly. Heck, on a pre-touchscreen general aviation GPS unit, you dial waypoints in one letter at a time with a single rotary knob. As annoying as the touchscreen is, it's still an improvement - and you still get your single rotary knob in case things are turbulent, so it's no really any worse. Takeoff/landing is a different story. Things happen quickly there. But you're also not messing with the avionics during those phases of flight. As the saying goes: aviate, navigate, communicate - in that order. Touchscreens are mostly the realm of navigation and (sometimes) communication.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
Touch screens are great for stuff that needs to be cleaned though so ER doctors are probably stuck with them.
- tiedieconderoga 4y ago
  I could be wrong, but I think I've seen removable silicone membrane covers over mechanical buttons in some pieces of medical equipment. Silicone is inexpensive and suitable for cookware that gets exposed to heat. I bet that sort of thing could survive an autoclave.
  - tomxor 4y ago
    Yeah, those have been around for decades on all kinds of old specialised keyboards and equipment... The real reason stuff trends towards touch screens is people trying to keep the BOM cost low without considering cost to the user. A generic touch screen with dynamic controls is cheaper than a larger custom made keyboard or physical controls. It's the same reason we end up with power inefficient IoT devices that could be made with very cheap and efficient microcontrollers, but developing for those requires expensive expertise, so we end up with huge powerful ARM cores because it's more general and easier to code. The common factor in both of these issues is cost to manufacturer vs cost to user (power, safety etc).
- NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
  I believe what the OP meant by hatred is that ER doctors and Insurance Companies need to clean up after auto accidents caused by drivers who were distracted by mandatory touchscreen use (which is ironic when mobile phone use, and distracted driving in general, is outlawed in many jurisdictions.) I am sure ER doctors hate to use touchscreens as well, but that's for another thread.
  - detuur 4y ago
    I did a project once for a touchless interface using a Leap Motion (remember those?) for use in operating theatres. The software was a 3D viewer for MRI scans. The surgeons attached to the project were excited, because currently they operated the software by telling the nurses how to rotate and zoom, which didn't work so great. In the end it ended up not working well enough (the Leap Motion would often give glitchy positioning data), but I believe it's the way forward.
testfoobar 4y ago
Touch screens are also pretty terrible for older people. Vision and fine motor skills both degenerate. Without tactile feedback, it is hard for older people to determine if they've successfully clicked on something. Gestures can be tough to teach and successfully implement without error.
- Fr0styMatt88 4y ago
  Worse than touch screens are those touch buttons (you know, where the thing is just printed on the outside of the TV). I have no idea why, I'm fluent with touchscreens in the usual way but something in my brain just.... I don't know. Theoretically it should be the same, right? Except it feels horrible and wrong and I even have trouble trying to find the button. Probably because I'm vision-impaired and an actual touchscreen is usually backlit and easier to see, while for physical buttons I've always compensated by using my sense of touch more (move hand towards general area of button, narrow it down with my fingertips). The lack of the tactile click also certainly has something to do with it as pointed out above. I'd actually be really interested to know from any UX design people here that work on this kind of thing - am I an outlier or does everyone hate them?
  - alephxyz 4y ago
    It's not just you. Most touch screens will have some sort of feedback (visual, tactile or auditory) to let you know when you've pressed a button. Those touch buttons on screens and monitors don't.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Thank god the touchbar is finally gone from the MacBook. It was such a strange delight to use the new model and have the media keys reliably work.
    - yellowapple 4y ago
      I didn't mind the touchbar as a concept, but the implementation was terrible and it should never have replaced any keys.
wolverine876 4y ago
Too many buttons is a problem, but how about a few physical buttons whose labels are screens (high-res LCD, e-ink, whatever) and change according to the mode.
- manchmalscott 4y ago
  The issue is needing to look away from the road. If I don’t know what the button will do right now because it arbitrarily changes, that’s just as much of a problem.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    Good point. I suppose each mode could be color-coded, so the driver might identify the mode and function in their peripheral vision, or at least notice that the mode changed.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  That’s still suboptimal but better, IF the labels never change. I’ll quickly learn that rear defrost is button 2 on screen 1 or whatever, but if some software update changes that I’ll be pissed. I have an older Mercedes (2004) that is like this. There’s a screen, but it’s not touch. There is are columns of physical, pushable buttons at the left and right sides, and the labels appear on the screen next to the buttons.
- FridayoLeary 4y ago
  fighter planes actually do that. In relation to another comment, the pilots memorise sequences of button presses, which slightly negates my own comment. I remember reading a book where a harrier pilot describes a systems pod which upgraded the plane. Unfortunately, the RAF couldn't afford the software upgrade to make the button labels match the actual function of the buttons so the pilots had to memorise every sequence.
netsharc 4y ago
Cockpit UI like on the F/A-18 are called Multifunction Displays or MFDs, but wouldn't they be terrible UI as well, until you memorize the sequence of buttons to do something? You'd still have to look at the display to see what the submenu options are. Apparently they're available for flight sim games, if I had the time and know-how, it'd be neat to bu one (e.g. on AliExpress) and integrate it to my car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gysmVPYX2Fc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gysmVPYX2Fc
- scj 4y ago
  Planes have the nice feature that 99% of the time there's nothing but air around you. With the exception of features used in a critical moment (takeoff, landing, etc), the UI of planes can afford to be far worse than a car!
- evntdrvn 4y ago
  The way they're implemented, I've found them pretty intuitive. Avionics manufacturers are generally pretty serious about Ux. Or at least the test pilots berate them into caring, when I was in Flight Test Engineering I remember a lot of "spicy" feedback about avionics usability issues getting sent back to the manufacturers lol
- Merad 4y ago
  Fighters like the Hornet use HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) which places buttons, 4-way switches, or other controls (mini joysticks, etc.) under most of the fingers. So pilots have something like 30+ commands that they can perform at any time without moving their hands. Interacting with MFD's would mostly happen when the plane is cruising straight and level, probably on autopilot.
hunter2_ 4y ago
> tactile buttons around the perimeter ... but the options can change "Soft keys" [0] are what you're describing. Very commonly seen on ATMs. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_key https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_key
- moffkalast 4y ago
  And on like every car made in the era where screens were high in pixel density but weren't touch capable yet.
HomeDeLaPot 4y ago
It would be best not to change what the buttons do very much. It could add unnecessary levels of confusion. "OK, I think I hit the wrong button, and now I'm not sure what mode the system is in... better look down at the controls while I drive along at 60 MPH." Maybe I'm biased. My old car has a great UI. No touchscreen, just a panel of physical knobs and buttons for media and climate control. The phone integration could be better, but that would really just mean a place to put my phone (without clipping it onto a vent) and a stereo that lets me play/pause/skip songs on my phone using the car's physical media controls.
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  I think mazdas all donthis and always have. They had touchscreens for abwhile and then went back to buttons around a non touch screen.
  - ghostpepper 4y ago
    My 2020 Mazda has a touchscreen (that weirdly only accepts input below 10km/h, sorry passengers), but pretty much all the important controls are available as tactile buttons / knobs. The heads-up display is also nice for checking your speed without taking your eyes off the road
  - nkrisc 4y ago
    My 2018 Mazda3 has the knob and a touchscreen. However the touchscreen is so poor I didn’t even know it was touch-sensitive for quite a while after I got it
  - timbaboon 4y ago
    Yeah, my cx-3 has this. I love it. I wouldn't want to go back to a normal touchscreen in my car.
- klyrs 4y ago
  As long as there is a dedicated back/home button, it's okay in my experience.
- 4y ago
FridayoLeary 4y ago
That sounds like an excellent idea. Operating a fighter aircraft (flying is just one of the tasks the pilot does) is very complicated. So i'm assuming the manufacturers optimise for the ideal combination of versatility and accessiblity while leaving little margin for error. In the middle of a dogfight and flying at mach 2.5 a pilot has very little time to glance at the screen and press the correct button and cannot afford to make a mistake.
dzhiurgis 4y ago
Wonder how much of that could you retrofit if software was customisable/hackable. Mach-E famously have a scroll wheel that imitates touch-swipe to adjust volume. FWIW I don't hate Tesla's touchscreen yet, but I dislike the fact you can't shut it off or disable all the stupid FSD animations there.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

cameldrv 4y ago

A lot of small aircraft controls have moved to touchscreens, and they're terrible, especially in turbulence.

roeles 4y ago
On gliders it's common to have buttons on top of the stick. There are <enter> and <escape> like buttons and a 4-way button emulating the arrow keys. Using these to navigate menus still demands a whole lot attention. It just isn't very predictable.
- Arrath 4y ago
  I drove a friend's Audi and it had the best input method possible, down on the center console next to the gear shift there was a little nub joystick that allowed 8 way movement on the map, the collar of the nub rotated to cycle around the menus, and you pushed it down to click. There was a back button next to it on the console. This actually made me consider an Audi, except for the fact that by the time I drove it this was an older model, and that input had long been superseded by a pure touchscreen.
omoikane 4y ago
Airbus A380 has a keyboard, I am not sure if that's common on other planes: https://www.google.com/search?q=airbus+a380+keyboard&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=airbus+a380+keyboard&tbm=isc... Maybe that's the endgame -- dedicated buttons for commonly used functions, keyboards for everything else.
FridayoLeary 4y ago
Isn't it the job of the faa to regulate every conceivable safety issue out of existence? Why did they let touchscreen controls through the net?
- tjohns 4y ago
  Because they're not really a safety issue in an aircraft. When you're in cruise flight, things happen slowly. Heck, on a pre-touchscreen general aviation GPS unit, you dial waypoints in one letter at a time with a single rotary knob. As annoying as the touchscreen is, it's still an improvement - and you still get your single rotary knob in case things are turbulent, so it's no really any worse. Takeoff/landing is a different story. Things happen quickly there. But you're also not messing with the avionics during those phases of flight. As the saying goes: aviate, navigate, communicate - in that order. Touchscreens are mostly the realm of navigation and (sometimes) communication.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

Touch screens are great for stuff that needs to be cleaned though so ER doctors are probably stuck with them.

tiedieconderoga 4y ago
I could be wrong, but I think I've seen removable silicone membrane covers over mechanical buttons in some pieces of medical equipment. Silicone is inexpensive and suitable for cookware that gets exposed to heat. I bet that sort of thing could survive an autoclave.
- tomxor 4y ago
  Yeah, those have been around for decades on all kinds of old specialised keyboards and equipment... The real reason stuff trends towards touch screens is people trying to keep the BOM cost low without considering cost to the user. A generic touch screen with dynamic controls is cheaper than a larger custom made keyboard or physical controls. It's the same reason we end up with power inefficient IoT devices that could be made with very cheap and efficient microcontrollers, but developing for those requires expensive expertise, so we end up with huge powerful ARM cores because it's more general and easier to code. The common factor in both of these issues is cost to manufacturer vs cost to user (power, safety etc).
NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
I believe what the OP meant by hatred is that ER doctors and Insurance Companies need to clean up after auto accidents caused by drivers who were distracted by mandatory touchscreen use (which is ironic when mobile phone use, and distracted driving in general, is outlawed in many jurisdictions.) I am sure ER doctors hate to use touchscreens as well, but that's for another thread.
- detuur 4y ago
  I did a project once for a touchless interface using a Leap Motion (remember those?) for use in operating theatres. The software was a 3D viewer for MRI scans. The surgeons attached to the project were excited, because currently they operated the software by telling the nurses how to rotate and zoom, which didn't work so great. In the end it ended up not working well enough (the Leap Motion would often give glitchy positioning data), but I believe it's the way forward.

testfoobar 4y ago

Touch screens are also pretty terrible for older people. Vision and fine motor skills both degenerate. Without tactile feedback, it is hard for older people to determine if they've successfully clicked on something. Gestures can be tough to teach and successfully implement without error.

Fr0styMatt88 4y ago
Worse than touch screens are those touch buttons (you know, where the thing is just printed on the outside of the TV). I have no idea why, I'm fluent with touchscreens in the usual way but something in my brain just.... I don't know. Theoretically it should be the same, right? Except it feels horrible and wrong and I even have trouble trying to find the button. Probably because I'm vision-impaired and an actual touchscreen is usually backlit and easier to see, while for physical buttons I've always compensated by using my sense of touch more (move hand towards general area of button, narrow it down with my fingertips). The lack of the tactile click also certainly has something to do with it as pointed out above. I'd actually be really interested to know from any UX design people here that work on this kind of thing - am I an outlier or does everyone hate them?
- alephxyz 4y ago
  It's not just you. Most touch screens will have some sort of feedback (visual, tactile or auditory) to let you know when you've pressed a button. Those touch buttons on screens and monitors don't.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Thank god the touchbar is finally gone from the MacBook. It was such a strange delight to use the new model and have the media keys reliably work.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    I didn't mind the touchbar as a concept, but the implementation was terrible and it should never have replaced any keys.

wolverine876 4y ago

Too many buttons is a problem, but how about a few physical buttons whose labels are screens (high-res LCD, e-ink, whatever) and change according to the mode.

manchmalscott 4y ago
The issue is needing to look away from the road. If I don’t know what the button will do right now because it arbitrarily changes, that’s just as much of a problem.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  Good point. I suppose each mode could be color-coded, so the driver might identify the mode and function in their peripheral vision, or at least notice that the mode changed.
SoftTalker 4y ago
That’s still suboptimal but better, IF the labels never change. I’ll quickly learn that rear defrost is button 2 on screen 1 or whatever, but if some software update changes that I’ll be pissed. I have an older Mercedes (2004) that is like this. There’s a screen, but it’s not touch. There is are columns of physical, pushable buttons at the left and right sides, and the labels appear on the screen next to the buttons.
FridayoLeary 4y ago
fighter planes actually do that. In relation to another comment, the pilots memorise sequences of button presses, which slightly negates my own comment. I remember reading a book where a harrier pilot describes a systems pod which upgraded the plane. Unfortunately, the RAF couldn't afford the software upgrade to make the button labels match the actual function of the buttons so the pilots had to memorise every sequence.

netsharc 4y ago

Cockpit UI like on the F/A-18 are called Multifunction Displays or MFDs, but wouldn't they be terrible UI as well, until you memorize the sequence of buttons to do something? You'd still have to look at the display to see what the submenu options are. Apparently they're available for flight sim games, if I had the time and know-how, it'd be neat to bu one (e.g. on AliExpress) and integrate it to my car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gysmVPYX2Fc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gysmVPYX2Fc

scj 4y ago
Planes have the nice feature that 99% of the time there's nothing but air around you. With the exception of features used in a critical moment (takeoff, landing, etc), the UI of planes can afford to be far worse than a car!
evntdrvn 4y ago
The way they're implemented, I've found them pretty intuitive. Avionics manufacturers are generally pretty serious about Ux. Or at least the test pilots berate them into caring, when I was in Flight Test Engineering I remember a lot of "spicy" feedback about avionics usability issues getting sent back to the manufacturers lol
Merad 4y ago
Fighters like the Hornet use HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) which places buttons, 4-way switches, or other controls (mini joysticks, etc.) under most of the fingers. So pilots have something like 30+ commands that they can perform at any time without moving their hands. Interacting with MFD's would mostly happen when the plane is cruising straight and level, probably on autopilot.

hunter2_ 4y ago

> tactile buttons around the perimeter ... but the options can change "Soft keys" [0] are what you're describing. Very commonly seen on ATMs. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_key https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_key

moffkalast 4y ago
And on like every car made in the era where screens were high in pixel density but weren't touch capable yet.

HomeDeLaPot 4y ago

It would be best not to change what the buttons do very much. It could add unnecessary levels of confusion. "OK, I think I hit the wrong button, and now I'm not sure what mode the system is in... better look down at the controls while I drive along at 60 MPH." Maybe I'm biased. My old car has a great UI. No touchscreen, just a panel of physical knobs and buttons for media and climate control. The phone integration could be better, but that would really just mean a place to put my phone (without clipping it onto a vent) and a stereo that lets me play/pause/skip songs on my phone using the car's physical media controls.

galangalalgol 4y ago
I think mazdas all donthis and always have. They had touchscreens for abwhile and then went back to buttons around a non touch screen.
- ghostpepper 4y ago
  My 2020 Mazda has a touchscreen (that weirdly only accepts input below 10km/h, sorry passengers), but pretty much all the important controls are available as tactile buttons / knobs. The heads-up display is also nice for checking your speed without taking your eyes off the road
- nkrisc 4y ago
  My 2018 Mazda3 has the knob and a touchscreen. However the touchscreen is so poor I didn’t even know it was touch-sensitive for quite a while after I got it
- timbaboon 4y ago
  Yeah, my cx-3 has this. I love it. I wouldn't want to go back to a normal touchscreen in my car.
klyrs 4y ago
As long as there is a dedicated back/home button, it's okay in my experience.
4y ago

FridayoLeary 4y ago

That sounds like an excellent idea. Operating a fighter aircraft (flying is just one of the tasks the pilot does) is very complicated. So i'm assuming the manufacturers optimise for the ideal combination of versatility and accessiblity while leaving little margin for error. In the middle of a dogfight and flying at mach 2.5 a pilot has very little time to glance at the screen and press the correct button and cannot afford to make a mistake.

dzhiurgis 4y ago

Wonder how much of that could you retrofit if software was customisable/hackable. Mach-E famously have a scroll wheel that imitates touch-swipe to adjust volume. FWIW I don't hate Tesla's touchscreen yet, but I dislike the fact you can't shut it off or disable all the stupid FSD animations there.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]