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The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

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Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#41

Post by michaelgrafl »

leejo wrote: post #39

Touch screens and mixed user interfaces on things like cash machines, petrol pumps, etc kind of bother me - maybe later posts will go into this as the blog ends saying there will be a follow-up. Just a couple of anecdotes - the first being cash machines where I input the PIN using the traditional buttons on the numeric pad, then i start using the touchscreen to make other choices. Pick one or the other, not a mixture…

I think the only situation in which I prefer a touchscreen to anything else is when the function of the device completely changes a lot and I can't have keyboard and mouse.

Re: calibration: In Austria we have touchscreens for buying train tickets at the station. As a tall person looking down on the screen I always have to factor in some offset, touching slightly beneath the thing I want to hit. Not that bad with big areas. But typing out stuff on the software keyboard is terrible.

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#42

Post by digi_owl »

spondyl wrote: post #28

A coworker of mine often refers to his time of working on a CT scanner which this reminded me of. One story was around how a new model was released that used a touchscreen instead of tactile buttons. As you can imagine, a doctor could previously fully focus on the patient as they were able to feel the feedback of physical buttons. With the introduction of a touchscreen, they would have to continually switch between l…

Read about similar where doctors would keep using older DOS based software because they could operate the keyboard by touch, and thus bring up test results etc while maintaining the conversation with the patient.

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#43

Post by kalleboo »

ctack wrote: post #15
lowkeyokay wrote: post #7

I still miss a physical button on my phone to take a picture. Haven’t had it since my Nokia Windows Phone.

I don't get how jog dials aren't more popular for every interface. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jog_dial There is a 5 direction one from Sony. One or two of these and a small black and white screen near the gauges should be all you'd ever need.

I had the Sony Ericsson M600[0] Symbian phone for a while, and loved the jog wheel on it. The software never really took full advantage of it though, and just used it to select in lists. It would have been great for stuff like quick-launch shortcuts.

[0] https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_m600-pictures-1425.ph...

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#44

Post by dingaling »

fipple wrote: post #10

On my old car I could both read and write any value to the car without looking at the controls. That's important -- if I was feeling cold, but the temperature was set to where I wanted it, I'd turn on the seat warmer, as I knew I'd need to feel warmer only temporarily. Now I have to look at the controls all the damn time. One important thing was that all of the controls were asymmetric -- the buttons were all differe…

Was it a SAAB? Pre-GM they had amazing cockpits, well laid-out and as easy to use at night as day.

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#45

Post by digi_owl »

I think one reason store chains etc are moving to touch screns is that they can push various changes centrally.

I recall seeing older systems that used transparent keycaps, and invariably they would be covered in stickers and whiteout as the employees had tried their best to implement changes on the fly.

And now that i think about it, were there not a story posted a while back about a restaurant where the waiters used an age old grease marker on the screen of their POS to mark reservations that had arrived? This because while the software had such a feature, it required too many clicks or some such to be effectively done during a busy day.

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#46

Post by kjeetgill »

leejo wrote: post #39

Touch screens and mixed user interfaces on things like cash machines, petrol pumps, etc kind of bother me - maybe later posts will go into this as the blog ends saying there will be a follow-up. Just a couple of anecdotes - the first being cash machines where I input the PIN using the traditional buttons on the numeric pad, then i start using the touchscreen to make other choices. Pick one or the other, not a mixture…

I think the mixed mode works really well.

Touchscreens are pretty natural and intuitive, especially for things like ATMs, but you can't have braille on ATM touch screens so you need the buttons no matter what. At least in the US they usually have headphone jacks to replace the information presented on the screen though, and since you have a screen you might as well make it a touch screen.

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#47

Post by bartread »

m-p-3 wrote: post #13

IMO this is a cost that many popular smartwatches seems to forget these days. Buttons are great for quickly interacting with the device without having to glance at it. I shouldn't have to watch my screen to skip/pause a song, dismiss a notification, etc.

The Garmin Fenix 5X uses buttons rather than a touchscreen for interaction, and it should be awesome as a result. Unfortunately the interface is so damn slow to respond that you end up having to look at the watch when navigating or using functions anyway. Also the feel of the buttons is spongey - there's no satisfying click to tell you when the button has been pressed properly. Again, a factor that forces you to look at the screen.

Not recommended: expensive, somewhat ugly, painfully slow UI, and frankly not that awesome in any way other than a relatively impressive battery life (unless you're using GPS!).

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#48

Post by crististm »

mirimir wrote: post #30

So how are touchscreens OK, but using smartphones while driving isn't OK? I mean, I got pulled over once for a little lane wandering while adjusting the radio. Which had knobs.

Perfectly valid question!

The process of vehicle validation should be extended also to user interface besides drive-train.

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#49

Post by dbattaglia »

This is exactly why I dislike the new MBP touch bar. I spend much of my working day in IntelliJ, debugging Scala code. I so badly want to rest my fingers on the function keys while I step in/out/over code, just as I used to in Visual Studio debugging C# and C++. I recently tried the native touch bar support in the Early Access version of IntelliJ and it was really not any better. It's no fault of Jetbrains either, I just don't care if I'm seeing a cute arrow icon instead of F9, as I don't want to have to look at anything at all, I want to rely on muscle memory.

Same goes for audio/DAW control surfaces; as much as I'd love to replace all equipment with an iPad, it just doesn't come close to the feel of an Ableton Push (for instance), and I don't see how it ever could.

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