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The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

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Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#141
post #16

> High contrast, color-coded buttons take less time to mentally digest. I agree with this strongly and recommend using high-contrast features and color wherever it can assist in rapid recognition of important UI elements. I remember being surprised by how much font-lock-mode reduced my bug/typo rate; I started fixing many errors immediately after typing them because the color was obviously wrong. However... it's impo…

Just a few days ago I added to my Pocket IMproved CSS style to 1) put some distance between the trash and other post icons and 2) colour-distinguish them.

https://pastebin.com/raw/bdMw6jkr

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#142
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…

Side note, I hate every device that needlessly makes a beep. Everything seems to make a useless audible sound constantly.

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#143
post #133

This makes me think of another field where bad UI decisions took years to undo... synthesizers! The rise of digital synthesizers in the late 1980s led to an elimination of knobs and sliders, in favor of buttons and menus. This made it very difficult to design your own sounds for them, as sound manipulation was no longer physically intuitive, and working with interacting parameters could mean a lot of menu-digging rat…

The annoying thing for me is that the touchscreen in an automobile doesn't preclude it form having physical controls, often the physical controls are just very poorly thought out.

My 2015 Nissan Leaf has on the face of the steering wheel two 2-way rocker switches, a 3-way rocker switch, what looks like a rocker but is actually two buttons, and five other buttons. This is in addition to the two control stalks that have a dizzying array of positions and knobs themselves.

Three of those buttons are for dedicated features of the infotainment system I will never intentionally press. The answer/drop call button could also function to invoke the voice recognition feature and eliminating the dedicated button. The cruise control utilizes a 2-way rocker and two buttons, it really could be reduced down to a single 3-way rocker.

Infuriatingly the model with the infotainment system, an upgrade, replaced the knobs for volume and temperature control with buttons?! You might think it's to reduce space for the infotainment system but when you look at the two consoles side by side they're proportional spacing is the same.

The infotainment system has two to three physical buttons dedicated to features you shouldn't be using while driving and would better hidden behind the menu button. Of the physical buttons that are arguably usable, there are two that I will again never intentionally press. They'd have been better off making the buttons color/symbol coded and function programmable like the buttons that flank the sides of ATM screens.

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#144
In the '90's, I worked as a software/systems engineer "upgrading" factory process lines (think 100 year-old paper mills, plasctic bottle processing, pharma) from big old buttons and knobs to industrial touch screens. It was a Disaster! Things that operators used to do in a few twists and pushes now required toggling between multiple screens. Small on-screen touch buttons that were the perfect size for computer nerd fingers were way too small for the big meaty fingers of the operators. Conveyor speed feedback that looked steady on an analog meter now looked unstable on a digital display with three decimal places of (un-needed) precision. I should do consulting for these car companies. I could tell them that a volume control should always be a physical manual device. :-)

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#145

I sometimes feel I am in a minority of one these days. Just about every car I've owned, I develop a muscle memory of where all the important switches are, and how far to turn to "hot enough" or "cool enough" etc. Same for most things around - I know fairly well how far to turn the oven for 180 +-10, no need to look. I might check if it's something especially sensitive (rare). Thanks to iPhone (I have one, and like it…

I live in a climate that has cold winters, and have Raynaud's syndrome. If it's cold outside, I wear -30C rated mountaineering mitts, and I'm fine, as long as I don't expose my hands to the cold . Touchscreens (and tiny steering wheel buttons) in cars are literally unusable for me for a good portion of the year.

Would actively heated mitts work, with exposed fingertips?

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#146

The new interfaces out of Garmin avionics are all touch screen based. They did wise up and add a knob and reference bumps around the screen. Still, scary to think I'd be looking at a screen when landing a plane outside of IFR flights.

Also, touch screens are much harder to use in turbulence.

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#147
I'll take this opportunity to complain about my 2017 Honda HR-V. It has all of the problems described in the above piece.

It's the most dissatisfying thing about my car. In fact, it might be the only dissatisfying thing about the car, and yet it's still enough to make me reluctant to recommend the car to a friend!

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#148
The Boeing Starliner has a similar problems with its "glass". It seems wrong on so many levels.

* requires sight (both line of sight and focus)

* fine motor control

* how does it interact with liquids (grease, blood, coolant, vomit) ?

* single point of failure (touch controller)

https://www.google.com/search?q=boeing+starliner+touch+displ...

Re: The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy with my 3rd generation Mazda3. http://images.nadaguides.com/ChromeImageGallery/Expanded/Whi... The IVI display is out of the way but accessible (there's a jogdial on the center console to control it while driving). HVAC controls are manual and very easy to use without looking.

The problem is how to reconcile manual controls (which are great) with Carplay/AndroidAuto (which is even greater). The only control I have over Carplay without using the touchscreen is next/previous song and volume :(

The Mazda unit is supposed to be Carplay-enabled in the next couple of months. I'm curious as well to see what happens. I would hope the newer versions of CP allow for use of external control devices like the jogdial.
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