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The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped

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Re: The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped

#101

Post by texel »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #41
Shenglong wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who answers their phone in the rain with the face up? Isn't that a little ridiculous? I think every piece of technology has its limitations. I could argue that button phones are loud, and I can't text with them during class or meetings. If you answer your button phone while it's raining, the rain will likely also screw up your button-phone... probably with more permanent damage than touch-screens. Also, a lot of touc…

"Who answers their phone in the rain with the face up? " Someone who lives in Seattle?

Lifetime Seattleite, never had a problem with the rain and capacitive touchscreens. I know I'm just one data point and all that but it's not a common complaint AFAIK.

Re: The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped

#102

Post by vacri »

samstokes wrote: post #6

tldr: Did they never play a game in landscape mode, and accidentally back out of the whole game by merely holding the device wrong? I really don't get the anti-(physical-)button trend.

less moving parts, less overall parts, cheaper to make, looks cooler in the marketing...

Re: The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped

#104

Post by Sidnicious »

faboo wrote: post #97
digikata wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those membrane buttons are more common on ovens, but I did mean capacitive buttons on my oven. Honestly, I think there are companies and products lines which take the time and care to do the human factors engineering whatever interface is selected for the design, and there are products which don't have that attention paid to htem - blaming the button technology itself is sort of a side show to the actual focus on use…

Indeed! Our dishwasher has membrane buttons on the front to operate it, and everyone in our house has accidentally turned the washer on by accidentally leaning on a button.

This is a great point. A friend of mine has a calculator, with big, traditional buttons, on his desk. It gets set off all the time (and prints out useless lines of tape) when people lean against the desk, simply because of where the calculator sits.

There is certainly much more to getting controls right than the style of buttons.

Re: The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped

#105

Post by barista »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #30

Its interesting to hear designers on a rant about capacitive buttons. Switches are the bane of most electrical engineers because they cost a lot and they have a finite lifetime. So generally they are thing that is going to 'kill' the product. And because they are both mechanical and have moving parts (in the non-capacitive variant) when they break the users just push harder trying to get them to work and that can cra…

Though I agree that the capacitive buttons are more reliable as compared to physical buttons and also look nicer, I think the mechanical buttons only have to be reliable enough. Particularly in case of phones, that typically get replaced every couple of years, the buttons dont necessarily have to last much longer than that.

Besides, with the smart phones that cost hundreds of dollars these days, adding a couple of dollars worth the cost to these buttons seems like a wise investment.

Re: The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped

#106

Post by chrisjsmith »

Anything which is not tactile is bad if you ask me. That means capacitive buttons, touch screens etc. Even Star Trek shot themselves in an episode when a blind person had to use a panel:

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Tactile_interface

Now I'm not partially sighted, but I'm not always looking at the display.

Re: The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped

#107

Post by yardie »

Zak wrote: post #38
namdnay wrote: post #13

I don't agree with his comment about the stove - Sure it's more fiddly than a real button or dial, but the ease of cleaning more than makes up for it IMHO.

For most purposes, I find the idea of buttons on a stove inferior to plain old knobs. I can see some merit to the idea of programming an oven to change temperature after a certain amount of time or some such, but a lot of stoves have buttons without any such capabilities. Most stove buttons I've seen are membrane switches with plastic over them, presenting a smooth, easily cleaned surface. These seem to be the optima…

I like the concept of knobs on stoves. But there doesn't seem to be any sort of standard so when one breaks or goes missing you're on the hunt for a replacement. Not so bad for a fairly new one, but when you have a 50 year old gas stove.... I'm sure visegrips makes good money on people that need pliers for their hobs.

Re: The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped

#108

Post by qq66 »

WrkInProgress wrote: post #37
raganwald wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an example of Apple's design brilliance. They have a feature that just works , and it's perfectly normal for users to have no idea why it just works or why other products that seem to have the same features are so frustrating to use. Of course, the downside is that people sometimes buy a product that seems to be "as good as an iPhone," and they have no idea that their user experience is worse than the iPhone'…

I think this is a standard feature of most modern touchscreen smartphones and not some "design brilliance" relegated to only Apple devices. I currently have to carry two phones, one is an Android device and the other is a Windows Phone 7 device, they both implement the proximity sensor and it works the same way as the iphone. IIRC correctly HTC (back in the days of Windows Mobile 5) already employed this feature in t…

I didn't use the HTC phone that you mention, but it would be interesting to know if the feature was implemented as well as it is in the iPhone. This feature has literally never failed for me in 2 years of using my iPhone (it sometimes gets false positives when the phone is in my hand, but it's not too bothersome).

Re: The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped

#109

Post by qq66 »

icebraining wrote: post #86
underwater wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never walk around wearing headphones. I simply don't understand people who think that every waking moment of their life needs a soundtrack.

They don't need to be playing music, you know? I got a cheap ($10) bluetooth headset and I walk around with it in my ear all the time just to answer calls.

Some of us don't want to walk around with a thingy stuck on our ears.
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