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Bring Back Our Knobs: Analog vs. Digital (2009)

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Re: Bring Back Our Knobs: Analog vs. Digital (2009)

#151

Post by throwawayboise »

katzgrau wrote: post #135
NikolaNovak wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this makes me a clueless annoying boring techie nerd :), but I still cannot properly fathom how this is a minority opinion. NOBODY in my non-techie group of friends or family cares. Not.even.remotely. I watch them struggle with their touch screens, I even listen to them rant, but when asked about it afterwards, it's fine. Just fine. Sexy. Sleek. Desirable. Why do I have to go and ruin everything? Honestly, eve…

On that note, my wife either sets to the absolute minimum (60F) or max (80F) and alternates between the two extremes as she inevitably becomes too hot or too cold with one of those settings. I've tried my best to help her understand the insanity of it, but no luck yet. I think it's actually a throwback to the days when there was just red and blue to indicate gradually larger amounts of hot or cold.

My wife does the same thing, with the temp setting but also with the fan speed.

Re: Bring Back Our Knobs: Analog vs. Digital (2009)

#152

Post by albert_e »

My dream --

Physical knobs and buttons (preferably with universal indicators of current state) for mic mute/unmute, camera on/off, volume.

Laptops can have either built in or a usb/wireless accessory.

Mobiles also need physical buttons if not knobs.

Edit to add:

A raspberry pi zero or less and commodity buttons / dials in a well designed case should easily work for this. I know some streamdeck projects exist but not sure if they specifically aim for knobs and other tactile UX. Any projects in this space we can get behind or emulate?

Re: Bring Back Our Knobs: Analog vs. Digital (2009)

#153

Post by chaboud »

For me the biggest reason knobs are useful in a car can be observed by the surface-exposed HVAC dials of the early 2000s Impala (axis-aligned with X or Pitch axis):

If you're twisting a knob with two fingers and hit a bump, the anti-directional nature of the contact points on the knob cancels out the translation injected by a bump in the road.

The 2000's Impala showed that analog on the X axis and analog on the Z axis are very different, as it was virtually impossible to set the temperature accurately in an Impala if moving (still not the worst thing about that car, not even close).

This is why steering wheels are very effective input mechanisms. If you're jostling around, the wheel still doesn't rotate. Try driving one-handed on a bouncy road. I bet your hand goes to the top or bottom of the wheel intuitively.

I do appreciate when auto manufacturers who use touch screens put the screen near an edge or lip that I can use to stabilize by hand, but day to day controls should really have dedicated dials, knobs, and (at least) buttons.

Re: Bring Back Our Knobs: Analog vs. Digital (2009)

#154

Post by Wistar »

finnh wrote: post #33
Wistar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High-end ovens, such as those above, say, $5k, almost always have knobs. I sure appreciate tuning knobs on car audio systems but almost no one besides Toyota and Lexus offer them any more.

Huh. When remodeling my kitchen in 2016 the highest priced ovens all had crappy touchscreens. I had to "downgrade" from Miele to Bosch to get knobs.

I was thinking about DCS, Bertazzoni, American Range, Viking, Blue Star and even Hestan level stuff. Most of their ovens have knob based controls.

Re: Bring Back Our Knobs: Analog vs. Digital (2009)

#155

Post by porknubbins »

katzgrau wrote: post #135
NikolaNovak wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this makes me a clueless annoying boring techie nerd :), but I still cannot properly fathom how this is a minority opinion. NOBODY in my non-techie group of friends or family cares. Not.even.remotely. I watch them struggle with their touch screens, I even listen to them rant, but when asked about it afterwards, it's fine. Just fine. Sexy. Sleek. Desirable. Why do I have to go and ruin everything? Honestly, eve…

On that note, my wife either sets to the absolute minimum (60F) or max (80F) and alternates between the two extremes as she inevitably becomes too hot or too cold with one of those settings. I've tried my best to help her understand the insanity of it, but no luck yet. I think it's actually a throwback to the days when there was just red and blue to indicate gradually larger amounts of hot or cold.

The alternating all the way is a little insane but I can kind of understand because the old UI of heat or AC level knob is more intuitive . When I first get in a 40F car I don’t want to set it to 72 or whatever I just want max heat I can get as soon a possible while knowing my 72 is meaningless until the engine warms up. I don’t trust my car to use max heat until exactly 72 so I set it all the way to 80 then back off.

Re: Bring Back Our Knobs: Analog vs. Digital (2009)

#156

Post by wruza »

BeefWellington wrote: post #149
smusamashah wrote: post #100

I recently found about "Aesthetic-usability Effect" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetic%E2%80%93usability_ef... People find sleek looking things more usable even when they are actually not. There are no visible left/right click buttons on modern laptop touchpads. You get a sleek looking touchpad. Tap bottom left side harder to left click, right side to right click. There are still buttons beneath, but no, to desi…

I think there's limits to these kinds of effects if it's actually a thing you interact with on what I'll call (for lack of a better term coming to mind) a blue collar basis. My reasoning (story time): I got hired to fix up a piece of custom-built software that was essentially the core business function for a series of medical clinics. They'd spent quite a bit of money to replace an older DOS system with a fancy new .…

the .net app to replace it didn't seem to even know what tabindex was for. Literally you couldn't tab around any screen in the app in any kind of sensible workflow way.

Software development is a smart job, but looking at some software makes you think who created it and what was in their mind. My pet peeve is frontend developers’ attitude to their enterprise users. “Okay, there is a table, so a user can click here on the add row button, then click at the select-item link, select an item (or click into the search input), click at the qty field and enter a number …”. Except that this user already enters thousands of rows per day and has no time for this clicking-around idiocy, they add rows by insert, they tab around fields, select-item is called automatically on empty cell focus, and they type right in the table of items to search it, which doesn’t work in web because tables cannot have focus. It has nice tr:hover effect though, cause why not. Useless animated bullshit with 0.1px typography and 2em margins.

And this mindset is everywhere, thinking that a mechanic who accounts for parts, or a doctor who fills in a condition details, or a store worker who runs between shelves, all have time for an hour-long chinese tea ceremony every time they turn to their computer.

Re: Bring Back Our Knobs: Analog vs. Digital (2009)

#157

Post by wruza »

albert_e wrote: post #152

My dream -- Physical knobs and buttons (preferably with universal indicators of current state) for mic mute/unmute, camera on/off, volume. Laptops can have either built in or a usb/wireless accessory. Mobiles also need physical buttons if not knobs. Edit to add: A raspberry pi zero or less and commodity buttons / dials in a well designed case should easily work for this. I know some streamdeck projects exist but not…

Add a screen brightness knob and sign me up.

My monitor ($750 few years ago) has only 3 levels of brightness effectively, because to change it you have to go through a hierarchical menu of around 10 clicks of different buttons, and then wait for a stupid bar to go to the desired value. I had to create 3 presets to at least switch day/evening/night modes with only 3-4 clicks.

Re: Bring Back Our Knobs: Analog vs. Digital (2009)

#158

Post by jonny_eh »

porknubbins wrote: post #155
katzgrau wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that note, my wife either sets to the absolute minimum (60F) or max (80F) and alternates between the two extremes as she inevitably becomes too hot or too cold with one of those settings. I've tried my best to help her understand the insanity of it, but no luck yet. I think it's actually a throwback to the days when there was just red and blue to indicate gradually larger amounts of hot or cold.

The alternating all the way is a little insane but I can kind of understand because the old UI of heat or AC level knob is more intuitive . When I first get in a 40F car I don’t want to set it to 72 or whatever I just want max heat I can get as soon a possible while knowing my 72 is meaningless until the engine warms up. I don’t trust my car to use max heat until exactly 72 so I set it all the way to 80 then back off…

> I don’t trust my car to use max heat until exactly 72 so I set it all the way to 80 then back off.

I've done the same in rentals but have always wondered if that helps. Shouldn't the car try to get the heat to 72 as fast as possible?

Re: Bring Back Our Knobs: Analog vs. Digital (2009)

#159

Post by MerelyMortal »

Koshkin wrote: post #116

A touch glass cockpit is perfect in a spaceship, good in an airplane or a boat, and an abomination in a car.

I disagree overall (you're definitely right about it being an abomination in cars though). Touchscreens are bad when they move (spaceship launch, air turbulance, waves, uneven road). There's also a direct relationship with how bad touchscreens are, with how often you need to 'keep your eyes on the road'. Space, you don't really have to look out the window, planes you don't really need to look if you're IFR in IMC, boats rarely have traffic on the open water and don't have to stay in a narrow lane, cars have lots of traffic and narrow lanes. So I wouldn't say "perfect" or "good", but perhaps you meant various degrees of "forgiving"?

Re: Bring Back Our Knobs: Analog vs. Digital (2009)

#160

Post by chimen »

abakker wrote: post #68

I have to say, I’m optimistic about the controls in the Ineos Grenadier. I’m not sure I can afford one, but man, the dash design is good.

Too bad it looks like a fridge and has a motor that consumes and pollutes a lot. Will make a great car for serious off-roaders and full time mommies picking up children from school no doubt.
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