41–50 of 410 posts
I'm willing to pay extra to avoid touch screens in my cars, washing machines, door locks, and personal computers. I can't be the only one!
Modern cars seem to be moving towards all controls on a touch screen somewhere. I suppose this allows for more frequent updates, but in my experience it just leads to more bugs and more painful factory updates. Not to mention using a touchscreen to adjust the temperature while driving is incredibly dangerous compared to a dial you can feel for without taking your eyes off the road.
I have grown to heavily dislike the whole smartify everything. Haptic feedback is a core part of how humans process the world, and to remove it in favor of more frequent updates seems like a naive decision at best. Flatness in phones works because we can use our full attention - which is also why car accidents happen when people use it while driving.
I very much agree with you, and would like to add that flatness in phones is a feature because today phones are pocket computers, and computers should be able to provide any arbitrary UI to function as such. Cars on the other hand are not a computer nor are they intended to function as one.
The fact that modern cars expose part of their on-board computer to the driver is no excuse to treat any capability that may be handled by said computer as something exclusively accessible via a touchscreen UI, especially when its something that is expected to be interacted with while driving (audio playback control, climate control, windscreen wipers, etc.). A touchscreen is fine for features that should not be done while driving and did not exist or were not easily accessible prior to the ubiquity of touchscreens in cars. For all intents and purposes those are computer features. However, subjecting anything that was previously available via mechanical interaction to it is an unacceptable regression.
Reminds me of modern stoves. All of them have touch controls which means every time a friend of mine is presenting me their new kitchen, I have no idea how to use the stove. They always say "No, no, it's really easy to get used to" but it's still frustrating because the touch controls never bring any new features to the table. They are just knobs abstracted into separated buttons and sliders, of which the latter you…
Reminds me of modern stoves. All of them have touch controls which means every time a friend of mine is presenting me their new kitchen, I have no idea how to use the stove. They always say "No, no, it's really easy to get used to" but it's still frustrating because the touch controls never bring any new features to the table. They are just knobs abstracted into separated buttons and sliders, of which the latter you…
Having had one of these, I just want to say: “Never again.” Mine would turn itself on when you washed it and turn itself off when something splattered (like 50% of the time when I boiled water). It made me wonder if anyone actually tested the damn design before approval for mass production.
> During the recent home device project I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest supporters of a touchscreen-based solution was the team’s marketing specialist. Why am I not surprised?
I don't buy it tbh. Most home appliances are sufficiently complex that physical buttons are not intuitive. Ask someone to change the clock on their oven vs on their phone. Most could do it on the phone but not the oven. And there are countless more practical examples of this issue. My Breville coffee machine only has buttons and knobs, which works fine for the basic flow since everything has a dedicated button. But o…
Common basic functions: knobs dials switches.
Extended functions: there's an app for that, or suffer through modal button changes like you describe.
Save on BOM costs, less points of failure, and does not require an SoC with display controller and a software stack running a (usually janky and slow and non-standard) UI.
Reminds me of modern stoves. All of them have touch controls which means every time a friend of mine is presenting me their new kitchen, I have no idea how to use the stove. They always say "No, no, it's really easy to get used to" but it's still frustrating because the touch controls never bring any new features to the table. They are just knobs abstracted into separated buttons and sliders, of which the latter you…
Having had one of these, I just want to say: “Never again.” Mine would turn itself on when you washed it and turn itself off when something splattered (like 50% of the time when I boiled water). It made me wonder if anyone actually tested the damn design before approval for mass production.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having had one of these, I just want to say: “Never again.” Mine would turn itself on when you washed it and turn itself off when something splattered (like 50% of the time when I boiled water). It made me wonder if anyone actually tested the damn design before approval for mass production.
Haha that’s true! I am an electrical engineering student, if I have to guess it may be due to random electric charges, probably grounding was not done properly.
Reminds me of modern stoves. All of them have touch controls which means every time a friend of mine is presenting me their new kitchen, I have no idea how to use the stove. They always say "No, no, it's really easy to get used to" but it's still frustrating because the touch controls never bring any new features to the table. They are just knobs abstracted into separated buttons and sliders, of which the latter you…
Having had one of these, I just want to say: “Never again.” Mine would turn itself on when you washed it and turn itself off when something splattered (like 50% of the time when I boiled water). It made me wonder if anyone actually tested the damn design before approval for mass production.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having had one of these, I just want to say: “Never again.” Mine would turn itself on when you washed it and turn itself off when something splattered (like 50% of the time when I boiled water). It made me wonder if anyone actually tested the damn design before approval for mass production.
Often they’re also too damn close to the heating elements, so you risk burning your fingers when you operate them.