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The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

uxdesign.cc

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Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#201

Post by foobarian »

nkrisc wrote: post #22
arky527 wrote: post #5

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.

The touch screens are the only thing keeping me on dino juice cars. I want to go electric, but they all have these awful touchscreens! I don’t want to navigate a menu to change the temperature or turn on a seat warmer. I’m just not buying an EV until there’s one that doesn’t rely on a giant touch screen for everything or I can’t buy an ICE vehicle anymore.

Nit: oil formed way before dinosaurs from simple marine organisms.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#202

Post by SCNP »

ratww wrote: post #11
arky527 wrote: post #5

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 really wonder if the possibility of updates alone can make software worse. Because you don't have to "get it right" on the first try. And the updates always contain something more than bug and security fixes, which often help keeping the quality of the experience low, despite fixed bugs. All the smart TVs I ever had lasted a long long time physically, but after a couple years they invariably started being noticeabl…

I purposely NEVER connect smart TVs to the internet for this reason. I'd like to get a "dumb" TV but the ones in the sizes I'd like are prohibitively expensive.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#203

Post by pnw »

franga2000 wrote: post #188
rob74 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's true only as long as the only electric cars you have driven are Teslas. The BMW i3 has pretty much resisted this tendency. Ok, it's already a pretty old design at this point and getting phased out, but it has lots of physical buttons (even for the seat warmer!). And I don't think electric cars that are variants of existing petrol cars (which are more and more common) will eliminate the physical control…

I regularly drive a variety of electric cars (renault, smart, bmw, ford, VW) and besides the Smart For* series, which is cost-down so much that it doesn't even have a touchscreen, all of the cars have at least one feature available exclusively through the touchscreen. One of the most infuriating is Reanult's ZOË, which has really good physical controls for absolutely everything, except volume. That's the one not-driv…

The Tesla Model S has a physical volume control on the steering wheel. I’m not sure about the other Tesla models.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#204

Post by SCNP »

woopwoop wrote: post #181
arky527 wrote: post #5

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.

My toyota Corolla has a touch screen for interacting with audio. It has the following delightful features: - latency - it has a boot procedure when you turn the car on. While this happens, the controls have quite substantial latency. However the first thing that happens is it begins playing audio. - there is a knob for adjusting volume, but it's still part of the same system as the rest of it. There is still substant…

This is another benefit of truly analog manual controls: Memory. Used to be your stereo volume knob was just at a certain level; when you turned it on it was at that level. Now they're all software controlled. At least some stereo equipment maintains this paradigm but I'm with you on the phone volume as it's dictated by your phone and the volume for one device could be drastically different than another.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#205

Post by typon »

foobarian wrote: post #201
nkrisc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The touch screens are the only thing keeping me on dino juice cars. I want to go electric, but they all have these awful touchscreens! I don’t want to navigate a menu to change the temperature or turn on a seat warmer. I’m just not buying an EV until there’s one that doesn’t rely on a giant touch screen for everything or I can’t buy an ICE vehicle anymore.

Nit: oil formed way before dinosaurs from simple marine organisms.

How come we find it underground then?

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#206

Post by nicbou »

marcosdumay wrote: post #197
nicbou wrote: post #141

The most important lesson I learned in engineering school: define the problem then look for a solution. Most people have a solution in mind before they even look at the problem, and that solution is usually "build an app", or "slap a screen on it". With bureaucracy, it's "put the form on the internet". There are a few low tech devices I much prefer: - A kitchen timer vs. my phone. I don't need to unlock the phone and…

> My microwave has one knob for time, and one knob for intensity. I don't think a knob is the optimal interface for time. In microwaves you need to input both low values of ~10s and very high values of ~600s with good precision on both cases. Sure, a logarithmic knob will give you that, but I don't think it's what you would expect. For power it's good. It's even a much better interface for the power level than the us…

I rarely need an exact amount of time. In fact I generally leave it with the door ajar and a few minutes on the timer.

Even then, a knob works perfectly. It does not need to set the value linearly. The first quarter of the timer could be 5 second increments, and the second half minutes.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#207

Post by jws »

nkrisc wrote: post #22
arky527 wrote: post #5

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.

The touch screens are the only thing keeping me on dino juice cars. I want to go electric, but they all have these awful touchscreens! I don’t want to navigate a menu to change the temperature or turn on a seat warmer. I’m just not buying an EV until there’s one that doesn’t rely on a giant touch screen for everything or I can’t buy an ICE vehicle anymore.

For a Tesla at least, you can use voice commands for the common functions and keep both hands on the wheel.

That said, people I know have a strange resistance to using voice commands with their cars and phones.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#208

Post by guessbest »

There are "low tech" interfaces are on handheld ham radios and can be pretty annoying to have to read the manual to change basic settings, like from step from 2.5k to 25k or somewhere in between. A touch screen would make handheld transceivers so much easier to use especially considering the number of features in it.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#209

Post by QuercusMax »

causi wrote: post #87
arky527 wrote: post #5

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.

It seems that Star Trek was incredibly prescient when they depicted literally every interface as a touchscreen.

And the reason of course, was because it was super cheap and easy to modify.

In the 32nd century, tho, they use programmable matter because people like tactile feedback, it turns out.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#210

Post by corobo »

Macha wrote: post #200
corobo wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there not the switch on the mains where you are? In the UK we have a quick-off* toggle switch for electric ovens. Usually near the oven but could be elsewhere in a bigger kitchen That'd be my go-to panic resolve anyway * For folks unfamiliar by this I mean it takes almost zero effort to turn the switch off, but takes a little bit of force to switch back on

I have a isolation switches near my oven (and also for my fridge, and a combined one for my washing machine and dryer) here in Ireland, which I believe are required on new or newly renovated properties by planning laws, but there's nothing asymmetric about the force required, it's just a relatively stiff switch whether turning on or off.

It's possible that the resistance part isn't even a thing

If I'm honest I only noticed it because the last one I came across seemed to be wired upside down (easy on, resistant off) and I'm almost certain the house before had the same but wired the "right way"

Could just have been some rogue grease or something either lubricating or gunking up the switch haha

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