The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces • Hacker News Board

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#281

Post by vel0city » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:01 PM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #267

vel0city wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how to I set my away temperature? How do I set the return temperature? How do I set the sleep temperature? How do I set the wake temperature? How can I make it change based on my schedule, as I'm home most of the day on the weekends while I'm often out during the week? Seems like its not that great of a UI given the requirements I have.

Turn it up and down when you come and go? In my opinion all those features are a catastrophe in that your body will end up being in your house at the wrong time or your clothing will be warmer or hotter than typical or your spouse will, and you will want to play with the temp anyways and end up fiddling with things to get it right. The learning thermostats try to solve this, but it’s at great cost and complexity and…

> In my opinion all those features are a catastrophe in that your body will end up being in your house at the wrong time

You're trading sometimes being in the house at the wrong time to every day being in the house at the wrong time. Then your other statement doesn't matter if its programmable or not, if you're constantly in disagreement of what the thermostat should be you're going to be fiddling with it regardless of if its programmed or not.

I realize people's experiences vary greatly, but that's kind of my point about looking at the basic Honeywell thermostat and declaring its a great user experience. To me, its a terrible user experience and far worse than my basic 7 day 4 stage programmable thermostat which I touch once a season and otherwise let it be. In the end I save energy, reduce my bill, have on average a more comfortable house, and I rarely have to interact with the thermostat.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#282

Post by formerkrogemp » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:01 PM UTC

speedgoose wrote: post #263

bobthepanda wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some tools are just not good for the job. At least to me, I haven‘t seen a compelling reasons that touchscreens replacing analog car controls isn‘t a square peg going into a circle hole.

Well, analog controls are not very good to control a gps map or browse a music collection.

Why do we need screens on everything when we have a phone? A mobile computing device.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#283

Post by lostgame » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:04 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #191

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 suppose this allows for more frequent updates, but in my experience it just leads to more bugs and more painful factory updates. What is allows for is: cost cutting. Not having to install a mask, a button, wire harness and QA everything is a massive manufacturing cost saving. It speeds up production and lowers the amount of components that need to be sourced, installed and later made available for replacement as…

>> This is the same situation as with Electron apps - the savings aren't for YOU the USER, the savings are for person MAKING the thing. They get all the benefit at the cost of your user experience.

I hate Electron as much as the next average HN user, but isn't the benefit of Electron actually kinda for the user as well as the developer, in the sense that Electron is basically a one-stop shop for porting to other platforms?

For instance, Microsoft Teams is written in Electron. This means the application is pretty damn well identical whether users within my company are using Windows or Mac computers. There are advantages to that.

I'd say for myself, Unity is a great example of where, basically; if I went 'native', I would really only be supporting one platform, like I used to when I did game dev in the late 90's and early 00's. But Unity gives me the power to flip a switch, and then all my friends can play pretty much the same copy of my game on any platform of their choosing.

It also means if there are bugs on one platform, they usually show up on another as well; making QE and addressing bugs a little bit easier, making for a better user experience.

Not a fan of Electron, just saying that there are benefits to the user for using such a system.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#284

Post by AdamH12113 » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:06 PM UTC

I feel like a lot of people have forgotten that before the iPhone, touchscreens were widely regarded as a terrible interface only suitable for niche applications like kiosks. There were good reasons for that, and latency and lack of tactile feedback were high on the list. Touchscreens have proved effective in situations where you need a highly-flexible interface in a small space, but an awful lot of devices (like appliances) have more space and don't need the flexibility, so they end up taking all of the downsides with none of the benefits.

A lot of designers (or marketers) seem to be trying to copy the look and feel of Apple devices without understanding the factors that led to their design.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#285

Post by CSSer » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:07 PM UTC

speedgoose wrote: post #256

woopwoop wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I understand your critics against touchscreens and they are justified. Your car doesn’t have a good touchscreen interface from what you say and also from my experience when I drove the corollas from the car pool. However it’s not because many cars are bad that the technology is bad. A touchscreen from an 20 years old Archos MP3 player is extremely bad while an iPad Pro M1 is very good.

I don't think it's really about the touchscreen. I think very few manufacturers, if any, are putting very much thought into this. Apple Carplay, for example, is just a jumbo, uber-simplified version of ipadOS/iOS. In my car it has a great, high resolution 10" touchscreen but a very lackluster experience. It's pretty damning if even Apple, a tech company at heart, is doing it poorly. It doesn't autoplay audio, store memory of what you were doing when last connected, or have any available preferences. "Car" is right there in the name but nowhere to be found in the experience based on everything drivers have expected from vehicles for the better part of a century.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#286

Post by sfink » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:07 PM UTC

This article strangely undersells the advantages of low tech. It's true that they're not better for everything, but they have advantages well beyond the basic things mentioned.

A tactile button has far fewer accuracy issues with positioning: if you can feel the button, you won't start pressing 2/3 off and then get further and further off until you're triggering something else, as happens all the time on touchscreens.

A knob provides a richer communication path between your brain and the device. With touchscreens, you can basically just poke and swipe, with some unintuitive nuances like long press or multi-fingered gestures. With a knob, you're using separate muscles and so can associate muscle memory based on the size, texture, and granularity of "click" feedback as you turn. We also have the ability to finely modulate the rate of twisting something—compare that to tapping frantically on a touchscreen left/right icon to control a quantity.

Knobs don't share space in our muscle memory with buttons. To some extent, different knobs and different buttons are distinguishable too.

Physical sliders are good for fine-grained control, but are also good at just smashing them all the way to min or max. When I try that on a touchscreen control, it might not make it all the way to the extreme, or my angle is wrong (no physical constraint to keep my hand/finger in place!) and it doesn't register at all because I veered off of the control.

Even when I'm looking at the screen already, using a directional pad means I'll always gradually get further and further off until it stops registering. Either because my attention is on a different part of the screen, or because my fingers are in the way of seeing the displayed pad. Not a problem with a physical stick or knob.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#287

Post by outworlder » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:07 PM UTC

The main advantage of the modern GUI is when you need to perform wildly different tasks on them. Physical controls may not be appropriate to every task. This was the pitch when Jobs unveiled the iPhone, and it makes sense.

However, if you have a device with a single function, there's no need for that. Your physical controls will always match the device's function. Use those.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#288

Post by speedgoose » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

formerkrogemp wrote: post #282

speedgoose wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, analog controls are not very good to control a gps map or browse a music collection.

Why do we need screens on everything when we have a phone? A mobile computing device.

The last gen Citroen Ami uses the phone. You can check how it looks.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#289

Post by basisword » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

lostgame wrote: post #283

izacus wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose this allows for more frequent updates, but in my experience it just leads to more bugs and more painful factory updates. What is allows for is: cost cutting. Not having to install a mask, a button, wire harness and QA everything is a massive manufacturing cost saving. It speeds up production and lowers the amount of components that need to be sourced, installed and later made available for replacement as…

>> This is the same situation as with Electron apps - the savings aren't for YOU the USER, the savings are for person MAKING the thing. They get all the benefit at the cost of your user experience. I hate Electron as much as the next average HN user, but isn't the benefit of Electron actually kinda for the user as well as the developer, in the sense that Electron is basically a one-stop shop for porting to other plat…

>> This means the application is pretty damn well identical whether users within my company are using Windows or Mac computers. There are advantages to that.

Disadvantages too. Unlike a website, I want the software on my computer to take advantage of the native UI and other features unique to the OS. If Electron didn't exist MS would still build teams for multiple platforms. It would disadvantage small developers but the majority of users (who use well known software developed by large companies) lose out on the prior mentioned benefits thanks to Electrons existence.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#290

Post by _jal » Wed, May 25, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #275

_jal wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we, the consumers, will continue to buy them. Who's this "we"? I'm in the pre-buy stage, it looks like my record of non-car-ownership will end at 23 years. (My last car was stolen from a SOMA lot in 1999.) It does look like I'm buying used and IC, because I will not have a touch screen. I've driven basically every model of car you can rent, and some of them are less offensive than others, but they're all ass. Backu…

' I'm buying used and IC, because I will not have a touch screen' That's not a solution - you have to look at market of brand new cars, as whateber is avaliable now will replace all the used cars.

Of course it is a solution. I end up with a car that doesn't have a touch screen.