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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

#351

Post by allenu »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #310
sfink wrote: post #286

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.…

Oh, it is actually worse. The amount of times when I swiped down from the top (to open the notification shade or whatever it is called now or to refresh the page), the UI shows pulling down the thing fully... and when backs off. I repeat the gesture, but again it goes all the way down and retracts back and nothing happens. And of course when I don't need that, I just swipe down to go top of the page - it thinks what…

Or worse, those UI affordances may change over time. With the swipe down behavior you mentioned, on iOS, I used to just swipe down from the center of the top of the iPad to see the notification shade. A recent iOS behavior made it so swiping down from the center now causes the app window to be dragged. Ugh! Now I have to relearn to find a spot slightly to the right to pull down to view the shade.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#352

Post by frosted-flakes »

jws wrote: post #207
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.

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.

Also, what if you have the windows open or the roof down? Or what if you're using your radio the way it was intended to be used?

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#353

Post by nelgaard »

low tech can provide control and persistence.

I want a real hardware volume dial on my phones and laptops. Mostly so that I can turn them down and be sure that that I will not embarrass myself by making noises at events where silence is expected.

And I miss DIP switches. It is just brilliant that you could configure it once and for all. E.g. I have smoke detectors that could all be linked together by pressing some buttons in a weird ritual, but when you change a battery they forget and run down the battery in no time trying in vain to sync.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#354

Post by frosted-flakes »

Melatonic wrote: post #322
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.

Yeah I hate this. Part of the reason I do not like the interior of all Tesla vehicles. I test drove one and asked the salesmen what happens if the screen breaks - he told me that it actually happened to his Tesla and that because of parts shortages it took months and months to get it fixed. When this happens all you can do is drive the car and open and close the windows essentially - no sunroof, no AC, nothing.

I'm surprised that Tesla's cars even have window buttons. They've eliminated everything else.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#355

Post by AdamH12113 »

tomtheelder wrote: post #347
AdamH12113 wrote: post #284

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 app…

Although I'm very much on the side of using more low-tech interfaces, it's important to remember that pre-iPhone touchscreens were a VERY different beast. Resistive touchscreens, in particular, were awful.

This is very true. Resistive touchscreens were slower, less reliable, and IIRC had coarser position sensing. Since we're talking about history, it's also worth noting that early opinions on touchscreens tended to assume they would be desk-mounted or wall-mounted, which leads to the gorilla arm problem.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#356

Post by tomtung »

sfink wrote: post #286

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.…

So true. This is one reason why I really miss my Pebble watch with its physical buttons, which allowed me to perform a lot of operations by touch without looking (e.g., play/pause/forward/rewind for media control). In comparison, fiddling with the small touch screen of my Fitbit Versa is such a poor user experience.

Not to mention Pebble's "low-tech" screen was so clearly visible in direct sunlight, while I have problem clearly seeing the fancier screen of Fitbit when it's slightly bright outside.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#357

Post by tablespoon »

_jal wrote: post #340
tablespoon wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a reasonable chance I won't buy another vehicle, so I don't care what the rest of the market does. Good for you, but why do you feel you need to weigh in on the new car market when you have no intention of ever participating?

Why do you feel the need to play conversation-cop?

> Why do you feel the need to play conversation-cop?

Because we're discussing a complaint about modern cars, and "always buy used ones that predate the change, and plan to die before those become unavailable" doesn't really address the complaint. It's a rather idiosyncratic and radical way of avoiding it, and bends the conversation to discussing that personal idiosyncrasy.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#358

Post by izacus »

windowsrookie wrote: post #304
malfist wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have touch screens, but it's minimal, pretty much only usable in the GPS view. They do have a rotary dial and push button that controls the display, so no touching it. Makes it a lot simpler when your UI designers are restricted to left/right movement and button push. Can't hide things all over the place and under deeply nested menus.

The new Mazdas have no touchscreen and in my opinion it's worse. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are designed to be touched. Navigating either without a touchscreen is a horrible experience and requires significantly more steps than just touching the item you want on the screen.

I found no serious issues using Android Auto with my Mazda, what kind of things are you doing during your drive that are so impossible to do with the rotary controller?

The only thing I can remember might be the address entry, but that can easily be done with the keyboard on the phone itself (click "phone" icon in the on-screen Auto keyboard to handoff).

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#359

Post by WalterBright »

sfink wrote: post #286

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.…

I find it harder to accurately position a physical slider than a knob. The reason is pretty obvious once you realize which muscles are involved in each movement.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#360

Post by closeparen »

joe_the_user wrote: post #325
sfink wrote: post #286

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.…

I agree with you but in response to: 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. I gotta mention that I have a circa 2000 Japanese luxury car and the dials that control the stereo and the air conditioning are actually re…

My 2017 Subaru has perfectly nice tactile controls for the radio, except that they’re disabled when the car is in reverse.
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