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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

#381

Post by rurp »

elliottkember wrote: post #198
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 did a car stereo design question during a job interview once. "Design your ideal car stereo" was the prompt. I said that all I wanted was a bluetooth button and a volume knob. They pressed me for details, and I said the volume knob needed to have a minimum and maximum threshold. I guess that worked, because I got the job. I ended up giving this exercise to a lot of candidates. About 30% said they would project the…

I actually test drove a car last year that projected the speedometer onto the windshield in an attempt to make it look like it was overlaying the road. It was terrible! Before even leaving the parking lot I clarified with the sales rep that this "feature" was optional, because there was no way I was buying a car with it.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#382

Post by stjohnswarts »

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.…

One reason I'm hanging on to my car for now. I prefer knobs and buttons. I can adjust my radio, ac, heat, defrost, etc without ever taking my eyes off the road.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#383

Post by stjohnswarts »

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…

Yep, it also gives a rather encompassing single failure point that will be very hard to replace and very expensive >10 years. Possibly more than the car is even worth at that point in time.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#384

Post by mc4ndr3 »

I detest touch screens. The feedback, durability, reliability, discoverability, and general focus of an application can often be maximized by selecting more traditional hardware user interface components. The ROC curve for gesture based volume controls peaks at false positives and again at false negatives.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#386

Post by porknubbins »

sfink wrote: post #328
joe_the_user wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree! I could rant endlessly about all the bad physical interfaces I've used. My house is full of them. All the new appliances come with the flat buttons—are they capacitive or something?—they may or may not register when you press them, that often don't work when poked with a gloved elbow, etc. And dials like you describe that change random amounts or aren't debounced or whatever. There are probably more possible…

Now that you mention it all applicances I’ve ever seen have those annoying flat buttons. If they made a microwave or oven control panel with the equivalent of a satisfying mechanical keyboard it would pretty well differentiate itself with a premium feel, though even the feel of a decent tv remote would be a huge improvement.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#387

Post by yourapostasy »

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 expect if lo-tek UI’s become a popular way to interface with software, it won’t be long before someone is codgering up a 3D printer to create baroque monstrosities. Like say a colicky knob that acts as a button in both push and pull directions with multiple different clicky depths, and slides.

That reminds me of many Asian web site UI’s: they’re very dense by some Western market standards because many Asian markets’ Internet users apparently want dense information transfer in their user experience, which seems to be eschewed by many current Western site designs.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#388

Post by mjcohen »

tomtung wrote: post #356
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 prob…

Pebble Times (and others) are still available on eBay. I am wearing my third - the batteries died on my other two.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#389

Post by MajorBee »

strix_varius wrote: post #237
marcosdumay wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'm just curious what you cook in a microwave for 10 minutes .

It's not really cooking, but I find it useful to defrost frozen meat in the microwave if I have forgotten to leave it out of the freezer overnight. Defrosting in a microwave usually means letting it run at low power for a long time (> 10 minutes depending on the type of meat and weight). Of course, I use the presets that come with my microwave to figure out the right time/power combination, so I definitely find that feature useful.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#390

Post by MajorBee »

omega3 wrote: post #32

One only needs to look at how professionals operate to find already iterated to a close perfection user interfaces. Take a professional kitchen at a restaurant and compare it with a gadget filled home kitchen.

That's not always the right way to go either. A professional using a particular device on the daily will be proficient in its usage regardless of how terrible the user interface, simply on the basis of how often they use the thing. On the other hand, how quickly an amateur can pick up a device and start using it will be heavily dependent on how intuitive and instructive the interface is. These two can often be conflicting, though not always. For a product that has a lot of "amateur" users (many home appliances), a touch screen can often be the right paradigm to choose.

A classic example of this is the situation where an experienced cashier on an "analog" system can just fly through the buttons and complete transactions in no time, while at the same time a rookie would take that much more time to ramp up, figure out, and internalize the various button mappings. A darker interpretation of this would be that the system is optimization for fungible workers, where swapping out one cashier at will for another has negligible impact on productivity.

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