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The UX of Lego Interface Panels

designedbycave.co.uk

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Re: The UX of Lego Interface Panels

#11

Post by george_cave »

java-man wrote: post #10
george_cave wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the nice thoughts. I'm a huge fan of all of the interfaces you describe from industrial and commercial applications. I've written previously about my concerns with the touchscreen dominance and the poor UX impact it can have. My day job is to design physical interfaces for all manner of automotive and consumer applications and you could say I specialise in the non-touchscreen design parts. Regarding the LE…

Please give us an example of the interface you designed (or one you are especially proud of)!

So the things I'm most proud of aren't quite launched yet, but I work right now on a lot of electric mobility projects. Something like a charger for an electric car is especially fascinating because you have none of the cues of typical car refuelling (smell, sound, vibration) and you can create an entirely new metaphor and language around how that charging experience plays out with light, sound, haptic...

Often you'll have a client who says "I want my product to be smart and connected so I need a 5 inch touch screen on the front of the box" and its fun to show them an entirely different approach that delivers both a better user experience and also becomes a key differentiator for their brand.

You can see a few (older) things that I've worked on at my employer's website here: https://kiska.com/

Re: The UX of Lego Interface Panels

#14

Post by jsmith99 »

> I’ve no idea what all the valves in the picture below do, but I bet they don’t all open things that relate to each other.

Disappointingly, the picture is just a bank of water meters for an apartment building (possibly in Israel?). It does convey the message though: they are unrelated because each relates to a separate apartment but are all in one place so a inspector can read them from outside the building.

Re: The UX of Lego Interface Panels

#15

Post by codeulike »

In my day (80s space Lego) we just had the one that looks like a screen of text with 3 buttons on the right. And the one that just had coloured rectangular buttons. And that was enough to run our space stations and LL928s. We didn't need any of that fancy stuff they've got now.

Re: The UX of Lego Interface Panels

#16

Post by uxamanda »

Graphing the differences in the pieces on a LEGO panel was very clever!

This article also reminded me to "zoom out" on a design. If it's super confusing at that level, it probably still needs work. The ventilator example suffers from this a bit. It is really nice to have the instructions inline with the dials, but the visual design makes it look more complicated. If you imagined the LEGO-version, it would have more symmetrical color blocks and alignment. I don't mean to pick on them too harshly, sounds like it was made and distributed in record time!

Re: The UX of Lego Interface Panels

#18

Post by victornomad »

george_cave wrote: post #12
kanobo wrote: post #7

If you liked this article, I highly recommend the book 'Make it So', it's a review of the UX and UI of the interfaces in popular science fiction tv shows and movies.

Thank you, I've just looked it up and messaged the author now!

Thanks for the article, its superb! Could you share some literature as a follow-up?

Re: The UX of Lego Interface Panels

#19

Post by richardwhiuk »

java-man wrote: post #4
ajarmst wrote: post #2

Nice article with an interesting approach. Assuming the poster is the author, the word ‘irradiate’ in the caption in the B17 photo confused me, although it did lead to some interesting speculation. Did you mean ‘eradicate’ and your spellchecker went rogue?

Perfectly fine meaning #2: To shed light on; illuminate. irradiate ir·ra·di·ate (ĭ-rādē-āt) v. ir·ra·di·at·ed, ir·ra·di·at·ing, ir·ra·di·ates v. tr. To expose to radiation. To treat with radiation: irradiate farm produce so as to destroy bacteria. To shed light on; illuminate. To manifest in a manner suggesting the emission of light; radiate: irradiate goodness. v. intr. Archaic To send forth rays; radiate. To become…

I think illuminate would be the common usage here.

Re: The UX of Lego Interface Panels

#20

Post by TeMPOraL »

jsmith99 wrote: post #14

> I’ve no idea what all the valves in the picture below do, but I bet they don’t all open things that relate to each other. Disappointingly, the picture is just a bank of water meters for an apartment building (possibly in Israel?). It does convey the message though: they are unrelated because each relates to a separate apartment but are all in one place so a inspector can read them from outside the building.

Reminds me of a similar setup I had in the basement of the apartment building I lived in: there were groups of valves on the water pipes running along the ceiling, and on each handle there was a tag with apartment numbers written on it.

This was essentially use-case organization, because the use case was, "in case of a leak upstream of your in-apartment valve, go to the basement, find the valve that controls the line you're attached to, shut it off, and go inform other people on the same line what's going on".

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