Oh, well, I must say - I'm touched that they got that problem under control.
US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers
251–260 of 458 posts
Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yesterday I was driving back from Scotland to England, doing 70ish, when we ran into a really heavy thunderstorm. Went from good visibility to almost zero in seconds, and the only thing I could properly see was the crash barrier alongside the lane. I found myself desperately trying to see where the road was, simultaneously trying not to get rear-ended as I slowed up, switch on the rear fog lamps and hazards, max wipe…
Honest question: Why don't modern cars yet monitor humidity in and outside the car and make the correct decisions to keep your windows clear? Why are we focusing on self-driving cars while our cars are too dumb to do this much on their own?
This is the Airbus v Boeing problem. There are two schools of thought, one being that you the operator can control all the settings including the ones necessary to avoid the fogging. There are others that do so automatically. So many times people would be aggravated that my a/c would turn on with the heat in my Audi. What they didn’t realize was how that prevented fogging of the windows which inevitably would happen a few min later. I noticed my current car also does this but it turns itself on after the heat has kicked in.
Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It ain't broke, so stop trying to 'fix' it. Sure, but the marketing department had to fill a few blanks in the "bad weather options pack" (optional but casually installed on all cars in production that will be available in the next six-eight months) for a mere US$ 3,000: 1) self-learning wipers (using AI to set automatically an appropriate wiping speed, including economode, that only wipes the right side of the wind…
Interesting this patent literally just expired today: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5412296
Expired in 2012, buddy.
Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
on the other hand, AC is one of the only electronic features that causes a meaningful hit to fuel economy (and available power, if you have a weak engine). I very much prefer to decide for myself when it turns on.
Your car likely already turns off the AC when you accelerate hard. Most of them do that.
But not at cruise, which op was alluding to
Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers
#255Wait. Let me get this straight. Touchscreens, which are ideal for representing multiple user unterfaces in an intuitive way, but requiring constant visual contact are being replaced by a physical user interface that can be used by both touch, and memory? Why was touchscreen ever even a consideration for controls you're not looking at? Touchscreen is great for phones. It is awful for keyboards (see macbook pro). And i…
Touch screens have a cheaper cost per command input and more easily changed. Further, you can reconfigure the controls on the screen based on use to achieve way more controls than would fit in a similar amount of space.
As pointed out in the article, this is not good human factors process when the key set of command options are fixed and unlikely to change. And that hard controls for similar functions across equipment gives better cost savings in human training time than the "soft" controls give at acquisition time.
I do think military acquisition folks can "fall in love" with "sci fi" interfaces but there has been a ton of excellent research at NASA Ames which disputes the utility of such interfaces.
Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
I installed encoder knobs to emulate potentiometers There's really no need to force this decision to go in either direction. Ever since I first heard of capacitive multitouch, going back to the timeframe before the first iPhone announcement, I've been waiting for someone to build 'stick-on' encoder knobs that the touchscreen controller can read. These would simply take the form of a knob with a metal leaf or other po…
This reminds me of the Surface Dial. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-dial/925r551sktgn Being able to set the dial on the screen and just turn it is a really good-feeling workflow, though likely not for something as mission-critical as the article is describing.
What I had in mind would cost closer to $0.99 than $99.00, though. (Well, OK, $9.99.) The Surface Dial was a relatively complex Bluetooth device; it didn't work through the touchscreen itself, except to the extent that the touchscreen somehow knew that a Surface Dial was resting on it.
Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
tbf this could be achievable with Apple's virtual click tech. Would like to see how that'd work in practice.
I assume, that actions like turning/twisting do not work well on touch screens. you can do sliders but for somethings that may not give the correct control. I can probably turn a knob at finer increments than I can slide my finger on the screen.
It is all about haptic feedback, and low latency between action and outcome.
You can twist virtually with good precision. But, what is much harder is the feel, state of the knob, particularly when it is released and then gripped again.
Mechanically, the structure of the knob can take some energy input, and it serves as a mechanical pivot, or fulcrum, depending on how people use a knob.
Without all those physical things, people lack the complex frames of reference needed for fine, "thought is action" type control.
Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers
#258Wait. Let me get this straight. Touchscreens, which are ideal for representing multiple user unterfaces in an intuitive way, but requiring constant visual contact are being replaced by a physical user interface that can be used by both touch, and memory? Why was touchscreen ever even a consideration for controls you're not looking at? Touchscreen is great for phones. It is awful for keyboards (see macbook pro). And i…
> Touchscreens, which are ideal for representing multiple user unterfaces I am no expert on this, but from talking to people in the aviation industry I noticed slow a trend away from the cockpit-with-2,000 controls and towards using computer screens which switch between display multiple things. Or rather, there still are 2,000 controls, but thanks to the computer-screens, the number hasn't blown up to 200,000. So my…
Configurable displays that you can quickly glance are great.
OTOH controls that you normally, and especially in a critical situation, reach and operate without looking, is a different thing. They should be stationary, and provide good tactile feedback.
Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Modal interfaces can work very well, if used wisely: - with experienced users, e.g. people who are used to vim - with a sharply limited number of modes, e.g. the three modes that vim has It's just really easy to get carried away when you have the enormous number of combinations that touchscreens allow.
The main problem with with experienced users, e.g. people who are used to vim ... though, is that it basically represents a surrender on the idea that UX is important at all. Given enough time and commitment on the part of the user, any interface can be learned well enough to be adequately useful. You could build an interface out of loaded guns and rotating knives, and a sufficiently committed user could eventually l…
This is absolutely not the case. There is a difference between UI built for people with no training/experience, and those with some training/experience; see e.g. the Therac disaster for an illustration of the UI challenges of building for experienced users. On personal computers, it means attention to keyboard shortcut design, making data more prominent and well-separated visually, and labels less prominent/space-consuming.
Consumer-oriented UI is not the only UI! Users' time and commitment are not unlimited, but they are substantial when e.g. you are in the military and already need to be trained to understand the problem domain.
EDIT: A great example is the UI of the controls of a car. It's important to put commonly-used controls in ergonomic areas, follow the principle of least surprise, etc.; but it can still be built with the assumption that the user is a licensed driver and knows where the turn signal usually is, that up is left and down is right, what all the assorted symbolic labels mean, etc.
Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers
#260> and that many were fatigued, with an average of 4.9 hours of sleep between the 14 crew members present. I suspect this played more of a role than any of the controls or procedures did. I had a friend in the Navy and he once explained the shifts he did to me and how utterly insane they were. I suspect leadership doesn't want to (or cant) fix the root cause (fatigue) and is happy to spend tax dollars to replace the s…
I'm not going to argue that the navy should be allow insane schedule, if it's due to budget or poor planing, but in case of a real war maybe you can't expect the grew to get a full 8 hour sleep. A warship need to be able to operate under the worst of circumstances. In that case every move you make needs to be reflex, and I can imagine that touchscreens aren't ideal for quick precise motions, done by reflex, after onl…
This is less than 5 hours of sleep in peacetime, though. How much sleep do you think they'd actually get with a war on?