Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 458 posts

Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers

#331

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

reificator wrote: post #285
devnulloverflow wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since mouses and GUIs were invented it was common knowledge that "ordinary" users don't bother to learn keyboard shortcuts. That common knowledge is wrong, but it comes from an important truth: brand new users who are not yet committed to your product will get frustrated if the thing they need to do is hidden away as a key-binding or command-line command. So successful products optimise for the UX of a user who…

But I wasn't talking about onboarding. I was talking about the speed of people using your software to do work on either a touchscreen or a keyboard.

You weren’t even talking about that.

The person you responded to wrote:

> custom control board with specialized buttons and keyboard

So we weren’t even talking about keyboard shortcuts in the ctrl-c sense, but that the specific action has a specific button.

How, indeed, could that have been a surprise.

Here’s a my stupid story:

On the laser cutter I operate there as no way to tell the machine “the stock / remnant / offcut I want to cut the parts from is located at x,y”.

The machine has a touch screen display which shows the cutting heads current location. So you put it in manual mode, drive the cutting head in to the start position as per your materials location, then type the coordinates it displays as a graphic in to two fields in a dialogue box.

There’s no button on the machine or touch screen to automate that.

This is why I think UX professionals will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Thankfully I’m aware of AutoHotKey, and Capture2Text, so I wrote a script to turn a keyboard shortcut in to a series of mousse movements, clicks, and OCR, to take the graphic display if numbers and turn them in to strings of numbers.

I still can’t believe there hasn’t been a software update to implement a feature I can build in to a compiled .exe that lotteralky took me 45 minutes to build from aware-the-tools-exist to implementation.

Someone give me a billion dollars already. I’m clearly a genius.

Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers

#332

Post by mietek »

mietek wrote: post #191
smacktoward wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i.e. doesn't need to morph into a different and back again The UX terminology for what you're describing is a modal interface : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(user_interface) ... which is to say, an interface that works differently depending on what "mode" the interface is in. A classic example of a modal interface is vi/vim, where you have to explicitly switch into "editing" mode in order to actually insert t…

Another classic example of a modal interface is the Photoshop toolbox, dating back to MacPaint. http://www.psd-dude.com/tutorials/resources-images/adobe-pho... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint It does not take much work for a Photoshop operator to orient themselves to the current mode, because it is communicated by a number of cues, including the shape of the mouse pointer. One problem with vi’s interface is th…

Rehosted Photoshop toolbox image:

https://i.imgur.com/oIKOOCC.jpg

Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers

#333

Post by ulfw »

Justsignedup wrote: post #198

Wait. 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…

Tell that to Elon Musk’s Tesla

Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers

#334

Post by closeparen »

Justsignedup wrote: post #198

Wait. 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…

Entertainment industry control consoles in audio, video, and lighting blend the two pretty well. Hardware faders and encoders for actually manipulating parameters. An LCD right next to each physical control showing its current assignment and meaning. Keyboard buttons for selecting pages and layers, playing back automation, and command-line programming. Touchscreens for situational awareness, drilldown to detailed views, configuration, routing, and navigation of complex hierarchies.

Yamaha has a nice idiom called "touch-and-turn" where there's an unassigned encoder right next the screen which manipulates whichever parameter you tap onscreen. Navigating the touchscreen is at least as nice as visually scanning a large format analog console to find the right handle, but a knob is the right way to actually tune it. It works well.

Your hands spend little if any time on the touchscreen during the show, but it helps you understand what's going on with the physical control surface and grab rarely accessed parameters, not worthy of dedicated console real estate, when needed.

Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers

#335

Post by mxscho »

PunchTornado wrote: post #263
mxscho wrote: post #206

This looks like a great step in the right direction and I hope the manufacturer of my coffee machine is following suit.

hmm, I like the coffee machine at the office to have touch screen. They have literally 30 types of coffees there, I prefer quick searching and selecting my stuff. + with touchscreen you can bookmark your specific drink with the right amount of sugar and milk and then get it every time at the touch of a button.

We also have these big coffee machines at work and they're very cool because when you're walking to a different one it's kind of random which mix of products you'll get offered just because there are so many drinks and each one is programmed differently. And I agree that it makes sense for these types of machines.

But my personal one has literally two options to choose from. However, the touch screen is old technology in contrast to the machine itself, so the handling is rather awkward. Also, it had to be replaced already because it suddenly stopped working for no actual reason. I think that the logic behind not just putting two physical buttons on it is that some designer thought it looks cooler with this big screen full of colors - and he may be right, but UX should really be more than just looks.

Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers

#336

Post by reificator »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #331
reificator wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I wasn't talking about onboarding. I was talking about the speed of people using your software to do work on either a touchscreen or a keyboard.

You weren’t even talking about that. The person you responded to wrote: > custom control board with specialized buttons and keyboard So we weren’t even talking about keyboard shortcuts in the ctrl-c sense, but that the specific action has a specific button. How, indeed, could that have been a surprise. Here’s a my stupid story: On the laser cutter I operate there as no way to tell the machine “the stock / remnant / o…

Yeah AutoHotKey is surprisingly helpful for things that seem otherwise unautomateable.

> You weren’t even talking about that.

> The person you responded to wrote:

> > custom control board with specialized buttons and keyboard

> So we weren’t even talking about keyboard shortcuts in the ctrl-c sense, but that the specific action has a specific button.

> How, indeed, could that have been a surprise.

I considered typing keypad or array of buttons, but I figured keyboard conveyed the intended meaning closely enough.

Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers

#337

Post by sgustard »

jacobolus wrote: post #302
beached_whale wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> actions like turning/twisting do not work well on touch screens Have you ever used an iPod (capacitive touchpad) scroll wheel? A good physical knob is still better, but a touch wheel can be made pretty decent.

The iPod wheel has a physical barrier acting as an affordance for your finger to trace. It certainly works better than it would just floating in space in the middle of a touch screen.

Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers

#338

Post by [deleted] »

jakear wrote: post #5
rossdavidh wrote: post #2

You know, I think touchscreens are not preferable unless you need/want to be able to have controls for many different systems in the same space (e.g. a smartphone with multiple apps). If you are needing a dedicated control for a high-stakes system, the fact that it's a more modern-looking interface should not matter. Touchscreens are inherently inferior to a mechanical interface, if it's a single-system (i.e. doesn't…

This is why I detest touchscreens for most car functions. Specifically AC, with old fashioned knobs I have full control over AC without taking my eyes off the road, but nowadays everyone wants to put it on their infotainment system, hidden beneath 4 other buttons.

[deleted]

Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers

#339

Post by ringshall »

archon wrote: post #248
Izkata wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Star Trek's bridge controls can be reconfigured, but there's a standard static configuration that doesn't change while they're in use. This is also referenced at a different point in Voyager when Tuvok is annoyed by how Tom Paris uses a nonstandard configuration. So that at least reduces the need for constant visual contact.

There's another Voyager episode in which Tuvok is temporarily blinded and he tells the computer to turn on the tactile interface so he can work on a computer console. So even 25 years ago before everyone had a touchscreen in their pockets, it was obvious that touch screens wouldn't be great for all situations.

And of course there’s the comment in ‘All good things’ by Dr. Crusher when she says she can’t believe how they got by with 2D controls in the old days, and how the current holographic controls were much easier to use.

So, Star Fleet made the same transition as the US Navy, from a touchscreen to 3D tactile controls.

Re: US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers

#340

Post by PhasmaFelis »

jacobolus wrote: post #302
beached_whale wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> actions like turning/twisting do not work well on touch screens Have you ever used an iPod (capacitive touchpad) scroll wheel? A good physical knob is still better, but a touch wheel can be made pretty decent.

A iPod touchwheel can be used without looking at it. It's much more like a knob than a touchscreen display, even if it uses similar technology.
Post reply on HN