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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

#341

Post by frosted-flakes »

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…

That's a bad implementation. Implemented well, a radio volume dial allows for predictable fine- and coarse-grained control. All of my cars have had good volume knobs that respond instantly and predictably, but I'm not surprised that there are bad ones.

There are no good implementations of touch screen buttons. However, there are some good implementations of touch sliders though, particularly on some LG microwaves (which someone else also brought up[1]).

I've written about these microwaves previously on HN, so I'll just quote myself[2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31506358

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30873016

> Regarding microwave oven ergonomics, the best one I've seen doesn't have old-school dials, but a touch-sensitive slider bar. You may think this is bad, but it works very, very well. The front of the microwave has the time display, the time slider bar, and two buttons: stop/cancel and start/+30sec. Open the door and there are a few auto cook options and power level options. There is no number keypad at all; the slider bar gives you both very fine and coarse-grained control, depending on how fast you slide across it. It's all very intuitive, and I was very impressed with it.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#342

Post by Unbeliever69 »

I was one of the first few Ux designers for a large defense contractor that made data-link communication devices for the military. Prior to my arrival all the GUIs were done in Matlab. Think 80s VCR-level complexity. Needless to say, these GUIs were not well received by the boots-on-the-ground soldier that had to operate the equipment. Furthermore, they were a complete mystery to the top brass who funded these projects.

When I arrived, some groups in the organization had begun to refactor these Matlab interfaces into WPF applications with slick new updates to the widgets, but it was really lipstick on a pig. After listening to all the stakeholders and users our proposal was to develop a skeuomorphic radio interface (green box with a bunch of dials and frequency display). Only the critical controls were featured on the radio face. All of the configuration options were buried. Now, I get all the eye-rolling when it comes to skeuomorphism as a fad, but it really resonated with our target audience and their superiors. This "Virtual Radio" soon became the defacto style for all communication devices throughout the organization. Because of the animation capabilities of VPF we were able to mimic both the look and feel of the various analog radio controls. It was super realistic. More importantly it allowed us to more easily communicate our designs to a broad audience, including: soldiers, contractors, technicians, and top brass. It has been nearly a decade since I left the company. I hope that this design has gone away. Not because it was ineffective (or trendy), but rather these communication systems needed to evolve to be self-configuring and self-operating, requiring little if any interaction by a soldier other than monitoring. After all, the best interface is one that doesn't need to exist.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#343

Post by marcus_cemes »

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…

I guess the "digital but with physical buttons" is the middleground. It still gives the designers the ability to mess around with acceleration curves that amplify fast movements, or to not sample the value fast enough to get coherent digital readings. I don't understand why they do this. As a university engineering student, I have a great love for linear systems, which usually is anything analogue. It makes everything easier.

For example, the focus ring of a consumer digital camera lens drives me nuts, it's practically impossible to do a pull focus reliably between two objects. If you do it a little faster or slower, it will be off, regardless of the travel distance. On the other hand, professional cinema lenses usually have actual mechanical focus wheels attached to ensure perfect reproducibility.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#344

Post by tomtheelder »

kube-system wrote: post #130
spaniard89277 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some korean brand was moving to physical buttons again, but I can't find which.

Hyundai/Kia have had some horrible interfaces lately. https://youtu.be/EREg2XtohTg?t=7m

My 2022 Kona EV has an amazing, mostly physical button based interface fwiw.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#345

Post by JoeAltmaier »

natdempk wrote: post #308
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #302

Curiously, for some people low-tech is not better. I.e. used to have an Amana RadarRange which had two knobs - one for power and one for time. You turned them until you saw what you wanted on the display. But my pre-reading children couldn't operate it. I'd say "nuke it for a minute and a half" and they'd twist the knob and ask "Is that enough? Which way should I turn it?" See they couldn't do the math to know if 45…

Looking at the dial I feel like if you told them to move it to 1:30 or move it to the 30 past the 1, it would be pretty obvious? Wouldn't you have the same issue of having to convert 1:30 to 90 seconds with the other microwave design? I don't understand how the two are different.

one you just type in the number. The other requires a knowledge of counting and ordinality etc. Is 90 seconds greater than 45 seconds? Is 9 bigger then 5?

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#346

Post by bee_rider »

Unbeliever69 wrote: post #342

I was one of the first few Ux designers for a large defense contractor that made data-link communication devices for the military. Prior to my arrival all the GUIs were done in Matlab. Think 80s VCR-level complexity. Needless to say, these GUIs were not well received by the boots-on-the-ground soldier that had to operate the equipment. Furthermore, they were a complete mystery to the top brass who funded these projec…

I wonder how it evolved over time, after you left.

Most soldiers are in their early to mid 20's, right? They might have never encountered an analog radio at this point! On the other hand, those old physical UIs did have a certain intuitiveness to them that might just be easy to learn, even if it isn't familiar.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#347

Post by tomtheelder »

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.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#348

Post by waynesonfire »

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.

It's a cost cutting strategy and it sucks. A screen and software is cheap at scale.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#349

Post by StillBored »

joe_the_user wrote: post #330
zepearl wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 part of a service. I tend to have the same opinion, but at the same time I'm not convinced: - I bought 1 year ago a new car for 80k…

we have ~100 buttons that all work reliably on our keyboards, which are connected to our PCs/notebooks with just a single cable => I admit that in a car there is the extra challenge of temperature variance I wanted to mention that. Sure, the way auto electronics were traditionally installed was expensive but a keyboard is $20 by itself, a midi music keyboard designed for wear and having buttons and knobs is ~$150. A…

The US backup camera fiasco was informative, because IIRC one of the domestic auto manufactures testified it was going to add $800 or some such to the price of a car (can't find a link about it). Which back then was still like 3x or so the cost of an aftermarket system. The law passed anyway, and for years its remained a high priced option, until there were lawsuits about the feds failing to enforce the law and require all cars to have them. There are various links on the web about how even the NHTSA estimated it would be ~$40 added to the price of a new car, something many found high considering the costs of the cameras and how many cars already had LCDs that could be repurposed.

Although I suspect the addition of backup cameras has given automakers excuses when it comes to rear visibility.

Re: The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces

#350

Post by frosted-flakes »

digitallyfree wrote: post #215
musesum wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This! Was fiddling with a Tesla touch screen to do something basic. During those few seconds, autopilot decided to steer me off the road - with no shoulder - at 80 MPH (it was during a sunset). Fortunately, I caught it in time. After the panic subsided, I decided to learn the voice commands. It seems that each device, now, has its own language, which we have to learn in order to function. A modern tower of Babel.

Speaking of Teslas, the SpaceX spacecraft also use touch screens heavily in the cockpit (maybe it's just something the company prefers) and only have a very small button panel. This is in comparison to the large array of controls normally seen on most aircraft and spacecraft. Obviously they state that the technology is well tested and that the astronauts train a lot with them, but in my mind you simply won't have the…

Astronauts are passengers though. There is very little they can do to control their spacecraft during launch, as the flight path is complex and cannot really be flown manually. Rockets have always been this way, it's just that before they had no choice but to put everything on toggle switches.
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