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Death of the Button? Analog vs. Digital
mattnyc99 writes "Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds is sick of navigating menus to turn up the heat—while he's trying to drive. His take in the article (as well as a a no-holds-barred podcast) is that modern tech product designers should get back to analog controls before iPhone users get sick of looking down at their touchscreen everytime they dial without a dial. It may be up to you: Whither dangerous auto technology, or long live the touchscreen?"
A nice system, definitely. Mind you, I like the one in my Prius: press button on steering wheel. "Say voice command." "Temperature, x degrees" "Temperature set to x degrees.", or "Restaurants" "Showing all restaurants in area.", or "Cruise Control, 60mph." "Cruise control set, 60mph."
I was about to say the same thing with my Prius. Most of the common things I need to do I can do from the steering wheel, and in addition there is still an analog volume control (for quickly adjusting the volume). Now there are still times I need to hit the touch screen, but usually not often. The main things I usually need to adjust are the radio and climate control, and both are easily settable on the steering wheel for 90% of the things I need to do. It took me a little while to adjust to the new controls, but now that I'm familiar with them I do not need to take my eyes off of the road.
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I have a Canon Rebel, which is a film SLR, but it has the interface you just described.
My parent's 1970's Canon is soooooooo much easier to use, it has knobs for the settings, it has a field-of-view diagram on the lens (I have to guess with mine), a split for perfecting focus on what you want in focus (I have to trust the autofocus or just eyeball it) and I know it's been dropped onto rocks in a flowing stream at least once and survived (I have not tested that with mine).
My camera's interface is a tiny LCD and microscopic buttons. You can see the settings more clearly when you look through the viewfinder, but then you can't see the tiny buttons you need to press. And the worst part: if stop pressing buttons long enough to arrange your shot (10 or so seconds) the camera times out and deletes all the settings you spent the last 5 minutes perfecting.
I prefered analog electric alarm clocks because it was quick and easy to set the alarm time, such as adjusting for Mondays or Fridays which have a lighter commute. Most digital clocks require lots and lots of clicking and waiting to change the time, especially to move it back. I could change the alarm in about 2 seconds with electric analog, but it takes me an average of one minute with digital buttons. But I cannot find analog electric alarm clocks in stores anymore.
Table-ized A.I.
There are practical ideas for haptic feedback for touchscreens---for instance, it turns out that live-feedback vibration can fool your sense of touch enough so that it feels like a real button. http://www.time4.com/time4/microsites/popsci/howit works/cellphone_motor.html
This has been apparently already implemented in Samsung SCH-W559 cellphone.
While I love touchscreens and whatnot, I think everything has it's place. For example, I MUCH prefer a car (or home for that matter) stereo with an actual volume knob, even if it just spins perpetually and get's translated by the system into a digital signal. It's the analog interface that's important. Beyond that, who cares what the underlying system does with the input, as long as the result is the desired effect. Rather than push a button repeatedly, it's so much easier to just give the knob a quick spin when you want to crank up (or down) the volume of a song. The iPOD's click-wheel interface is one of the few touch technologies that are acceptable replacements to an analog volume control. I am simply using the volume control as an example, as that is what came to my mind when I read the article, I am sure there are many more examples I could think of, were I so inclined.