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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?"
The author complains about BMW's idrive control (more info here), but I think it is a good solution to this problem. It's a universal control that gives you a tactile interface without tons of buttons and knobs. Once you get used to it, it's actually pretty easy to use.
The problem with analog controls is that you can't add/remove them easily once a device is made. BMW, for example, updates the software in their vehicles periodically, adding and removing features. Without some sort of universal control system this is much more difficult to do.
Visualize the world of wine
from the long-live-the-knob dept.
Well, there's a sentiment we don't see every day.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
For everything but the volume control/mute button on the stereo.
"car, turn up the air conditioning and close the windows."
Oh, and gags to keep the kids quiet.
Deleted
I can speak to this somewhat, because I am a moon man from the future and have been dialing my phone via touchscreen for a couple years now.
My futuristic moon man technology is called a "Treo 650". You guys arent advanced enough to pronounce that correctly, but trust me, it's a complete rip off of the iPhone in every way. In my time only the richest kings of the undersea realm of europe can afford a true iPhone.
This device I speak of, has a touch screen, and dialing with it requires you to look directly at it.
However, it is fortunate I am so poor and underprivileged, as this device also has an analog keypad, with numbers affixed to some of the keys. The central of these numbers is marked with a little nib, enabling my advanced moon man fingers to dial by my tactile sense alone.
I wish you great success with your iPhone, this is a new technological age for humanity. You are about to behold the awesome power of "a phone that can play mp3s and also has a camera in it".
I pray you use this technology wisely.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
That's a manufacturing "problem".
Consumers are concerned with control.
Making it easy for the manufacturer to crank out more units or less expensive units or whatever isn't important when the consumer has more difficulty USING those devices.
Apple did great with the iPod. Most companies aren't as focused on the customers.
Computers are now being put into embedded devices, but they shouldn't look or act like computers. My prime example is the digital camera:
My mom was an amatuer photographer who used a fully manual camera in the 70's. I bought her a very easy to use Canon Powershot with the same features, and she was completely lost. Imagine this: She wants to set the f-stop, aperture, and exposure time. On her old Miranda that was a switch, a knob, and a slider (or something like that). Now, it's switch to "M" mode, then arrow left to one setting, then arrow up and down, then arrow right, then repeat for the next setting... it takes 10 times longer, and the buttons are much smaller and harder to push. She can't just go by feel while looking at the screen or viewfinder.
Buttons are not the universal replacement for all settings for the same reason that the mouse cannot replace a keyboard and vice-versa. There are multi-modal input devices which map better to some things than others. Use the most appropriate input for each setting. It actually makes it easier.
Oh, and more buttons isn't the answer.
Fund a study of these things as a driving distraction. If they're equally as or more distracting than cell phones, you should be able to lobby a bunch of key, high-income municipalities into instituting an eventual ban on operating touchscreens while driving. Voila, the engineers of taste rediscover analog charm.
OK, maybe it's not that simple. It's still possible.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
It isn't a question of design aesthetics, it's a question of money. Knobs cost money. Analog potentiometers, even bad ones, cost money. Shaft encoders cost money. What you see in modern product design is the result of a ruthless campaign to cut parts costs. A front panel composed of a microcontroller and bunch of flimsy switches is the result.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
What's really needed to solve this dilemma (dialing-while-driving issues in general aside) is a technology which will allow software to subtly deform a touch screen to give tactile feedback. So buttons actually stand out from the screen a bit, etc. I seem to recall there being a technology like this in one of the later of Asimov's Foundation books (Foundation's Edge of Foundation and Earth, I don't recall which): the main character had an inclined, desk-like board on his ship which was a tactile touch screen. I imagine some combination of flexible (and probably elastic) LCDs and something like those toy pinboards (where you've got thousands of tiny dull metal pins arrayed on a board, and you can make impressions of your face and whatnot in them) could accomplish this. The hard part would be controlling all those tiny pins electronically; making the LCD elastic enough to keep snug to the contours of the pinboard would probably also be tough. But imagine the possibilities! You could actually feel the smooth, round curves of... er... those shiny Aqua buttons in OSX.... yeah, that's it. Though other possibilities may help popularize it faster. :-)
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Seriously. The guy is a disturbed political nut job on par with Ann Coulter and knows nothing about technolgy other than he has a blog which only he's allowed to post on and pretty much nobody reads. This idiot was and still is a huge War Supporter. Frankly most people are sick of Glenn Reynolds, the Right Wing's Ward Churchill.
Maybe thats true, bit in this case (and I speak as a bleeding-heart pinko leftie) the guy is right. Designers seem to think that because thay can put a computer in it, it has to *be* a computer. I want analogue. Oh, and before anyone makes any luddite assertions, I'm a shit hot programmer who can juggle a 296,077 line (according to slocount) program in his head with ease. Technology belongs in its place and nowhere else.
When I was getting ready for my freshling year at college, I bought a slick new stereo system. I was so proud of how modern and futuristic it was: it didn't have any knobs! But as time went on, I discovered how awkward it was to use a slider to adjust the volume, or the bass and treble. And holding down buttons for the digital tuning was a pain. I've since replaced it with a stereo that has knobs for all these inherently analog controls, and I'm much happier with it.
Anyone notice what the main control on the iPod is? It's fundamentally a knob (implemented digitally). And that's no small part of the product's success.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Remember the 80s? Remember the fancy cars with digital readouts for speedometers, and some would even talk to you and tell you when the door was open?
Remember when you went in a recent car and saw analog speedometers, and tachometers.
The irony, is they aren't analog - they're displaying a readout of a digital signal. But the "needle" guage is something you can monitor with your peripheral vision. It's safer, people prefer it, and it looks nicer - frankly.
You have to look at a touchscreen, you have to waste seconds analyzing it. You have to read a digital readout, recognize the numbers "72" and realize you're going 72 mph. Whereas I can know if the orange needle gets past "12 o-clock ish", I'm going too fast.
Of course, I can guage my speed by feel like most good drivers, I knwo what gear I'm in and can feel how hard the engine is working, so it's not a perfect example.
But the displays that came with computers are awkward, and unintuitive by nature. The interfaces we have already gotten accustomed to are, in many cases, just perfect as they are.
My A/C is a knob, one side is red, one side is blue. It's easy to reach down and adjust it without taking my eyes off the road.
ETC
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I'm going to nominate the Advent 201 cassette deck here. I got one as a hand-me down from my dad and it was really something special.
t m
One of the design goals was that the user should be able to operate the unit in complete darkness going only by feel. To that end, controls were placed far apart, on a couple different planes of the unit, had distinct shapes, and switched in different directions. Stateful controls changed position enough that you could feel what state it was in without looking. There were no status lights (other than the VU meter) to look at as I recall.
Here's a picture:
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue16/advent.h
Anyway, ever since then I've always felt that user interfaces should be tactile and show their state in a physical sense. You should be able to make changes even with the power off, and you shouldn't have to look at indicator lights to figure out what's going on.
While a lot of appliances don't require this level of UI "analogness", it is something that should be carefully considered for automotive instrument panel design, since that is definitely a "must be operable in total darkness" situation.
Digital Cameras, Pro or Semi-Pro (i.e. not the point & shoot ones) with...
Why? Well, you don't need to look at the controls to operate them. That's good.
Try Ubuntu GNU/Linux, it's great!!!
On a similar vein, I sure wish DVD player makers like Sony would put all of the controls on the console as well as the remote. I hate the fact that losing the remote means only being able to play, stop, or eject.
It's gratifying to see that you're already taking the first step toward simpler interfaces by eliminating unnecessary letters from the word "knob".
It's not a tough interface design problem.
Heck, you can probably make an 80/20 rule for it:
1) 80% of the time, users are interacting on 20% of the function.
Come to think of it, it's simpler than that:
2) 80% of the time, users want one of four functions. Oh yeah, and might as well throw in
3) with a button interface, users can "spatially remember" three distinct buttons without looking (or training).
and
4) with a dial, that "spatial memory" becomes 5 discrete positions, and a whole mess of sweet intension/remission levels (=volume, tuning have much higher response times).
So design-wise, you want 5 dials maximum. Of those dials, four are fixed in function, and one changes the paradigm (and presumably some of the other dials' function). The main things anyone would want to do are there, and they're there at the first level.
If you wanted to have a similar arrangement with keys, you'd need between 10 and 25 keys. It would not make sense.
Main Menu:
a: Accelerator (30%)
b: Breaks (0%)
c: Steering (+23 degrees)
d: Extra menu
Please select a control: [abcd]
he dialed with a dial?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I have a 325i with an iDrive, and I can tell you exactly what is wrong with the damned thing.
(1) Inconsistent user interface 'language'. In some submenus, selecting a submenu requires rotating the knob; in others, it requires moving the knob like a joystick. (Worse, in some screens, such as on the main navigation screen, you need both motions to select from different menus and submenus. The inconsistency extends to the language of moving back one level: do you press the menu button to pop up one level (as in the 'Info' menu) or do you push the knob forward and select the "up" arrow? Or do you rotate the knob to select the "up" arrow?
Because there is no consistant user interface, it is impossible to simply press the right button to do the task--and that requires you to actually look at the screen, divine from the layout of the screen what action (push menu key, push knob forward, rotate knob) that you need to perform, then take that action--all the time while driving 70 miles an hour down a busy freeway.
(2) Overuse of the knob electromagnetic stopper for tactile feedback causes the knob to be extremely hard to use.
The iDrive knob uses an electromagnet system to both give the knob the feel of discrete "steps" (by triggering an electromagnet briefly as you turn it, to make it feel like there are descrete steps), or to emulate a hard 'stop' when you hit the top or the bottom of a menu list. While this works fairly well for short menus, in some places (notably in the iDrive / iPod interface menus), the 'stop' electromagnet pull is not done when you hit the end of the list, but when you hit the bottom of the screen. So when you rotate the knob to the bottom of the screen, rather than just one brief click and the list scrolls up, the knob does a full stop, then a physical (electromagnetically driven) 'bump', then returns to the same orientation while the screen scrolls up one.
What this means is that if you have a list of 30 or 40 musicians, instead of just turning the knob, you wind up holding the knob as the thing flutters under your hand (hurting your wrist) as the list scrolls up.
I think BMW overused this electromagnet because they had this "wow, we are paying a few bucks for the hardware; let's overuse the feature because it's so cool" thing that many programmers get--and what could have been a subtle effect is instead used to clobber you literally in the wrist until your wrist is sore.
The iDrive user interface actually has more controls than the iPod: a knob rotates back and forth, has four different directions it can be pushed (similar to the four control buttons on the iPod), a select (push the knob down), and a 'menu' button. (I don't count the voice control button, even though it is physically part of the same cluster of buttons, as it does something completely different.) Yet even with one more button, the iDrive is much harder to use than an iPod--because whomever wrote the software didn't think about useability.
It is the dumbest thing in the world to have a $40K car where every last detail is well thought, the driving dynamics are incredible, and the whole thing is so incredibly well built--only to have a user interface that looks like a college student's freshman programming project.
There is part of me that is so annoyed with the user interface that I'm half tempted to move to Germany just so I can fix the stupid thing. Hell, they don't even have to swap out the underlying OS (Windows Automotive), even though it means the car's iDrive (and radio and nav system and...) are effectively dead for the first 30 seconds after starting the car because the OS is still booting. Just clean up the user interface, and it would make a whole world of difference. (And I even know WinCE, on which Windows Automotive is based, so it's not like I couldn't hack the damned thing myself.)
Obviously the safety of a complex system like an entire transportation system depends on many factors - it's to be expected that some changes which occured are detrimental, while others are beneficial. Analysing the overall performance of the system can not directly be used to determine which factors are detrimental - it can only show that the detrimental changes (I think we can safely assume that there are some) are cancelled out by the effects of the beneficial changes.
Given that, suggesting a return to 50 year old technology as the article suggests, is almost certainly the wrong thing to do. The whole approach of coming up with wild theories, based on nothing but gut feelings is not only non-scientific - it's dangerous. Mr Leno has not the slightest idea whether any of his suggestions and speculations have a connection with reality. It's not even based on anecdotical evidence - it's based on anecdotical gut feelings. This is the sort of nonsense which causes some people to reject airbags and ABS.
Mr Leno if you advise people on matters of live and death, is it so much to ask that you learn something about the subject? Or alternatively keep quiet on topics you don't know anything about?
Disclaimer: I develop chips for automotive applications (e.g. airbag controllers). However my salary does not depend on anything my company sells (actually, unfortunately it doesn't even depend on my performance - I'm an engineer...). Anyway, if you are really concerned about your safety your best bet is public transport.
but after a week or two I could navigate the menus quickly and without fuss, and while mostly keeping my eyes on the road
As someone who drives near vehicles that might be BMWs, I have a problem with that 'mostly' bit. Any system that requires you to not look at the road to use it is broken.
Thirdly, about the criticisms that it's unsafe to use while driving? No shit sherlock. Neither is your cell phone. Or putting on makeup. Or shaving. Or eating lunch. But people do those without blaming the manufacturers or restaurants or stores that sell the necessary equipment.
Slight problem with that analogy: cell phones, makup and lunch are generally designed to be used in places that AREN'T CARS. Your iDrive isn't. There is a 100% chance that the driver is actually in the car while using it. Therefore, it should be designed to be used without looking.
> You wouldn't try to steer a car with buttons. So why have many product designers abandoned simple analog controls?
.amsrc defines other preferences like my desired units, my desired velocity:direction ratio curve (which slows the vehicle during turns), etc.
Hmm, well as long as those buttons have tactile feedback, I actually would love to steer a car with buttons. Like a Model-M keyboard plugged into an automobile management system that supports a fully customizable command set. I'm envisioning something like:
g 40 # go, and set cruise control to 40mph
g 0 # slow to a stop
ss # stop short
g +10 # go 10mph faster
g -10 # go 10mph slower
b 35 # go backwards at 35mph
a 1.5 # increase acceleration rate by 1.5 current or default
a 0.5 # decrease acceleration rate to 0.5 current or default
r 1 # turn right 1 degree
ar 10 5 # arc to the right 10 degrees over the next 5 seconds
sig r # signal to the right
fl # flashers
fol # follow the car in front of me at my current distance
fol 5 # move 5 feet closer to the car in front of me
fol -5 # move 5 feet back from the car in front of me
tg # tailgate car in front of me
ppl # parallel park to the left
roll r # roll car to the right
roll l # roll car to the left
ww 1 3 # enable windshield wipers at speed setting 1 with a 3 second delay
hl # headlights
dfr 0 # disable rear defrost
r s 91.3 # set radio to 91.3 (default fm)
r v 10 # set radio volume to 10
r v +1 # increase radio volume by 1
r b -1 # decrease bass by 1
mpg | ws # print mpg (default is 5 min. avg) to the windshield display
mpg | r # announce mpg over the speakers
Of course there's much I've left out, but you get the idea. Additionally my
http://www.parablog.com/blog/images/computer2004.j pg
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.
I gave up on aftermarket car stereos and just get whatever top end factory system is offered. The tiny buttons and Vegasesque displays were just getting too stupid.
Which would you prefer to set a preset station:
Factory stereo: Tune to station. Hold down preset button until beep is heard. Afterward, just hit that button to get that station.
Aftermarket: Run through a sequence of button pushes similar to that required to surface a submarine, and target and launch a cruise missile. Afterward, no less than three presses of tiny buttons are required to access your "convenient" preset.
I'm serious, too. I had onee once where it took more button presses to go to a station preset than to just tune the radio manually. There should be hard jail time given for interface abominations on that level.
Sometimes I would wonder if the Japanese engineers outsourced their interface design to institutions for psychotics.
Agree with the parent, buttons and moveable bits add to the cost. Whilst I lament (and curse) the cheap video cassette recorder I have because a lot of things have to be set from the remote (and settings can only be viewed on the TV screen), the cost of that unit was a darn sight cheaper than my nice 20-year-old TEAC Stereo VCR that had buttons, knobs and switches (yes, slide switches) for operation. And the fluorescent clock display had the indicators to tell me what I had set. And not just stupid odd-shaped rubber buttons but big rectangular ones. Ahhh I wish it still worked.
When I think of loss of 'ease-of-functionality' (not 'loss of functionality') I think VCR's.
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.
'...I remember seeing a demonstration 10-15 years ago of the latest Spectrum Analyser, where the salesman made a big deal of the battery backed RAM saving the settings when the device was switched off. One of the older engineers said "we've got that on the analogue spec analysers, we call it a knob."'
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From http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/04/02/28/0041
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.