https://spectrum.ieee.org/touchscreens
Tactile controls are back in vogue. Apple added two new buttons to the iPhone 16, home appliances like stoves and washing machines are returning to knobs, and several car manufacturers are reintroducing buttons and dials to dashboards and steering wheels.
With this "re-buttonization," as The Wall Street Journal describes it, demand for Rachel Plotnick's expertise has grown. Plotnick, an associate professor of Cinema and Media Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, is the leading expert on buttons and how people interact with them. She studies the relationship between technology and society with a focus on everyday or overlooked technologies, and wrote the 2018 book Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing. Now, companies are reaching out to her to help improve their tactile controls.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday November 05, @07:41PM (2 children)
Mother-in-law wants touch-screen but can't use it.
With mouse, she can move too quickly for Windows:
"Print....print..printprintprintprintprintprint........"
My wife will go over and there'll be tens to almost a hundred prints in queue: overloads Windows and prints nothing. She now gets me to print the obituaries of people they know.
I can just see if Recall gets implemented, she'll sku the data with print requests.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by krishnoid on Tuesday November 05, @10:57PM
Microsoft tried to handle this by implementing pointer ballistics [archive.org], where the m=mouse-motion, p=pointer-motion is controlled by something close to p = am^2 + bm + c . With this kind of response:
I think the mouse speed [youtu.be] control panel setting adjusts control points on this parabola-like mouse-pointer transfer function to maybe keep the slow part the same but speed up the quick part. Maybe you could start with a slower mouse speed and adjust it until she's comfortable with it.
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Wednesday November 06, @06:47PM
It's a common problem.
Move on-screen pointer over on-screen representation of button (if you are lucky, it is skeuomorphic). Click on the physical mouse button.
The on-screen representation of the button changes to indicate it has been clicked upon, then...
Nothing happens.
Click again,
The on-screen representation of the button changes to indicate it has been clicked upon, then...
Nothing happens.
Click a few times. On screen representation changes every time, but still nothing happens.
Get frustrated, and click lots of times.
The UI wakes up from examining its navel, knitting disk blocks or something, and executes all the actions queued up by the buffered clicks. 60 print jobs are sent.
It gets even better when windows open after a delay, so the second click activates a button on a new window that opened up under the pointer, like the 'Close without saving' button in a 'File close' dialogue.
After a while, some people learn not to mash on virtual buttons. Some don't.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday November 05, @07:47PM (2 children)
Pushing them? There. Problem solved.
Snark aside. I much prefer button, or some kind of physical button/knob/dial to a touchscreen. So overall good news everybody! The Button is back in fashion.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday November 06, @01:03AM
Things change, people change, hairstyles change, interest rates fluctuate, this week it's buttons, next week it's touchscreens again.
-- Hillary Flammond.
(Score: 2) by boltronics on Friday November 08, @06:02AM
Agreed. I was gifted a Garmin watch by my partner, and this new model has a touchscreen. I was so happy the day I found out that it can be disabled!
I always tried to avoid using it because I'd get fingerprints on the screen, and it would go crazy in the pool or if I touched it with wet hands. If I did use it (typically for pop-ups back when I first got it, when I wasn't 100% confident which physical button was mapped to scroll and which was cancel) sometimes I would have to swipe multiple times for it to correctly register my intended action. Nowhere near as practical as the good old physical button.
Buttons were the thing I missed the most when I finally had to move on from my old N900, and switch to an on-screen keyboard. It was only years later when I started learning Japanese and got used to the 12-key flick board that I could truly feel comfortable not having them.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 05, @07:50PM
The thing I like most about my AC powered Marshall Bluetooth speakers: the physical knobs and switches.
The physical control I like the least: those stupid joystickish multi-knobs. You can tilt them left-right-up-down, sometimes press in, they never have good tactile feedback and always feel fragile. Marshall's portable Middleton speaker has one, it sucks. An in-dash replacement radio I got in 2013 had one, and it's still working just as vaguely as the day I installed it 11 years later - surprised me that it didn't snap off or otherwise fail physically, but even when they're working, they're packing too much functionality into a single touch point.
Here's a clue for the interface designers: do less with your switches. Determine the essential functions of your device and only make those accessible through the physical interface. Put everything else in some god-forsaken bluetooth connected app or something, and make absolutely sure that the real value of the product is 100% accessible from the physical knobs.
Of course, there's always malicious compliance with such guidance: just bought an Omron BP monitor from Walgreens, yes, you can set the clock through the physical buttons, somehow, but if you connect the Bluetooth app that all happens automagically - not blackmail, bluemail... and now that you have the app installed, aren't these personalized graphs really cool? Oooh, and look: we sell five other kinds of devices that integrate with this app too. Would you like periodic notifications? And while I'm here, let me also bitch about Walgreens hostage taking of my personal information. Price of monitor when you hand over your phone number to the clerk? $65. Price without divulging personal information? $109. Of course you can always lie about your phone number, zip code, name, etc. but, what's the point? They already have your CC info...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by Snospar on Tuesday November 05, @07:54PM (2 children)
"I have a button on my desk that says, 'The buck stops here.'" Richard Nixon
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday November 05, @08:58PM
Was that just next to the button that was marked "LAUNCH THE NUKES"?
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday November 06, @01:05AM
He meant it in a more Putin-esque way than Truman's original, "I get it all" rather than "I take responsibility".
(Score: 5, Informative) by MostCynical on Tuesday November 05, @08:28PM (8 children)
Software controlled buttons are not really buttons, and if you can't change the volume before it turns on it is.. painful.
To change the volume on my wife's car, you have to wait for it to tune in (FM/DAB are on the same list in the device)
It also turns on at the same volume the previous occupant was using. My wife is going deaf, so the volume is usually very very loud.
Sometimes, it was left in nav or media... so the radio volume comes on while you're driving.. I now try to remember to always get the volume set before driving.
I now get in, turn on the car, turn on the radio (note, if it was left on 'radio', it will turn on automatically.) I then have to wait for the sound (DAB tuning takes several seconds sometimes) with my hand on the volume dial thing, and twist it .. lots.. to turn the thing down.
Then I can safely start to do all the driving stuff..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 5, Interesting) by turgid on Tuesday November 05, @09:12PM
What really annoys me these days is that even these analogue dials and knobs are not really analogue and if I am trying to find a good volume for a particular piece of music, for example, it always seems to be somewhere between two settings. There's the same problem with graphic equalisers.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05, @09:35PM (2 children)
> ...if you can't change the volume before it turns on it is.. painful.
Sorry to hear about your situation.
For a trivial amount more (but perhaps not zero), there are absolute encoders used for volume controls. I have an old AIWA (Sony) stereo receiver that has a digital volume control knob (I looked inside, it's not connected to a potentiometer). If I turn the knob down when the receiver is off, I get the volume I expect when I turn it on--it has an absolute encoder.
The AIWA also simulates the dual slope of old volume pots that roughly follow human hearing sensitivity. Ears are something like logarithmic in sensitivity and I've come across many simple encoder volume controls that you have to crank like mad because they are setup to be linear with encoder count (which is just wrong).
It's hard to believe that engineers designing these things don't pick simple options like this. But obviously they don't think very hard about users...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Tuesday November 05, @09:59PM
It's hard to believe that engineers designing these things don't pick simple options like this. But obviously they don't think very hard about users...
What does it say when they google it on stack overflow?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Wednesday November 06, @09:59PM
Old "AIWA" wasn't Sony. It became "aiwa" around 1992, and a Sony sub-brand shortly after. But the old AIWA was so much better than Sony (to the extent Sony had been buying shares for a long time).
I started with a cheap plastic transistor radio, mid '70s, that, despite its cheap appearance, was working well decades later. Then came an HS-F1 portable cassette recorder. Yes, recorder, with stereo microphones, when everyone else in that format had just playback. Once I even got a great concert recording from it. Mechanically, it seemed (or actually seems, I still have it) to be on Swiss watch level. Finally, not long before the logo change, came their DAT recorder. It's still wired up, although I haven't used it in years. Flawless, too.
Probably they were too good for their own sake, when bottom-race cheap (and mind you, AIWA were really cheap for what they provided) became the main thing.
(Score: 4, Touché) by DannyB on Tuesday November 05, @09:58PM (2 children)
<no-sarcasm>
As you say about the volume knob. Potentiometers which can be adjusted before turning on the radio are long gone. Replaced by rotation encoders that can be turned infinitely with no mechanical stop to prevent turning even when you have reached maximum or zero volume.
</no-sarcasm>
But it's a small price to pay for the benefit of having everything cloud connected.
People who can't distinguish between etymology and entomology bug me in ways I cannot put into words.
(Score: 3, Informative) by vux984 on Tuesday November 05, @10:42PM
It's not just for cloud connected, its easier to manage with respect to even basic remote controls. On my 90s stereo amplifier the knob was motorized so you could volume up and down by remote, and it would actually adjust the knob position. That's way more expensive and finicky to build than a rotation encoder which allows the volume to be set independently of the knob position.
Likewise every slider on the equalizers, and the various on-off toggles and selectors. None of that was compatible with remote controls, of any kind; not just the 'cloud connected' sort.
The knobs on a lot of newer stuff is also commonly highly modal. Where, "Normally" the knob is the volume control, but this other button cycles other modes: treble, bass, balance, fader, equalizer presets, adding radio station presets, setting the time, and whatever else... and the knob is then used to make changes or selections within in each mode.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday November 05, @10:45PM
Somewhere, I've got a 3.5mm maleto female audio cable with a volume adjuster n the middle. Just a simple potentiometer to adjust. They're particularly helpful when sharing between to headphones.
(Score: 1) by One Time Use on Wednesday November 06, @01:36AM
On my wife's car, some controls reset to a default value whenever the car is started. For example, the radio volume resets to a level that is fine for an idling car. That's okay for the radio. What isn't okay are the HVAC controls. Some controls retain their setting, like A/C on or off, and the temperature setting. But fan speed always resets to auto and the vent reset to all being open. Air blowing on her feet and ankles causes her physical pain. So, every time we start the car we have to turn off the floor vent and turn down the fan speed on her side. Of course that disables the thermostat setting on her side. PITA.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Username on Wednesday November 06, @03:29PM
Leave it to a woman to know how to push your buttons.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Wednesday November 06, @10:28PM (5 children)
So, in the old days, cooker knobs (at least in Germany) went from 1 to 12, or 1 to 3 with a step in between. It was like this since ancient times. I suppose the latter is due to some clever on/off wiring of heating elements, where the former comes from, I don't know. AFAIK, they are some kind of analog thermostat setting, and it may have been a luxury feature shortly before or after the war. The knobs hat a protrusion that you could grab between your knuckles if your finger tips were greasy.
Fast forward to 2023, when I had to buy a new cooker. It has "sinkable" knobs that supposedly look neat when the device is not in use, they lack the protrusion, and they only go to 9. I only figured out how stupid the haptics of the new knobs are when I tried to turn one for the first time with greasy hands. That made me think about why they annoyingly only go to 9, which means all the settings memorized over decades have to be converted.
I came to the conclusion that it's got something to do with the touch controls introduced on some "upmarket" cookers at first. Of course, these controls are not upmarket, but cheaper to make in reality. They just look "new". For the sake of cheapness, they also only got a one digit indicator. Which means, because the dumb majority can't think in hex, it can only go to 9. Now, it would be impossible from a marketing view, if the lowly knob devices would still go to 12 - hence they had to be castrated, and in a way that makes them genuinely less useful. Which also explains the disappearance of the "grubby fingers handle". I accuse them this was with the intent of making interaction worse than with the touch controls. (Well, nice try, at least, but ask cat owners what ideas they have come up with to prevent the cats from operating a touch control cooker...)
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday November 07, @10:56AM (4 children)
I'm mildly surprised that touch controls are legal, given they are, for the most part, not accessible to blind people. Especially on things like cookers.
Haptic feedback is important. Who knew?
I wondered why the touch-control hob I use occasionally on visits went up to 12. So it was probably German. It used two 7-segment displays per element (Oh! the expense!), so would display 12. I guess some manufacturers have cost engineered to a single 7-segment display.
You could, 'sort of' show 10, 11 and 12 by regarding the 7-segment display as having been rotated, and lighting up the segments:
- at the top middle and bottom, and both sides of the bottom to display a rotated 10 (Line 6, Position 14 in the linked SVG)
- at the top and middle to show a rotated 11 (Line 5, Position 2 in the linked SVG)
- at the top, top right, middle, bottom left to show a stylized rotated 12 (Line 6, Position 4 in the linked SVG)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/7-segment.svg [wikimedia.org]
Or, as you say, just use hexadecimal. Or light up or flash the decimal point marker for numbers greater than 9, or if the decimal point marker is cost-engineered out, flash the entire number for numbers greater than 9, or alternate between the digits of two digit numbers. No matter what, just having a display is innaccessible to blind people.
Designing for accessibility is something that is not done enough of. Many people are sight impaired, and many are hearing impaired, some are both. Some people have neuropathy of the extremities which makes their sense of touch less sensitive, and some have difficulties with finger/hand/arm dexterity (in my volunteer work, I work with people with all of the above, so am a little more experienced than the average person with the challenges.).
On a side topic, many people use payment devices which have touch screens rather than physical buttons. This makes them unusable by blind people, and it looks like regulations are coming to make such devices non-compliant with payment system regulations. Blind people are frequently asked for the PIN so it can be entered for them by helpful people!
(Score: 2) by Rich on Thursday November 07, @01:58PM (3 children)
Surprisingly my new cooker is made by BSH, the most German manufacturer imaginable ("Bosch Siemens Hausgeräte") yet still only goes to 9. I've been somewhat of a fanboy, because I've never had one of their devices fail on me, and if they would, spares are readily available, unlike Miele, who annoy with their "only authorized dealers" crap in addition to being more expensive (and my mother had a Miele dishwasher fail with a write-off outcome). However, with these new cooker controls, they miss the mark (but not that the competition is any better). I think it may be a market niche to sell replacement knobs that you can turn with your knuckles. I'd buy those on the spot.
People would wonder about the question mark. The indicator would have to me more clear. I wonder why there are no 7-segment displays with a leading 1. You have so many things that go from 0 to 10, or 0 to 100%, or even 0.000 to 1.000 (the dot could be driven separately or wired in parallel if you only have 8 bits to drive). A 16-segment element could even do proper narrow 10, 11, and 12. But I suppose they either calculate with razor sharp margins, given the cheap Chinese competition, or they went for scale internationally and figured out that a majority of markets use a 1..9 range.
Oh, and while I'm at it. Now that they seem to have dumped the classic wiring for some PWM drive, they could add a LED not only for a hot plate, but for "Cooker is on" in general. The front clock already has an "oven heater active" indicator, so that would hardly be any effort.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday November 07, @02:54PM
Yes, they probably would.
I'm sure I've seen some displays that are a two (vertical) segment display (or maybe a single segment that looks like two) and a 7-segment display, which can display a leading '1' when necessary, but I haven't turned them up on a quick Internet search, which means they are likely very niche, and correspondingly expensive. As you say, a 16-segment display could easily show a compressed 10, 11, and 12.
Oh yes. Knuckles are under-appreciated. I use mine on public touch-screens, rather than my fingertips. And elbows and/or wrist/back or hand to push on door push-plates. Minimises transfer of 'stuff' to fingertips. Knobs with indentations in that allow them to be turned with a knuckle or other tool (like a short stick) are really good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08, @07:50PM (1 child)
I got a new stove somewhat recently, also Bosch, and it does go to 9. What I still don't know is if the new 9 is the same as the 6 on the old stove. Or does it get hotter then the old one? Did it just introduce more levels.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday November 11, @08:04AM
You probably got more levels.
There is little benefit in increasing the maximum power output of a hob ring - the only exception would be is if you were trying to emulate the gas-fire cookers used for heating woks for stir-fries. They are insane, and I don't think you want to do that in a domestic setting. I know someone who did have a wok-burner domestically, and I believe they had to get specially certified ventilation.
More levels means finer adjustment - I find getting just the right simmer level or boiling level is more important. One of the hobs I use doesn't go low enough for a good long-term simmer for slow-cooking things like rice pudding, stew, or porridge.
I take the view that if your kitchen is full of smoke from frying pans, water vapour/steam from boiling vegetables and pasta, and screaming from the noise of a ventilation fan, your burners/hob-rings are set way too high. Run the frying pan so the oil does not smoke; and the pots have lids that don't bump. The exception with the frying pan is if you are searing meat. Of course, the 'best' approach to cooking is always a personal choice, so you, and others, may well have other preferences.
When I used a gas cooker, the valve for each burner was infinitely variable - no steps - so it was relatively easy to adjust to the right level, although for low simmers a flame-spreader was essential.