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Touchscreens Are Out, and Tactile Controls Are Back
(spectrum.ieee.org)
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this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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Back in the 80s, Don Norman popularized the term affordance. Humans need something to push, pull, turn or otherwise interact with. We are physical beings in a physical world.
Driving vehicles is potentially life-endangering. Just because the technology is there and cheaper does not mean that humans can push aside their physiological limitations in a critical situation.
Take the emergency blinker. You know where it is, you see it all the time - it's right there in front of you! But when a real emergency happens, you'll be fumbling for the button, concentrating on the situation at hand. Now imagine that button on a touchscreen.
I've noticed this with modern standards. They just don't have the same experience because nothing is actually linked. It's all electronic. I miss the feeling of the linkage as I moved through the gears. Feeling the disc touch as you let out the clutch. There was a magic to that. Now it has the feeling of setting on your hand for too long.
This always happens, with change you have things you don't need and things you need, and things you consider and things you don't consider, and things you had and things you will have. Of these there's a combination of things you had, you need and you don't consider. Which means you will not have them, while needing them and not considering them.
Correct good feedback is in that area.
I can't imagine driving a stick like that. If it's all electronic why bother with being standard as well?
The term is «affordance»
Thanks. Damn autocorrect.
Suspected as much!
I don't know Don, I'm sure he's a fine guy, but I've read about all these kinds of rules (EDIT: emerging) much earlier - as early as 1940s, with airplanes and cars and other machines in production and in front lines that people had to operate for long hours under strain and make as few mistakes as possible.
Even USSR, not the Rome of ergonomics, had GOSTs for average ratio of errors an operator makes on a certain machine, machines had to be inside those numbers in tests involving people, or they wouldn't get adopted into wide usage.
Note how the criterion is defined. Not formalities like the shape of something or the layout conforming to some vague definition, but the results of an actual test on people. Of course, though, there were also a myriad GOSTs as to how the specific controls may look, a GOST for every detail one could use in a device.
I use my four way hazard lights when there's heavy braking on the freeway to make sure people behind me are paying attention. It's a button on my dash and pretty easy to toggle.
Though is that something that touch screen cars really put into the touch screen!?
I don't think I've seen a car with the hazard lights button on the touch screen... Even the Teslas have a physical button for it. I imagine this must be a legal requirement, at least in some countries.
Have you considered the shareholders though?