alt Hacker NewsI realize the article is pro buttons. I think a huge thing missing from the button discussion (well, maybe lightly touched on in the article) is that physical buttons and controls help guide without looking. Other buttons give feedback that your hand is in the right place. Sure, at first contact that (very bad) reference radio is worse than the touch screen but within a few days of using that I would not need to look to make sure I was hitting the button I wanted because I could feel the face of it with my hand and know I was hitting the right button. So basically, even though the paper picked essentially the worst radio on the planet, it would likely be better than a well designed touch screen after just a few days of use. First day though? That thing is a nightmare.
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A while ago I was driving a loaner car - a brand new top tier Accura rdx and the infotainment system was truly the worst and most dangerously designed I had ever witnessed. It was essentially a lenovo thinkpad type touchpad by the cup holder, and the screen was far away. The first time I tried to use it, it was so distracting that I would of crashed the car if it weren't for the safety features.
My car is a 2018 with car play and physical scroll knobs and buttons, while awkward, I can operate it with my eyes on the road (realistically I can do everything I need from the steering wheel). This weird middle ground carplay was somehow the worst combo of buttons and touchscreen.
Totally agree; I had to cut a few sentences about that :). (I also tried to steel-man the paper as much as possible).
Oddly enough, it seems like, although the value of "blind operation" is well-understood, it's not super well researched. As one of the papers I cite puts it:
> Little research deals with the optimal design of haptic features and how haptic feedback can support the user in searching for control elements.
I think that most people have the usability of buttons without sight as a main argument for.
Things like sliders and knobs can also have limits and detents that provide two way feedback that a screen cannot.
If you have to set the fan level on a touch screen, I have to use my eyes to coordinate my hand movements. On my old 2000 econobox, I just had to find the fan control slider (normally without even looking, and certainly faster than finding it on a screen, and getting my hand to the right spot), and I knew if I was already at max, or how much I had adjusted it based on the number of clicks. Same thing with the old red/blue temperature adjuster slider/knob.