Switches, dials, buttons, etc. -vs- screen interface

[Swammerdami]

On another message-board I noticed a discussion about Tesla. One guy hated it more than any other car he'd ever driven; another guy loved it more than any other car! (Neither was a Musk fan.) One controversy was the user interface. On most cars you look straight ahead and see an analog speedometer or tachometer, while on Tesla you must divert your eyes from the road to the screen and then all you get is a number, not the speedometer's needle which moves in analog fashion.

I've never driven a Tesla, but this reminded me of my experience 50 years ago. Pictured below is the front panel of an IBM 370/155 -- lots of dials, switches and buttons. (About 98% of these lights and controls were never used by the customer -- they were troubleshooting aids, but troubleshooting is how I got involved with these machines.) In 1973 IBM started shipping the IBM 370/158; a machine very similar to the 370/155 with one major difference being that 98% of the dials etc. disappeared. The front panel was just a sheet of metal with very few buttons. The rest of the console functionality was moved to a CRT (with light-pen and keyboard). This had advantages and disadvantages. The field engineers I worked with preferred the new approach almost without exception, but I preferred the old-style console with its more tactile interface.

That's all I wanted to say. I'd have posted on the other message-board but it doesn't allow images.

Speaking of images, I found the image below on-line in two parts and spliced the parts together. I could/should have taken the time to carefully manipulate and make the splice much better. But an even "bigger problem" is that when I attach the 3k-x-3k image, it gets reduced to about 1k-x-1k and the lettering on the lights and buttons becomes blurry.



At the lower left of the console, see a place for IBM's customer engineer to insert a key during maintenance. Above that are two meters. If the 370/155 was a rental machine, the upper meter would track (for a billing purpose!) the number of hours that the machine wasn't idle. With the CE's key inserted time would be recorded on the lower meter and not affect the renter's bill. (Even activity on an I/O device would turn the meter with the CPU idle: That's why the channel interface has a "Metering In" wire.)

 

[TV and credit cards]

If the auto industry does not want to stick with the tactile interface of buttons, switches, and dials a driver can work without taking their eyes off the road, they should go right to voice command. These digital interfaces they install require the driver's attention and I'm guessing a person also has to take off their winter gloves to work the capacitive interface.
Seems like a digital interface can be just as distracting as using a phone. And I'll bet by time you figure it all out as much as you need and care to, they'll download an update and move everything around.
NHTSA should have never permitted such interfaces.
I Like Big Buttons.

 

[ZiprHead]

Touch screens in a moving car suck donkey balls.

 

[bilby]

If the auto industry does not want to stick with the tactile interface of buttons, switches, and dials a driver can work without taking their eyes off the road, they should go right to voice command. These digital interfaces they install require the driver's attention and I'm guessing a person also has to take off their winter gloves to work the capacitive interface.
Seems like a digital interface can be just as distracting as using a phone. And I'll bet by time you figure it all out as much as you need and care to, they'll download an update and move everything around.
NHTSA should have never permitted such interfaces.
I Like Big Buttons.

After decades of steady reductions in road deaths, we are now seeing them start to increase again.

Touch-screen distractions (both as part of the vehicle design, and brought in by drivers for entertainment purposes) seem to be the primary driver of this.

I heartily agree. No car should have a screen that is capable of showing anything other than directly necessary information (eg rear view cameras for reversing) to the driver; No control should require the driver's visual attention to either operate or to determine its status.

This is well understood and longstanding design practice, and has been recklessly discarded in pursuit of modernity and fashion by the "move fast and break shit" tech-bros exemplified by Elon Musk.

That slogan is the direct antithesis of good automotive practice, and it is literally killing people.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I heartily agree. No car should have a screen that is capable of showing anything other than directly necessary information (eg rear view cameras for reversing) to the driver; No control should require the driver's visual attention to either operate or to determine its status.

This is well understood and longstanding design practice, and has been recklessly discarded in pursuit of modernity and fashion by the "move fast and break shit" tech-bros exemplified by Elon Musk.

That slogan is the direct antithesis of good automotive practice, and it is literally killing people.

And, instead, we have problems with laws about showing moving images to drivers even when they are relevant. Reversing cameras are permitted, but AFIAK they still haven't permitted the various other parking-assist cameras that are in some other countries (things like pointing at the corner of your vehicle to judge clearance), nor are the clearance-assist cameras used by the jeep crowd.

 

[Tharmas]

I heartily agree. No car should have a screen that is capable of showing anything other than directly necessary information (eg rear view cameras for reversing) to the driver; No control should require the driver's visual attention to either operate or to determine its status.

This is well understood and longstanding design practice, and has been recklessly discarded in pursuit of modernity and fashion by the "move fast and break shit" tech-bros exemplified by Elon Musk.

That slogan is the direct antithesis of good automotive practice, and it is literally killing people.

And, instead, we have problems with laws about showing moving images to drivers even when they are relevant. Reversing cameras are permitted, but AFIAK they still haven't permitted the various other parking-assist cameras that are in some other countries (things like pointing at the corner of your vehicle to judge clearance), nor are the clearance-assist cameras used by the jeep crowd.

I have such amenities on my car including an overhead 360 view. I couldn't get into my garage without them (I have about 5-6 inches clearance on each side and come in at a sharp angle).

 

[bigfield]

Pictured below is the front panel of an IBM 370/155 -- lots of dials, switches and buttons. (About 98% of these lights and controls were never used by the customer -- they were troubleshooting aids, but troubleshooting is how I got involved with these machines.) In 1973 IBM started shipping the IBM 370/158; a machine very similar to the 370/155 with one major difference being that 98% of the dials etc. disappeared. The front panel was just a sheet of metal with very few buttons. The rest of the console functionality was moved to a CRT (with light-pen and keyboard). This had advantages and disadvantages. The field engineers I worked with preferred the new approach almost without exception, but I preferred the old-style console with its more tactile interface.

I used to operate digital presses (big photocopiers) which used a combination of mechanical buttons and touchscreen on the same panel and the operator had to switch between them to input jobs. The mechanical buttons included all of the controls needed to do basic copying, but anything more complex jobs that communicated with the print server.

The mechanical interface was fast: you could key inputs as quickly as your fingers could move, and the button clicks were good feedback. The screen was a bit sluggish when responding to inputs, and instead of haptic feedback it used beeps and button colours to give input feedback. It also had to switch modes multiple times while inputting a job, and the screen was slow to refresh when mode-switching. This all meant that operators had to pause a lot while working on the touch screen. I would have preferred more mechanical buttons.

Modern touchscreen devices have gotten better in some ways - they respond much faster, have better precision and switch modes faster - but they still slow the operator down in ways that mechanical input does not. I think this is why the keyboard is still the preferred input device for people who go on the computer a lot - the keyboard is a modal mechanical interface that lets the operator reuse the same muscle memory across dozens of applications.

Touchscreens are a compromise: they are compact and allow a much smaller interface than mechanical inputs, which is great for a pocket computer. But touchscreen are not touch-only: they are look-and-touch. If the operator needs to be able to work without looking at their input device, then they shouldn't have a touchscreen.

On most cars you look straight ahead and see an analog speedometer or tachometer, while on Tesla you must divert your eyes from the road to the screen and then all you get is a number, not the speedometer's needle which moves in analog fashion.

Our car has a heads-up display projected on the windshield, like a fighter jet. It makes the numbers and symbols appear like they're hovering over the front of the bonnet (hood). It's also entirely redundant because all of the HUD info is also displayed on the dash behind the wheel, traditional dials and all.

The first time I saw it, I thought yeah this is fucking good design.

 

[Swammerdami]

...
The mechanical interface was fast: you could key inputs as quickly as your fingers could move, and the button clicks were good feedback. The screen was a bit sluggish when responding to inputs, and instead of haptic feedback it used beeps and button colours to give input feedback. It also had to switch modes multiple times while inputting a job, and the screen was slow to refresh when mode-switching. This all meant that operators had to pause a lot while working on the touch screen. I would have preferred more mechanical buttons.

I learned a new word! Two new words actually, since Google responds "tactile, tactual" to "haptic synonym." I suppose the control yoke of an airplane is an excellent example of haptic interface, with push, pull, rotate and even stick-shaking.

Writing OP I wanted a word which would incorporate not only touch feedback, but the visual advantage of, for example, a speedometer dial compared with a numeric reading. I could not think of such a word.

Modern touchscreen devices have gotten better in some ways - they respond much faster, have better precision and switch modes faster - but they still slow the operator down in ways that mechanical input does not. I think this is why the keyboard is still the preferred input device for people who go on the computer a lot - the keyboard is a modal mechanical interface that lets the operator reuse the same muscle memory across dozens of applications.

Touchscreens are a compromise: they are compact and allow a much smaller interface than mechanical inputs, which is great for a pocket computer. But touchscreen are not touch-only: they are look-and-touch. If the operator needs to be able to work without looking at their input device, then they shouldn't have a touchscreen.
...

In OP I showed a photo of the IBM 370/155 front panel. My favorite machine was the 370/145; its console had slightly fewer lights but I spent many pleasurable hours dialing microinstructions etc. into its rotary dials. (There was also a printer/keyboard to load scope loops longer than a single microinstruction.)

The 370/165 had a larger, fancier and sexier console housed in its own large cabinet. Unlike with the 155-->158 transition, this "sexy" console was NOT replaced as part of the 165-->168 transition. (IIRC, the sexy console did disappear with the 168-->303x transition.) To make sure the 'Test' light was off before returning the machine to customer one needed only to run one's finger over a row of toggle switches, ensuring all were horizontal. (With the 158's screen interface, one had to use light-pen to click through several pages to find the non-standard setting that illuminated 'Test'.)

 

[bigfield]

Reminds me of the cockpit of the Boeing 747:



Or the Space Shuttle:

 

[bilby]

Reminds me of the cockpit of the Boeing 747

A huge amount of design, plus a lot of evolution in response to crash investigations, has gone into the layout and style of controls for airliners.

In the current generation of airliners, the landing gear lever is shaped like a wheel, the flaps lever is a wedge shape reminicent of the trailing edge of a wing, even the landng light switch is a different shape from the other exterior light switches. An experienced pilot can tell without looking that he has put his hand on the right (or the wrong) control.

Similar design concepts were used in cars, until the new craze for touchscreens.

Such things seem trivial, but they genuinely save lives.