Tag Archives: ergonomic controls

Useless Add-Ons

It is never a surprise to discover that once-innovative human inventions have devolved under the weight of bogus improvements.

It seems to be a natural result of the things we invent that “refinements” added to perpetuate a product finally that turn into burdensome add-ons. Entropy is a guiding force that can sabotage “improvements.” This is certainly not true in every case. With exceptions, we made some great advances in the eradication of diseases like polio. We have also shrunk the world, making it easier to reach people over great distances. But it is never surprising when once-innovative human inventions devolve after attempts at refinement. Add -ons to software and hardware can easily weaken the core advantages of the earlier form of an application or product. No one would look at the later bloated versions of the original 1956 Ford Thunderbird and call them improvements. It was originally a coherent vision of a smaller and sporty car. In that era cars also had the advantage of real switches and knobs, not touchscreens. Am I the only one a touch screen seems to ignore? The “improvement” of this “rub and hope” ergonomics has left countless drivers unable to easily control key functions like heating and cooling. Auto-makers like them because they are cheap to make. And they look more cutting-edge. The first car that I owned was a Honda. . .  with a spoiler over the trunk. That addition was purely a case of form over function, with some personal vanity thrown in. My car never experienced wind-tunnel speeds.

If you get a chance to look, notice that a modern airline cockpit uses screens for displays, but relies on click knobs and real switches for critical controls. And, more generally, let’s not even pretend that flying in coach is still an exciting way to travel. You will pay more for a routine flight if you want the luxury of taking along a suitcase. One of the disadvantages of being a young traveler is that they don’t know what good service used to look like. In a mobbed Philadelphia airport a few weeks ago they were clearly the happiest people, apparently accepting their fates as just so much air cargo.

Customer service by phone-tree or closed-option questions is usually vastly different from actually speaking to an informed employee at the firm from whom you need help. “Resort fees” are now tacked on if a modest hotel has a swimming pool and a palm tree out front. Even the ostensible advantage of home audio with seven channels will usually result in a degraded soundscape created by low-quality speakers that lack the accuracy of a good two-channel (stereo) system.

The same pattern of devolution away from a useful tool happened  years ago when most universities gave up the standard practice of publishing a hard copy of their yearly “catalogue.” The book-length document listed all the courses offered at the institution, and the degree requirements for every undergraduate and graduate major. It gave even a marginal first-year student a firm statement of the  contract they had with an institution, good for all of the four years of their education. When all this necessary information disappeared into various obscure online corners, most of my advisees never bothered to track down and map their academic future, missing requirements and prerequisites in the fog of internet distraction. Some had to delay their graduation as a consequence of never bothering to plot how they would spend their four years.

Because my career has included a great deal of writing, I’ve been able to track various iterations of Microsoft’s Word for Windows, which has evolved over the years with many add-ons: among them, an “editor” function, dictation function, and loads of graphics capabilities seemingly borrowed from the company’s Publisher and Paint software. Some of the add-ons help. But others get in the way of Word’s core function as a tool for committing ideas to the page. Add in new promises of A.I. “help,” and we will no longer be crafting messages that are fully ours. Traditionally, our written or spoken words have been the best representations of who we really are: textual fingerprints of the self that can now be faked by a digital assistant.

 

black bar

Out of Touch

If a pilot had to use his stubby fingers to indicate on a screen where he wants to land, flights to Chicago would surely end up in Indianapolis or Lake Michigan.

Touchscreens tend to be oblivious to my commands. The ones I try to use always seem uncertain about whether anyone is actually present. This problem of not noticing me might show up on a self serve scanner at a grocery store, at an ATM, in my car, or maybe just an ordinary phone.

These screens make me feel like I’m knocking on doors that no one wants to answer. Maybe this what it is like to be ghosted by a machine. Or perhaps I’m slow to pick up some sort of cosmic cue that my number is up.  It’s also just a little demeaning to encounter a customer service robot that won’t talk to you.

My wife wonders why I don’t text more. She must be kidding. In my hands, pushing the crummy images of keys on a phone is the equivalent of trying to play an ‘air guitar’ louder.  It is no surprise that texting rates are higher with girls and women.  Their fingers come closest to fitting on the fake touch keyboards. I know a few guys who text. But I suspect farmers and men who do a lot of manual labor aren’t big on thumbing their way through a message.

Of course its all most younger users know. But they should at least consider the possibility that touchscreens are one of the least satisfying electronics “innovations” of our times. They seem to be used by manufacturers because it is cheaper to make a virtual switch than an authentic one. And since we think we need to carry a computer around in our pocket, a virtual keyboard is going to be part of the package.  But I would be happier if this this failure of electrical design and execution is not considered some sort of achievement.

Public touchscreens are even worse. Their smears accumulate from the fingers of countless others, meaning that we are picking up involuntary lab specimens of everyone who came before us. We might as well be kissing doorknobs.

The cooling and heating in one of our cars is controlled using a touchscreen, often giving us Phoenix heat when we would prefer mountain cool. A good new car will likely have real click-stop knobs for controlling temperatures and fans. In a word, they are ergonomic and much more satisfying to use.

All of this makes me wonder if the displays in airliners are touchscreens. We should hope not. The controls that matter in planes are probably real keypads, reliable switches or levers adjusted manually. If a pilot had to use his stubby index finger to indicate on a screen display where he wants to land, flights to Chicago would surely end up in Indianapolis or Lake Michigan.

A tech guy at National Public Radio describes my condition as “zombie fingers.” Somehow my digits aren’t producing enough of the tiny electrical field a screen needs in order to sense a command. The solution is apparently a “capacitive stylus,” a sharp tool that a person keeps with them that will generate the necessary electrical field. Think of it as a sharp pencil, and probably one that can easily be misplaced until someone has the misfortune of sitting on it.