I hope the book [1] is more interesting because this article struck me as pretty plain.
> Yet as much as people have complained about buttons over the years, they remain stubbornly present – an entrenched part of the design and interactivity of smartphones, computers, garage door openers, car dashboards and videogame controllers.
They could only possibly be replaced by something better, right? And the owner of the button who is summoning functionality/food/gratification is likely to be the one who evaluates the better-ness.
Personally, I think the craze of removing buttons has gone too far in recent years. What comes to mind are the iphone or tesla model 3.
I think having buttons for critical or common functions is actually a great idea. I'm talking about well-designed buttons, differentiated by texture, shape, size and location, not rows and columns of undifferentiated buttons.
That said, buttons aren't the only solution. A knob is probably the best way to quickly and accurately change volume in a moving vehicle.
I rented a car that had no physical buttons. It was frustrating to change stations or adjust the volume because there was no tactile indication that I pressed anything correctly. I'm accustomed to hearing a click, or feeling a press and release. It left me wondering if younger generations will have that issue: is it just bad design, or is it too unfamiliar to me.
Agreed! I think it's bad design, especially when it comes to other controls. I want to be able to adjust the temperature by a known amount without ever taking my eyes off the road. Knobs with positive clicks do this, screens don't.
My phone has a convenience key on the side, and I love it (I have a BlackBerry KeyOne). I just wish it had another one so I could set it to do more things. Here's what I use it for:
- single press: play/pause
- long press: toggle rotation lock
- conv. key + volume down: toggle flashlight
- volume down + conv. key: toggle night mode
I can turn the flashlight on in a jiffy, without having to touch the screen, even while wearing gloves, which is super handy. I can also pause my audiobook while driving without having to muck around with the screen.
I also have a phone with an auxiliary button and even though there are many many things that I don't like about it (for instance it only gets 2g data) I am loathe to replace it almost exclusively because of this feature. I have it set to turn on the flashlight with a 1 second press and I probably do that more times in a day than I talk on the phone.
The only lesson I wish new UX designers would learn about buttons is to make them actually look like buttons. Don't make me wonder if a flat borderless vague icon is actually a button or not.
To adjust my fan without air conditioning in my car, I have to 1)Press a Display.
2) Press OK on the display warning me about the dangers of pressing buttons while drving.
3)Press AC display button.
4) Turn off AC display button.
5) Turn up fan by pressing display button.
I was able to do that in my old car in a second or two with physical buttons.
This has nothing to do with buttons other than that the author randomly brings them up every now and then in a manner that doesn't logically follow.
>1. Buttons Aren’t Actually Easy to Use
With the example being a cockpit in a plan with the line "It takes a lot of training to know what all those buttons are for. (Credit: U.S. Air Force/Kelly White)"
This is drivel.
>Yet as much as people have complained about buttons over the years, they remain stubbornly present – an entrenched part of the design and interactivity of smartphones, computers, garage door openers, car dashboards and videogame controllers.
Because they work. Honestly, I actually want my physical buttons back on things like - my phone, my kindle, my car.
But no, please continue to deride the button for tangentially related issues...
>Yet in many contexts, both past and present, buttons are anything but easy. Have you ever stood in an elevator pushing the close-door button over and over, hoping and wondering if the door will ever shut? The same quandary presents itself at every crosswalk button.
Both of these problems are irrelevant to whether we use buttons or not, and don't prove buttons are "hard to use".
Just that we sometimes connect buttons that either don't do anything (elevator open/close door buttons wired to nothing, meant to give users a fake sense of control), or do it after a delay.
If the delay for crosswalk buttons was presented on a small timer above the button, there would be nothing "mysterious" about the whole operation but the control would still be a button.
If those, i.e nothing concrete and all badly formulated, are the "Five Lessons From Seven Years of Research Into Buttons" the authors got, then I pity those who funded the research.
> Yet as much as people have complained about buttons over the years, they remain stubbornly present – an entrenched part of the design and interactivity of smartphones, computers, garage door openers, car dashboards and videogame controllers.
They could only possibly be replaced by something better, right? And the owner of the button who is summoning functionality/food/gratification is likely to be the one who evaluates the better-ness.
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=5j9tDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PR5&ots=C...
Personally, I think the craze of removing buttons has gone too far in recent years. What comes to mind are the iphone or tesla model 3.
I think having buttons for critical or common functions is actually a great idea. I'm talking about well-designed buttons, differentiated by texture, shape, size and location, not rows and columns of undifferentiated buttons.
That said, buttons aren't the only solution. A knob is probably the best way to quickly and accurately change volume in a moving vehicle.
- single press: play/pause
- long press: toggle rotation lock
- conv. key + volume down: toggle flashlight
- volume down + conv. key: toggle night mode
I can turn the flashlight on in a jiffy, without having to touch the screen, even while wearing gloves, which is super handy. I can also pause my audiobook while driving without having to muck around with the screen.
I was able to do that in my old car in a second or two with physical buttons.
This has nothing to do with buttons other than that the author randomly brings them up every now and then in a manner that doesn't logically follow.
>1. Buttons Aren’t Actually Easy to Use
With the example being a cockpit in a plan with the line "It takes a lot of training to know what all those buttons are for. (Credit: U.S. Air Force/Kelly White)"
This is drivel.
>Yet as much as people have complained about buttons over the years, they remain stubbornly present – an entrenched part of the design and interactivity of smartphones, computers, garage door openers, car dashboards and videogame controllers.
Because they work. Honestly, I actually want my physical buttons back on things like - my phone, my kindle, my car.
But no, please continue to deride the button for tangentially related issues...
Both of these problems are irrelevant to whether we use buttons or not, and don't prove buttons are "hard to use".
Just that we sometimes connect buttons that either don't do anything (elevator open/close door buttons wired to nothing, meant to give users a fake sense of control), or do it after a delay.
If the delay for crosswalk buttons was presented on a small timer above the button, there would be nothing "mysterious" about the whole operation but the control would still be a button.
If those, i.e nothing concrete and all badly formulated, are the "Five Lessons From Seven Years of Research Into Buttons" the authors got, then I pity those who funded the research.