
I studied buttons for 7 years and learned why people push them - davesailer
https://theconversation.com/i-studied-buttons-for-7-years-and-learned-these-5-lessons-about-how-and-why-people-push-them-110084
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darkpuma
Buttons are made to be pushed, and frankly are fun to push. I've got a spare
microswitch sitting around that sometimes I push when I get bored. It's not
connected to anything, but it has a pleasant tactile action and makes a nice
clicking noise.

~~~
acheron
I've found myself reminiscing about the power switch on old PCs (XT/AT era).
Bit of force needed to move, made a nice heavy clunk, and of course it
seriously shut off the power.

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neuralRiot
People get scared of purely physical interfaces like old aircraft cockpits
mixing desks ad pro SLR cameras because they can see every control at once but
once you figured the layout it becomes very intuitive quickly unlike touch
screen based systems where it looks simply at first but some controls are
buried several levels down in the menus.

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HocusLocus
Modern 'Smart-to-smartstupid' design evolution:

1\. Once there were consumer devices with a few buttons and switches. They
really worked and they were amazing.

2\. Then manufacturers added extra features, and extra buttons/switches for
them. It was a feature trade war. Extra controls meant better. Everybody wins.
Buttons and switches were cheap to make. Manufacturing was intricate and
people-intensive but the products were plentiful.

2a. These buttons and switches had _springs_ that gave them snap and finger
feedback. There were standard leaf switches and generic microswitches, made in
the billions, that were fitted with custom caps.

3\. There was always 'proverbial' group that always complained that the "extra
controls made it too complicated to use".

4\. It turns out these complainers were really 'paid consumer focus groups'
that wanted to be in the design loop. We never used to listen to such people
in real life, just asshole control freaks whose idea of a certain switch being
'useless clutter' was actually their lack of understanding of what it did.
These are the kind of people today who if you post a specific question on a
hacker forum, you get an answer "why would you want to do that?" with no
follow through. But people like this sleazed their way into corporate life.
Their projection of the average consumer 'enraged' by too many controls was a
self-serving myth to keep them into the design loop and introduce dubious
measures that created more confusion than saved cost. We made fun of them and
companies that adopted their practices, and continued to buy things with lots
of controls.

5\. Microcontrollers hit the market. Now often the driving logic was digital,
but those switches, controls and simple displays were still there and part of
the interface. They were polled often enough to simulate the more component-
intensive analog experience. It was the golden age of debouncing.

6\. Displays became matrix and alphanumeric. Almost at once a drive began to
eliminate controls in favor of on screen menus and multi-use buttons. This was
a boon to complicated processes like industrial control systems, which always
maintained separate essential controls, but NOT so much to those consumer
devices. On consumer devices something that used to be a switch was now a
hidden menu option. Humans can easily memorize switch positions, but started
struggling with menus.

7\. The fall of modern civilization really accelerated with the PLAY button
that was also the PAUSE button, the STOP button that forgets where you had
been and '<<' and '>>' buttons that change their operation based not how long
you held it but also how flaky the button is made. Where once people were
angered by membrane and 'chicklet' button membranes, now people accept them
even in expensive devices... with their brief lifespan, and for at least half
of the brief lifespan the controls are a source of chronic frustration. For
the shaky and the elderly, constant frustration.

8\. Displays became color and HD and touch screens appeared. Web site design
rejects -- not engineers or people familiar with previous consumer devices --
were hired to populate the screens and build the menus. There is whitespace
and visual clutter, too many levels, few if any actual controls, and often
used controls are two operations deep. Onscreen pop-up QWERTY or ABCD
keyboards have replaced the simple act of including an actual keyboard with
the device, even when it would save frustration in daily use.

9\. Now Internet connectivity was integrated, postponing a full design cycle
even further as devices were released before they could even compete favorable
with their previous generations. The Android is probably the best-of-breed of
this genre where screen interface and driving logic can be integrated into a
brick that is set into other boxes... but at a very steep price. Few
suppliers.

10\. Its thinness is an affront to the serviceability of previous eras. Small
displays on large empty panels and empty enclosures, that once were populated
with controls performing immediate functions. A tiny window into the whole
machine.

...

Because of those switches and buttons, people used to operate devices while
doing something else, while looking somewhere else. In the dark, by rote and
by habit. They were 'big' but big meant real speakers, beefy batteries and
things that couldn't get lost under a sheet of paper or left on the bus seat.

Now you have to gaze intently at a small screen, figure out where you are,
stabilize the device to place your fingers just so on a surface that will not
work well when wet, squint in the sunlight, fumble while holding things
_designed_ to slip out of your hand so the precious glass shatters as it hits
the ground... while trying to discern whether present state will accept an
operation from pressing a button that isn't there.

I predict that the next consumer craze will be things that look and operate
like they did in the 1980s.

