I work in data visualization. Every programmer who gets into datavis goes through a "3D all the things" phase where they look around and realize that 3D visualizations aren't used in a lot of areas where it seems like they should. Eventually you realize that there are big tradeoffs and 3D is very difficult to get right for the human brain.
Touchscreens are similar. The appeal is obvious. Screens are space efficient, customizable, upgradeable, flashy, etc. But they simply aren't as nice as physical controls with tactile feedback. Not only should we not be forcing touchscreens into every HCI situation, I think we should be moving the other direction, adding more physical buttons, dials, sliders etc to our computers and smartphones. In school a couple years back I worked on a project[0] for adding generic bluetooth buttons on a wrist device.
Imagine if you had 4 extra physical buttons, a scroll wheel, and a slider all sitting on your wrist, and your phone and apps were designed in such a way that you could map these to whatever you wanted.
> Imagine if you had 4 extra physical buttons, a scroll wheel, and a slider all sitting on your wrist, and your phone and apps were designed in such a way that you could map these to whatever you wanted.
Well this is kind of what Tesla is doing isn't it? You have some general purpose scroll-wheels/buttons on the steering wheel
Touchscreens are similar. The appeal is obvious. Screens are space efficient, customizable, upgradeable, flashy, etc. But they simply aren't as nice as physical controls with tactile feedback. Not only should we not be forcing touchscreens into every HCI situation, I think we should be moving the other direction, adding more physical buttons, dials, sliders etc to our computers and smartphones. In school a couple years back I worked on a project[0] for adding generic bluetooth buttons on a wrist device.
Imagine if you had 4 extra physical buttons, a scroll wheel, and a slider all sitting on your wrist, and your phone and apps were designed in such a way that you could map these to whatever you wanted.
[0]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lTOxHxHFjwJXeCLROAPf6OJD...