US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers

IIRC the official explanation from the makers of Star Trek is that the displays look like simple touch screens, but they are actually overlaid with structured force fields, so for the users it feels like a physical button press.

There's really no need to force this decision to go in either direction. Ever since I first heard of capacitive multitouch, going back to the timeframe before the first iPhone announcement, I've been waiting for someone to build 'stick-on' encoder knobs that the touchscreen controller can read.

These would simply take the form of a knob with a metal leaf or other polygonal electrode in its base, whose rotation could be sensed by code similar to that used to implement crappy 'virtual potentiometers' on existing touchscreens. The fixed part of the knob base would be epoxied or otherwise bonded directly to the screen surface, or perhaps held in place with some sort of frame.

Doesn't seem to have happened yet despite being an incredibly obvious (and inexpensive!) thing to do. Seems like the MIDI community would be all over something like this, even if no one else considered it worthwhile.

I didn't watch Voyager much, and never saw that episode, but this is extremely disappointing. The ST:TNG Technical Manual (which came out before VOY) clearly addressed this issue, way way back in the early 90s. You can actually feel touchscreen controls, because they have miniature force fields/tractor beams that provide the same tactile sensation you get with mechanical controls. Didn't the writers of VOY ever read the TNG Tech Manual?

It's of course even more disappointing that a sci-fi TV show in the 80s/90s was able to address this important HMI issue in a book meant just for geeky fans, yet 25 years later people in the industry still don't get it. Of course, we don't have tractor beams or force fields to implement what they wrote about in the tech manual, but it does show the show's technical consultants were thinking about and aware of this issue back then, 15 years before slate-style smartphones were even invented, and that maybe we should not be using touchscreens for certain controls until we do have force fields or some other workaround.

>and I mean HATED the touch screen when it came to virtual potentiometers (one operator got up and walked away saying "this screen is a fucking piece of shit")

That operator was correct. Virtual potentiometers on a touchscreen are a horrible idea and miserable to use.

You can add all the haptic and UI flair you want in, but it's not going to make my nerves tingle in the way my brain expects.

video in german https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJjp-P9jZCk

Most industrial touchscreens I've seen are resistive which makes them much more difficult to use, especially for dragging motions, so that may be compounding the problem. Capacitive screens are generally much easier to use.

http://propsummit.com/upload/408/tt4.jpg

I'm not anti-touchscreen by any measure, but did you really find that surprising? It seems common knowledge to me that keyboard shortcuts are faster than touchscreens for most tasks.

You could replace that with the more general "Humans as usual."

So if there's things you can do with the touchscreens it's likely to be a whole lot of small things you might want to do in rare non-emergency situations. That's a pretty good fit for a touch screen. You can potentially give the astronauts a huge amount of control over all aspects of the spacecraft without creating a mountain of buttons and knobs. It could even lead to better safety since you know that every single physical control you see is important, and there's less room for mistake when using only the physical interface.

I'm not an expert in this area, so I could be wrong, but my impression is that SpaceX has a pretty good design here. Not necessary better or worse than Boeings approach. It's not like NASA would let astronauts fly on it if they thought it was unsafe or hard to operate.

That said, it does look like they are prioritizing aesthetics over functionality of the control layout.

Having a thoughtful default UI along with the ability to display any control or status on the screen would seem like a better idea for central control station. A captain could pull up their own configuration for the control panel. During an emergency, they could fallback to a default view that could be referenced by operating procedure documents. Give the ability to delegate controls to other stations but do not allow multiple stations to control the same input, that seems like an idiotic idea.

Add labels on the display and use a set of generic controls and boom, you can use the same hardware for a ton of functions given the right abstractions.

OTOH controls that you normally, and especially in a critical situation, reach and operate without looking, is a different thing. They should be stationary, and provide good tactile feedback.

For planes that means that controls required during normal flight can be touch controls. After all on Concord and TU-144 pilots didn’t even have visual. However during departure and landing, pilots need physics buttons and switches as it is visual flight.

Another conclusion is that fighter jets can’t have any touch controls, they are supposed to be in visual all the time.

No touchscreens for in-flight, though, although iPads became common as replacement for paper charts.

However, I would not be certain if I could type well on a full-touch screen keyboard such as the Optimus Tactus [2]. I do my typing blindly, having a touch screen would constantly require me to find the correct position for my fingers by look. While on a normal keyboard that is easy to do by touch.

[1]: https://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/maximus/ [2]: https://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/tactus/

"Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200335

Agreed. I consider them dangerous, a threat to public safety, they should be banned by the NTSB, and some cars that use them should be under recall to retrofit them with mechanical controls.

Many states are now passing hands free laws that criminalize the use of phones or any other devices that use your hands while driving. The states provide exceptions for car touch screen use, but they shouldn't. They should criminalize the use of all touch screens when driving, not just some.

[0] https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur...

In one of the talks at Google I/O a few years ago a VP from Audi (or Volvo?) spoke in a thick and lofty German accent about how "ve haf completely oferhauled ze driver exzperienze". He played a sexy video clip showcasing their new Android infotainment system (something like https://youtu.be/h_7_fKJ0PNs), and the first thing I noticed is how they'd taken away my traditional temperature knobs and replaced them with digital touchscreen ones. They looked just like physical ones, and were in the exact same place you would expect (https://9to5google.com/2017/05/15/android-cars-audi/). So, I've gained absolutely nothing, and now I have to take my eyes off the road and look down at the stupid console just to change the temperature.

TLDR: Tacticle feedback is a Good Thing(tm) and designers should cultivate - not fight - muscle memory.

Modern, knob based, vehicle climate control systems actually bury a lot of functionality. For example Toyota's "automatic" AC you can either pick between fully automatic or a subset of manual controls. That's because they ran out of space/complexity headroom for more controls.

Touch screen climate control integrates better with voice (which you should be using while driving), offers better fine-grain control, more information (like CURRENT interior temp rather than just outside/target temp), and can offer new functionality (like profiles/pre-sets, additional automatic modes, memory climate, linked seat heat & cool/positional vents, etc).

I dislike several touch screen based climate control systems I've used. But that's because they're BAD. Car manufacturers are bad at making touch screen systems. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's a lot of good reasons to go that direction, car manufacturers just need to work on UX a lot.

My old MP3 player with its physical buttons and weird control lever, well, I could work it by touch and muscle memory.

For managing permanent properties, I think mechanical interfaces are the best option, though of course vastly more costly.

For a human to interface with anything digital, we need to drop what we’re doing and fully engage the touch interface.

Dangerous when driving, or similar.

With analog interfaces, our hands know exactly where to go and what to do just on feel, keeping attention elsewhere.

I’m glad the DOD made this decision and I hope others will follow.

Just because you can chip it doesn’t mean you should.

Fruit gets larger and brighter, but the flavor and texture go down.

Acoustic paneled ceilings are removed in favor of exposed ductwork and beams, but noise transmission between floors and echoes on the same floor get much worse. (I am torn about this one though)

Buttons with tactile guidance feel great but look too 1990s so everything becomes a glass rectangle.

I would really really like to see and participate in a renaissance of design that accounts for all of the human senses in all their forms.

In the case of using Xbox controllers it’s actually a great idea - these controllers were designed & refined over decades of intensive use by all kinds of people around the world - you wouldn’t be able to do better even if you tried with a custom design. There are obvious concerns regarding reliability of the hardware, but the design itself is in my opinion flawless.

http://www.psd-dude.com/tutorials/resources-images/adobe-pho...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint

It does not take much work for a Photoshop operator to orient themselves to the current mode, because it is communicated by a number of cues, including the shape of the mouse pointer.

One problem with vi’s interface is that, in contrast to Photoshop, it’s not easy for a vi operator to discover the available modes.

Are there any paint programs without a modal interface?

- with experienced users, e.g. people who are used to vim

- with a sharply limited number of modes, e.g. the three modes that vim has

It's just really easy to get carried away when you have the enormous number of combinations that touchscreens allow.

Too many medical devices are designed to be operated by fingers, rather than a foot. Touchscreens help the problem of hand-transferred contamination, but that is the wrong problem to fix. The problem is that hands are being forced to touch things unnecessarily. No one cares about what feet touch, because feet don't touch patients, and shoe-clad feet can step through a shallow disinfecting bath if necessary.

Or make monitors have a USB device profile, or just use the serial profile and have a command response protocol (http rest) for query and setting configuration. Standardize this protocol.

Now all displays could be configured using external standardized logic. I'd prefer something over SPI, but either is really ok.

The point of this joke is that as soon as the number of "things" (in this case input sources) is >1, someone somewhere starts looking at solutions as if that number might be 5, 10, 100, 1000, 1 million. Most monitors will have less than 5. Some will have up to 10. This number is known when you make the monitor.

Just let me buy a monitor with hardware input selection.

My monitor has one plug (DVI-D dual link). My monitor has 5 buttons.

But thankfully the manufacturer removed basically all software, so only the power button does anything, and the other 4 buttons are unconnected in the background. (Unfortunately this means the brightness can only be controlled by the connected computer's software)

The chassis is the same as more complicated monitors though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel

https://clickmonitorddc.bplaced.net/

True, but even Navy Seals don't run sleep deprived continuously. In between those training times when they are sleep deprived, they are expected to have normal sleep cycles.

This is a tiny shade of background in the story, not the main story, but read the books if you like this kind of tale.

It would be VERY cheap to invest in training procurement teams in how to buy and own effective software, especially in light of the billions that get wasted when they can't articulate their needs to the point that a vendor can't be successful.

There isn't really room for iteration and continual feedback on a warship. It has to be done right the first time then maintain stability in every conceivable scenario and reduce the need for ongoing training after updates.

At the same time, the public sector doesn’t operate like the tech sector. We may have 2500 employees who spend 37 hours a week behind a screen, using various pieces of software to do their daily grind on the bureaucracy, but we have maybe 10 technicians to build/maintain/operate those 300 IT systems for the total of 7000 employees at 200 different locations on a network we also operate. With 10 people on staff, and political management looking to make it 9, no one can be specialised in UI/UX because you can build things without a great UI/UX. Even when you buy the development from a company who does have some UI/UX guy, the decision goes back to the compromise and messy decision making of all those different stakeholders.

I think we have gotten better at it over time though, but it’s probably never going to compete with the private sector where you need great UI/UX if your competitors have it.

We lost electricity on our yacht at sea. There are electronic controls for both steering and throttle at the helm but none of them worked for a time. Because the yacht had two screws and the manual throttle control was in the engine room, we were able to steer and navigate the yacht with a man in the engine room with a radio. Traditionally throttle is the responsibility for engineering because there is a lot more going on with a ship than a car throttle.

Of course modern diesel engines are more flexible. You might still have to fire up the gas turbines on a modern navy vessel which would at least require checking oil etc.

The systems in use likely haven't evolved far for a number of reasons.

So far I've tried a few pendants, starting with a games controller, some kind of media production controller, and some off-shore low budget purpose made dedicated CNC pendant. The games controller was by far the most useable but it's made out of the wrong materials, made for childrens' hands, and doesn't have all the right mechanical inputs (I need a wheel). The media thing was unsatisfying but tantalising in some ways.

I've been psyching myself up for a doing some sort of mostly faithful copy of legit OEM controllers I use from time to time, like Fanuc for example. Some years ago I used an old Maho that had a really nice wired pendant. It was really solid, had some heft to it, and my recollection is that failing one or two functions had every one might want in such a device.

Also, I think you're right about wanting a standalone DRO with 7 segment LED displays. For a lot of jobs I find that a DRO hits the sweet spot with being easy to use, easy to read, and having the functions I need. My only real complaint is that I think I want one with a larger read out, so I can push it well out of the way and still see it properly.

Infact, most games have aim assist if you use a controller as means of input.

But my personal one has literally two options to choose from. However, the touch screen is old technology in contrast to the machine itself, so the handling is rather awkward. Also, it had to be replaced already because it suddenly stopped working for no actual reason. I think that the logic behind not just putting two physical buttons on it is that some designer thought it looks cooler with this big screen full of colors - and he may be right, but UX should really be more than just looks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

> Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving telegraph operators electric shocks.[20] Telegraph pylons threw sparks. [..]

> In June 2013, a joint venture [..] used data from the Carrington Event to estimate the current cost of a similar event to the U.S. alone at $0.6–2.6 trillion.[2] [..]

> The solar storm of 2012 was of similar magnitude, but it passed Earth's orbit without striking the planet, missing by nine days.[4]