Menus versus whatever? Human Factors and Ergonomic Design
LoopyByteloose
Posts: 12,537
I have a new Canon Powershot SX150 camera that I am learning. While it isn't bad, I miss all the things that the old SLRs had... through the lens focus, rings on the lens body that allowed one to change focus, zoom, and film speed. At this stuff has moved to the back of the camera.
And of course, I have to look at a screen rather than through an eye piece, so glare from the sun confound my viewing what I want to take.
In other words, the user interface is typically digital and has forgotten that 1960s concept of good ergonomics.
These days everything seems menu driven and button controlled. We no longer have knobs and wheels that rotate through a range of selections. Admittedly, Apple has done some very interesting digital ergonomics with the iPad and iPhone; but more often than not, the devices we are using no longer adapt as well to the human as they did in the past. Instead we have a lot of hype about 'high-technology', better pixel resolution, and more MIPs to attract buyers.
But it seems that a return to an excellent user interface is always going to drive the big volume sales... it has for the iPhone, hasn't it; it did for the iPod, didn't it?
It is not enough to be digital, pretty, and fast.... I'd love to have a camera that didn't make me fumble, like my good old Zeiss Icon. I was 'at one' with that machine. The fact that it is supposed to be 'more intelligent' is somewhat of an insult to the user.
And of course, I have to look at a screen rather than through an eye piece, so glare from the sun confound my viewing what I want to take.
In other words, the user interface is typically digital and has forgotten that 1960s concept of good ergonomics.
These days everything seems menu driven and button controlled. We no longer have knobs and wheels that rotate through a range of selections. Admittedly, Apple has done some very interesting digital ergonomics with the iPad and iPhone; but more often than not, the devices we are using no longer adapt as well to the human as they did in the past. Instead we have a lot of hype about 'high-technology', better pixel resolution, and more MIPs to attract buyers.
But it seems that a return to an excellent user interface is always going to drive the big volume sales... it has for the iPhone, hasn't it; it did for the iPod, didn't it?
It is not enough to be digital, pretty, and fast.... I'd love to have a camera that didn't make me fumble, like my good old Zeiss Icon. I was 'at one' with that machine. The fact that it is supposed to be 'more intelligent' is somewhat of an insult to the user.
Comments
http://www.samsung.com/in/promotions/galaxycamera/
It's a very nice Android device with a big screen and a camera bolted on the front.
So it has the ergonomics of a touch screen phone rather than a camera. Could take a while to get use to. Is it ultimately easier to use than a good old fashioned camera as you describe?
The shift to digital devices certainly realigned a lot of items from knobs and switches to push buttons and LCD menus or touch screens.
I purchased an inexpensive telephone as I didn't need anything fancy and the darn thing flies off the desk when I answer the phone. The alternatives are to get a wireless phone, or attach it to a brick. It used to be all bases of handsets were heavy and the phone was configured to allow you to hold it with your shoulder and have both hands free... but weight is a shipping expense, and nobody seemed to think about needing both hands free for typing.
Other examples are abundant.
The most irksome is what I would call the 'Walmart syndrome'. Chairs used to be a significant ergonomic design debate, but Walmart buyers have had the power to just buy at the lowest price and to limit selection. I haven't seen a good chair in at least a decade, and that office chair was a European import all-aluminum for $650 USD.
So it doesn't matter how much money I spend locally, I can't buy a decent desk chair... a certainly not a great one. But I can visit Ikea and get something a bit better than Walmart. We have slowly killed off hundreds if not thousands of retail niches with the internet. And of course, computer design has put many craftmen out of business as demand is diverted.
So, is there anyway to revive demand? Maybe by founding a design institute, like Bauhaus once was?
Sad but true, and not just chairs, pretty much everything.
What it seems to have done is decimate the middle ground, you can find a lot of cheap stuff that at most is worth what you paid for it, and then high end stuff that is more like what you want but at a price above what it is actually worth.
Another example of bad UI design is cell phones that don't show the corresponding letters on the keys, like 2 showing "a b c", it makes calling numbers like 1-800-WALMART or entering names in a directory lookup a pain.
C.W.
We have a number of cameras here but it's only the low-end ones that don't have the dials and at the price and for what you get I don't really expect much different. My current favorite is the lightweight OM-D E-M5 which is very easy to handle in manual mode using it's dials plus the touch screen for all those functions you had no hope of having on the old film SLRs.
My main beef with ergonomics or the lack thereof is with the humble cheap and nasty TV remote. Most of the buttons are black and of the same shape with the same "stylish" design in that you can only read the symbols and letters when you turn the light on. There are normally four colored buttons but these always seem reserved for functions you just never use. The play button etc could be any shape and anywhere. If they designed cars this way we would all have to take driving lessons every time we buy a new car. The same also goes for the "stylish" and frustrating controls you find (or can't find) on most equipment these days. Who designs this stuff??? I mean who would ever design it in this weird back-to-front illogical and downright impractical way?
To expand on this further, I see many of my colleagues perfectly happy programming on a laptop for hours and hours a day. Somehow, I got tired of that and picked up a new hobby horse. I have developed a desktop shape and system that I've built from scratch to fit my body. I use a custom keyboard, an ergonomic mouse, and enough screen space where I can have everything up that I want up. And I ordered my chair from Herman Miller. It cost me around $700 IIRC, but it's one of the best investments that I made. Nowdays, I don't get any aches or pains from long, 15+ hour programming sessions.
My next investment will be an adjustable height desk. I'm thinking of these legs, but with my custom desktop.
Different strokes for different folks i guess...
You just bought a low-end Canon, that's all. There are all kinds of options out there. If you want a compact camera, I would go with the S100/110, plenty of dials but more importantly (for me) is the relatively fast (F2.0) lens on such a tiny camera.
My main camera used to be the Canon 5D and a 40D for backup but I increasingly found myself leaving them at home in favor of the Canon G9...no good for fast action but neither was the 5D.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/recommended-cameras.htm
As for phones, I don't want to hold my phone on my shoulder when I need free hands, my Samsung Galaxy S3 makes an excellent speakerphone or if I need a bit more privacy, I use a headset. My S3's voice recognition is eerily good, it's my GPS when traveling and when shopping I can scan a bar-code and the app will tell me if I can purchase the item elsewhere for a better price. Using TeamViewer I can/do tweak the source code on my customer's control systems anywhere in the world and can see the machines perform and talk to the operators/engineers, etc., etc.
My phone is my still and video camera (the best camera is the one that you have with you) and I also have an amazing scanner app that scans and processes documents, it's my magnifying glass (with illumination) and it's my personal, portable entertainment system. It came with a free 50G of DropBox cloud storage that is sync'd to my PCs and tablets so I always have access to my data. I have a whole bunch of different calculators and electronic component reference apps.
All too often we have a glitch with our super-duper 60Mbs fiber-optic internet service. I whip out the S3 and switch on the "Portable Hotspot" option so that the four of us in the office that need to be online can resume working....Amazing stuff!
Regards,
Mickster
EDIT: Just realized that this wasn't about cell/mobile phones...sorry.
and BTW ALL the low end rebel canons are cranky in there GUI ..... I Like the Real Jog wheels on the mid and Pro SLRs they make ........
Once you cross in to that land they Are Much more consistent with menus and the like My Old A2 FIlm and the 1D " feel " the same and I can run them with Out looking at the dials ......
Speaking of Menus !! THIS little text of joy poped up on the HP laserjet 4 in the project lab at Oregon tech .
Attachment not found.
I nearly Died laughing .,
Peter
Did it lead to a trip to a nearby field with a couple coworkers and a ball bat?
C.W.
as for the cams ........ I dont know . I really have a bone to pick with all these consumer electronics companys . the UI and feel is Last on there list . . Its Really obvious in cheap Keyboards on laptops ..... and trackpads .. Id you spend your Life at a computer the nuances of a bad KB and pad are Very had to ignore... My dads HP neeeded a 2 inch button travel to use a mouse click ( Ok I am kinda over stating this ) But really My Moms Mac and my toughbook give me way less grief when used for Hours on end ....
My canon 1 D is NOT a lite cam! but I can hold it for hours as they did a good job with the grips ....
some things are a " joy " to use . some are just a royal pain .... Often you pay up the nose for the better stuff . But trust me If your sanity depends on it then you are way better off paying the higher price ..
And yet, it seems that good ergonomics are more and more costly as the producers have gotten into giving less and less at the bottom end of the market and new players cannot afford to enter and compete.
In other words, you just have to be rich or deeply in debt to afford the good stuff.
~~~~~~~~
I have other issues with menus as I live in Taiwan. My air conditioner, my answering machine, and my telephone don't have English menus. That is not a big issue in itself as these devices just make me work a bit harder to learn Chinese. But the documentation in Chinese requires me to read it all with a magnifying glass. English-Chinese Dictionaries are notorious for using 'fine print'. As both Chinese learners of English and English learners of Chinese have long known that new learners require larger type faces, you would think that somebody would exploit that market niche. Not so, it is only the Chinese-Chinese children's dictionaries that are large type face.
I can only hope with a slower economy that more and more goods improve their ergonomics to gain market share. I have enough gadgetry with hundreds of pages of documentation; I'd rather have something that is intuitive and immediately useful. What good is a new camera on vacation if you have to bring along a laptop to read a 200 page PDF file on its operation?
We could use some writers that realize 50 pages is a reasonable limit to documentation and all those extra graphics are rather unneeded.
Funny, the last really comfortable chair I sat in was one that my mom picked up at the CA State Surplus site for $15. It was the ugliest thing I have ever seen from a chair perspective, but it was ridiculously comfortable and had a perfect ergonomic fit.
As for the menus, I completely agree. The old days of picking something up and being able to use without reading a manual are gone, but there is at least an effort to make menus intuitive enough to navigate them without training. My latest work phone is a Razor Maxx HD and I haven't had to find out how to use any part of it. Granted my last phone was Android based, just an earlier version of the OS, but still, very easy for me to adapt to it and have it set up to my liking in about 15 minutes.
My camera, a Canon T1i, is pretty easy to use and has a few knobs to spin to give me that old-school feeling.
This is what I have referred to as "the Walmart Effect" for several years. Unfortunately in order to stay in business most companies have had to submit to this effect, thus the reduction to the very cheap Smile like that found at Walmart or the over priced products sold by boutiques and other specialty retailers.
Or maybe it has come to the reality that you now have to always spend a lot more... unless you are bidding on abandoned storage lockers or visiting nefarious garage sales. Marketing has gotten a lot more aggressive in the past few decades and competition has dwindle.
I think marketing has always been aggressive, I was just perusing some old archived newspapers and came across this one:
I have found it is very rare for a specific item that the lowest or highest price one is the best value so I usually spend a little more to get somewhat better quality. Unfortunately it now seems to be a binary choice in many cases. One can pay a little to buy some Smile that will fall apart in no time, or spend one or two orders of magnitude more for something that will last. There no longer seems to be a mid range. I call this the "Walmart Effect" because the decline in the mid range quality/price products appears to coincide with the increasing success and number of Walmart stores. As their own ads have stated, their aim is the lowest possible price. This seems to have had the side effect of driving out manufacturers and retailers of mid range quality/price products and reducing our range of choice.
Another thing I need to vent is that sound and picture are out of synch on most cable network tvs, but people don't care! Ouch, for me it is a pain when when a mouth moves, and the afterwards comes the sound.
Erlend