@paco would definitely be more interested in a modern android phone with this keyboard than a folding phone.

@paco The idea that human beings navigate the world by sight alone has caused so many accidents. Touch navigation (shape coding) was codified after a spate of mysterious B-17 runway crashes, found to be caused by two controls - one to be used during landing & the other decidedly not - looking identical & being right next to each other. Adding a tactile identifier to each stopped the crash epidemic in its tracks, but not until a guy had the idea of sitting behind the pilots & observing them.

@paco There's not *no* way to do it. iPhone Voiceover is actually a good example of multi-touch with audio and haptic feedback that includes intention to click.

@paco The genius part of that raised spacebar too?

It was also the fingerprint reader so was natural for unlocking as you picked it up / took it out of your pocket.

Loved my Keyone.

@paco i think about this sometimes too. I miss physical keys on phones--i could type so much faster with predictive ten key than i can with my smartphone. and i could do it without looking!

and that's just me being annoyed about convenience. putting touchscreens that control everything in a car is such a dangerous choice on the manufacturer's end!

@paco I explicitly bought a car with more buttons over another very with just touch screens for this reason.

The least bad option here is often to use the voice assistant and hope it hears you right...

@paco
A friend of mine drives a Mini Cooper. As I watched him get in and drive off, I noticed the car has a huge dash-mounted touchscreen. As you have pointed out, this is a TERRIBLE idea.

Naturally, the Swasticar also has a yuge touch screen you need to use to operate the climate control system.

@paco
Oh man, I miss my Blackberry Passport.

@paco Slider phones with keyboards were the peak of cellphone technology - it's been downhill ever since.

@paco

As an ex- BB employee, I agree. The BB keyboard had 10s or 100s of patents. Shape, size, physical interactions. No edge was an accident on those keys. The next level was when the physical keys also had touch capabilities, which was awesome for just swipe a word and prediction. It was a beautiful thing.

@paco yes

@paco

Also seems related to an avantage of a mouse over a touchscreen.

You can wave it over something and get a clue what will happen if you click on it.

No mouseover with a finger.

@paco Touch screens are intended to respond to human fingers and specially designed styluses. Maybe one needs gloves the screen won't respond to except for one's "do it" fingertip.

@paco
The absence of any touchscreen will determine my next car.

@paco you’re making excellent points. Interestingly enough, using a phone with a screen reader - while not the same tactile experience we’re all looking for - checks some of your boxes:

When you touch a control, the phone announces it. You then double tap to activate it.
To navigate between controls, you can also swipe on the screen (think touchpad) and focus moves to the next one, and the phone announces that.

Using an on-screen keyboard with a screen reader is a whole other story though.

@paco

I hate the fake touch. You do not have to make physical contact with the surface. Just being close enough can result in a fake click.

@paco When I got my current car, I made a point of actually telling the salesperson that one of the reasons why I choose it was that it does *not* rely on a touchscreen interface.

Yes, it does have a touchscreen, but only for rarely-needed functions. I can live with that.

Everything I need to do while driving and then some has physical buttons, knobs and levers.

See also: the little ridges on the F and J keys on a full-sized computer keyboard, which also allow orientation without looking.

@paco

@paul_ipv6

I use an old phone as an alarm clock. I don't want to have to look at the phone to snooze the alarm every 15 minutes. I have a rubber band marking the swipe zone so I can snooze without fully waking up.

#Ui #UX #touchscreen #phone #iPhone #blackberry #affordance

@paco @Lazarou Audi are removing their good dial system from their cars and going to touch screen.

@paco I really miss tactile feedback on my phone. I used to have a phone that was built in 2 parts that let the keyboard slide behind the phone & was always disappointed that design didn't take off.
But especially with a car, that ability to differentiate where your fingers are on the dashboard is so important.

@paco yes! touchscreens are awful in cars. this is the first thing I noticed the first time I used a car touchscreen. This was about a decade ago. How is it that we have normalized this and nobody talks about it?

@paco I'm with you on this, I think the idea of a car interface that relies solely on touch is ludicrous. Anything that forces a driver to look away from the road is just a horrible idea.
I also miss having phones with keyboards. I'd love something with a slider again, but I get that there's probably only a handful of people that feel that way now.

@paco Buttons, especially delightful little clicky deals, kick ass.

@paco yep. My 2024 crosstrek has that & i find it a big problem. Trying to adjust temp or audio can cause all sorts of accidental swipes & results. And can seriously distract me from driving. Then there was the blinding sun glare off the screen this morn when I had to block it with my right hand, while trying to avoid icy patches on the winding back road.

@paco how are touchscreens on anything a driver has/wants to interact with still legal? 😑

@paco @dpfyhrie It's not a patch on the Psion Series 5 keyboard, but alas, the last attempt to sell an Android with that keyboard was killed by the supply chain upset of 2021-22—Planet Computers' Chinese ODM went bust during production. I got one: it's amazing but a dead end.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/planet-computers-astro-slide-5g-review/

@paco I think you make a very good point, particularly when navigating functions in situations where attention to one task is critical and all other functions have to be designed to be completed while minimally diverting attention. Touchscreens make it easy for designers, manufacturers and engineers (and make updates easier) at the expense of the user's cognitive load. Especially in cars, this is the wrong choice. Nothing that a user may need to change while driving should be on a touch screen

@paco However, I don't miss Blackberry buttons, because I have big hands.

@paco
What's really interesting is that there -is- haptic feedback on the iphone. It is not something you super notice if you're used to it, but it does provide a slight buzz when you press in a certain way, not a full motor thing but enough to get some data.

The androids have the same, but it seems more narrow (mine's just a buzz when I press a key).

But there's no reason this couldn't be incorporated in, genuinely. A set motion (half circle?) to make it buzz and change 'modes'

@paco The more I think about this the more I think that the hard-won ergonomics lessons of the 20th century have been thrown out of the window with the advent of cheap touchscreens. The next Chernobyl will be touchscreen-related.

@paco Funny, I had this realization since ... forever. Even before touch screens, there were touch sensitive buttons on elevators and such. Hated them always!

That said, it's possible to improve the touch screen interface to make it better. Pressure sensitivity would allow sliding over controls without activating things, and audio feedback could help you figure out what you're sliding over.

@paco Yes, but each one of those buttons probably takes about $0.02 away from the device manufacturer's or carmakers' profit margins. Safety?Who cares, what are you, some kind of hippy?

@paco Compassionate Buddha yes! Give me buttons and sliders and dials and all those glorious things that didn't become UX hand grenades.

@paco it is possible to get closer to this, even with touch. Think: MacBook touch pad. Due to haptics and pressure sensor, it feels like you are pressing on something mechanical to ‘click’, but it doesn’t actually move (I constantly find this amazing). We could do something similar in cars. You would not feel the button, but at least you could slide to get the right one before activating it.

There have been various attempts to get texture with touch. Nothing has yet taken off.

@paco I recently saw a study/survey of millennials & GenZ that indicated they agree with you, at least as far as vehicles go. They prefer actual physical buttons and dials more than touchscreens. Though I am GenX, I know that I do!

@paco My main problem is that I don't have the steadiest of fingers to begin with, much less sitting in a rolling metal box. I need to rest my hand somewhere so the lone digit has at least a chance of hitting its target. If it fails its mission, the situation has gotten even worse.

@paco

When I finally went to Android from a Palm Treo, I got a bulky case with an external Bluetooth keyboard. I loathe typing on a touchscreen, but they've made it too impractical now.

I would *so* love a phone with a physical keyboard. Phones are already big enough I would't miss some screen real estate.

@paco I have Tourette's and I touch every surface around me. With physical buttons, keys and knobs, I can touch them without a worry. Typing on my phone means having to delete stuff all the time, or starting from zero several times because I close a window accidentally. I can't imagine driving a car with a touch screen without eventually having an accident.

@paco FWIW, Unihertz currently sells phones with physical keyboards

https://www.unihertz.com/collections/titan-series

(I have one of their itty-bitty Jelly devices and love how it helps prevent me from getting sucked into the device, and it fits comfortably in a pocket)

@paco

I'm always baffled when a car design forgets this basic understanding of tactile interface. Ages ago I read an article by Honda about how they designed with tactile interfaces for the console. Then my wife's car last year had nothing but a smooth touchscreen to control radio/temp/phone apps/etc. We returned it within months.

Reminds me of the part in Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy where an item is thrown & it passes by a console causing systems to turn off.

@paco
sometimes it jsut feels like UI/UX trends are on the wrong way of EVERYTHING common sense woudl say, and they _DO_ yield worse, unusable stuff.

A related thing to no-physical buttons is the trend for "black over black" for desktop apps and themes. It is just unusable, no matter how "elegant" one would find it.

@paco Yes! Touchscreens are not terrible for phones (assuming they are cheaper and more robust than physical keys). Not great, but a reasonable tradeoff.
However, they are terrible for any application where they steal visual attention from important tasks like avoiding oncoming traffic. That goes double when the control surface is modal: the layout of buttons changes depending on function-of-the-moment.
I blame the control panels in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

@paco In "Customers Included" I wrote about the MyFord Touch, a disastrous touchscreen design, for the very reasons you note:
https://creativegood.com/blog/23/why-car-companies-ignore-customers.html

@paco@infosec.exchange yeah. Touchscreens are great but arent suitable for everything. im quite happy that necessary contrils on my car are physical.

more of the entertainment system could be, but at least some of even that is.

@paco indeed, and this is part of the reason why the Euro NCAP (safety testing body) will prioritise physical controls over touch screens. https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/5/24091043/euro-ncap-safety-rating-europe-2026-touchscreen-buttons-dials