Hi Gregg, My observation is that in the last decade or so human factors engineering has taken a back seat to getting a product out the door. Possibly with the idea that it will be out of date in a couple of years so why bother.
Way back when I was in University it was the Arts Department at the University of Alberta that introduced a Industrial Design stream for students to take which was exactly about that. How big should buttons be? What sort of positions should they be in and where. I was friends with a guy that was doing that while I was taking what is now called Computer Engineering but then was Computing Science with a few EE courses. Never forgot the comments he made about design. Lately it appears to take a back seat. In essence perhaps that's what my question about touch screens is all about. John > -----Original Message----- > From: Gregg Eshelman via Emc-users [mailto:emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net] > Sent: June-01-21 11:55 PM > To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) > Cc: Gregg Eshelman > Subject: Re: [Emc-users] Touch screen for LinuxCNC > > I always liked the rotary click wheel on many CRT monitors. Nice big wheel > with an offset dimple. Put fingertip in dimple and push to > get the menu, spin to highlight the configuration option then push. Spin > again to select (for example) vertical position then push and > spin to move the raster up or down. No slower (for me it was faster) than a > mouse interface with "spin" controls that scroll a list or > change a number. Only took me a few seconds to have a CRT's image all > tweaked. That's why people lamented the loss of the > clickwheel on iPods. It was FAST, easy to use, and didn't need eyes on it to > be able to use it. > > My current LCD has five buttons on the back. Only the bottom one (on/off) has > a tiny bump. The other four are ??? and after the > menu is brought up, their positions don't align with the order of the menu > selections so one is literally poking around blindly trying to > find what does what. Even a row of clearly labeled buttons on the front of a > monitor was slower than a click wheel. If TV and monitor > designers want a "blind poking" physical interface tucked around on the back > side, they should bring back the click wheel. I have a > couple of Samsung TVs that have, of all things, a tiny joystick *and* some > buttons on the back. Now that is a crazy thing. > > On Tuesday, June 1, 2021, 7:38:13 PM MDT, John Dammeyer > <jo...@autoartisans.com> wrote: > Personally I like the tactile feedback of a button that moves.� But moving > from buttons over to a mouse to then select entries is > tedious so I can see either a number of buttons or a touch screen for that > sort of thing. > > For the same reason I really detest those interfaces based on Arduino's that, > due to limited I/O use a rotary knob and button to select > from all sorts of menus.� Or worse test enter each digit one at a time using > the rotary knob. > Shudder!!!! > > Way back HP had the right idea with what they called soft keys.� A row of > mechanical buttons along the edges of the screen to select > options displayed beside the button.� My Tek scope has those and the stupid > rotary knobs.� Invariably since they have two of those I > tend to choose the wrong one first. > > But to design such a user screen for LinuxCNC implies you also have to > provide the buttons (and maybe a knob).� Easy to do with > CANopen or ModBus or if you have one of the high i/o count MESA boards but > then you are also running a bundle of wires up rather > than a network cable. > > Thanks for the feedback. > John Dammeyer > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
