Give me feedback
I haven't done a geeky, techy blog entry in a little while so if this is not your thing, you might want to skip on.

If you are into that then feel free to read on and see if you agree with my latest rant.

I've started to notice some "improvements" that designers have been making to various controls on every-day objects which seem to be sacrificing a very basic feature of any good UI design - feedback. A couple of examples:

• Pedestrian crossings - There's a new set of lights on Victoria Avenue, Cambridge and they have a new way of activating the pedestrian crossing. Ever since I can remember, pedestrian crossing lights have worked the same way in the UK. You push a button, a WAIT sign lights up above the button and you wait a couple of minutes until the red man changes to green and the audible sound tells you it's safe to cross. So in-grained in my psyche is this routine, that I scarecly look at the button anymore. If I'm cycling along I can stop, reach out and feel and press the button without taking my eyes of what's going on around me. This is because pressing the button in and feeling it spring back has given me enough of a sensory clue that I've activated the lights. Imagine then my surprise when I tried this on the new lights on Victoria Avenue which have a touch-panel to activate them. I attempted pushing the thing a couple of times, meeting total resistance until I realised that a red ring around the touch panel was now glowing so I guess that means I'd activated it. Now, I'm lucky, I can see but how is someone who's blind or partially sighted supposed to cope? Am I missing something? How is this touch-panel nonsense better than a good old-fashioned button which has some real-world feedback?



• Indicator stalks - Probably one of the simplest parts of a car's UI. Push the stick down, you're turning left, push up you're turning right. Once you've completed the manouvre the stick will either spring back automatically to the middle OFF position or you can knock it back manually. Simple. Well, it appears the folks over at General Motors have found a way to "improve" things. My brother's company car is a Vauxhall Vectra and the indicator stalk works a bit different. You push the stick down or up to signal but rather than staying put it springs back to the OFF position. The only clue you have that the indicators are now active is the flashing arrow on the dashboard. You can hardly hear the audible 'tick' either (either the bi-metallic strip has been replaced with a digital sample or the cabin sound proofing is just too good!). The auto-cancel feature is now governed by electronics rather than the mechanics of the steering wheel and again the only indication that the indicator has been cancelled is that the green arrow stops flashing on the dash. Gone is the re-assuring noise you hear on mechanical stalks as the spring back to OFF. It strikes me as just a little bit scary that you have to take your eyes off the road and look at the dash in order to know whether you've successfully activated the indicators or not. In addition, to cancel the indicator manually, you have to push the stick in the opposite direction. So to cancel a left indicator, indicate right, to cancel a right indicator, indicate left. Bonkers or what? Apart from just being counter-intuitive it also places a greater reliance on the driver to 'remember' the indicators current mode. It's therefore of no surprise that my brother says he frequently ends up triggering the indicator in the wrong direction and confusing the hell out of anybody around him.

It strikes me we are in danger of losing some of the feedback we get when we swap out analogue devices for digital equivalents. Making technology more 'clever' through the use of electronics does improve things in many cases (e.g. EPG-driven recordings in Sky+ or TiVo versus clock-based in VCRs) but in this new digital world I still want buttons I can press, knobs I can twiddle (expecting innuendo in the replies to this post anytime now), and levers and sticks that move and stay where I put them.

By way of a positive ending to this post, I cite my new Nikon D50 SLR (and most digital SLRs thankfully!) as an example of good design. Both it and my old Minolta Dimage Compact have a zoom lens. To zoom or go wide on my Minolta I have to hold rotate and hold a dial in one direction or another (ie it's a rocker switch which some designer has decided looks much nicer as a dial). After a noticeable delay, the electronics will work out that they should be moving the lens and the motor will kick in. By which time, the subject has probably moved out of shot and I've missed the photo opportunity. On my Nikon, I rotate the ring on the lens to zoom or go wide. Simple. Instant feedback. More of this please.