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Tuesday, May 24, 2005Reynolds is writing about device simplicity. He suggests that knobs, buttons and fewer features will make a comeback.If I had my way, cellphones would make outbound calls only (remember when a trip to the Post Office was 15 minutes with nobody bothering you?). The only modern cellphone feature I like is being able to select your ring. And even that's just because it reduced the profusion of earlier cellphones (were they Motorolas?) that went da-dah-dum-dum... da-duh-dum dum duuuuuum. One device I really like is my antiquated Palm IIIC. I like the way it slips onto the compact keyboard and a whole lot of other things. But what I like best is this. On the Palm, at the bottom, there are four buttons. One's a calendar, one's a phone, one's a checklist and one's a notepad. But the buttons are programmable. So the calculator button now gives me my French dictionary, and the checklist my Italian dictionary. In this case, there is a device with (too many) nested menus, but with a few clicks you can reduce your routine usage to the pressing of four buttons. I think a smart compromise - if they can figure out how to deliver it - is to keep offering gadgets with a good number of features, but replace about five of the tiny function buttons with two large ones that you can set for your most common features. That way the grandparents can ask their still enthusiastic grandkids to program the two big buttons for the features they most want to be able to use and avoid the rest while the technophiles can fuss. The smart ones are already doing this with computers, cleaning all but the essentials off the desktop so that the technically unsure can click on the one that says Word or the one that says E-mail, blissfully unaware of the havoc lurking within the "start" key. So here's my thought: Customizable knobs for your favorite functions. The same joystick can be used to position either mirror in the car. So I presume that knobs, too, are customizable. In the future, your mid to lower end (though not low end) gadget will feature all your menu driven functions, plus a handful of knobs. For an afternoon's fussing, you'll be able to reset what the knobs do for the things you most want to do. Then the 90% of us who aren't going to learn the full range of possibilities our devices offer will be able to sleep securely, knowing that if we ever need to do this or that, we can go through the menus when the time comes, but that at the same time we can give over the majority of our efforts to the glory of dialing up and tuning in exactly what our heart desires. 
posted by gbarto at 11:12 PM |
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