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User Interface Design for Devices
By Jacob Cohen | March 1, 2004
While some appliances and devices have grown easier to use over the years, some have gone the opposite direction and become more confusing. It is not, it seems, through any lack of trying on the part of the manufacturers, however. It seems that some manufacturers have simply become detached from their customer base, or their research departments are inept.
For example, look at the controls on a car stereo. It used to be simple to tweak the equalizer settings. There would be a knob for the bass, a knob for the treble, a knob for balance, and maybe a knob for fading front to rear. Now, you have the exact same functionality, but you access it through a menu. You press the “Audio” button repeatedly until you get to the setting you want, then hit up or down to change it.
The problem I see with changes like this is that they don’t add anything for the end user. They might be trying to save room by not having so many knobs, or they might be using some sort of digital EQ which is more difficult to set if you control it with analog knobs. They are essentially passing a design/manufacturing problem on to the user. With the old-school knob system, it might look “low tech” but it does exactly what it’s supposed to do. You can see at a glance what the current setting is, and you can change it quickly.
For another example, look at the printer attached to the average computer. Older printers had a variety of buttons that were labeled for the function they accomplished. Newer printers have only a couple of buttons, but they are labeled with a cryptic symbol or not at all, leaving you to either punch them in various combinations until you get what you want, or go find the user’s manual to look up something like canceling a print job, which should be a simple, intuitive operation.
| The HP LaserJet 2100 series printer is an example of a printer with an over-simplified interface. Two buttons, one of which is labeled with a triangle within a circle, one blank, are the only means of controlling this printer. It also has three LEDs on the top to indicate status. One of these is next to the blank button, one is next to a symbol that looks like a horseshoe, and one is next to a recognizable symbol: an exclamation point with a triangle around it.It is not obvious from looking at this panel that pressing the blank button gives you a printer information page, or that pressing both buttons together gives you a detailed information and status printout. |  HP LaserJet 2100 control panel. Source: John VanDyk’s web log. |
If I had to redesign this printer’s controls, I would simply show the functions you can do, and the statuses that can be reported, and not rely on user’s manuals to interpret the meanings of various combinations of status lights or buttons. There would be one button with a red circle with a line through it, and the text label “Cancel” next to it. There would be a small button with the text label “Print Status Report” next to it. There would be a small button with the text label “Print Printer Information” next to it. For most printing purposes that is all that is needed.
For the status indicators, I would put a few LEDs on the control panel. One would be labeled “Power”, one would be labeled “Printing”, and one would be labeled “Paper Jam”. The power switch would be on the control panel, not on the side or the back.
The paper tray in modern printers never seems to hold enough paper. Unless you get a office-duty larger (and more expensive) laser printer, the paper tray almost never holds a full ream. Printing paper is sold in reams. I think all printers should have paper trays that hold slightly more than a ream. The paper status light should be next to the paper tray. It should light yellow when the paper is low, and red when it is out. If the paper tray held slightly more than a ream, it would be easy to just open a new ream of paper and load it whenever the light gets yellow. As it stands now, people often load part of a ream and have to leave the rest sitting next to the printer until it is needed.
March 25th, 2008 at 5:22 am
Hello
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