Hasta La Ideas

Ah, the minutiae of physical interface design. Alexis Brion’s insightful gripe on the Design vs. Art Blog points out that most camera manufacturers have uniformly adopted a rather silly interface feature: The wheel that isn’t a wheel.

The problem with this design is that the wheel does not behave like a wheel, meaning that it can not be rotated in any direction. In most cases, we saw that wheels were actually 4 buttons put together. Even worse, those buttons usually had totally different functions.

Come to think of it, I have always subconsciously hated that little ring button, but never thought about it much until Brion brought it up.

Another piece of Brion’s I enjoyed was “Telephone design for elderly people,” featuring the phones pictured below and listing some do’s and don’t’s. Am loving the handwritten speed-dial list the Doro phone on the left! I’m not even old and I want one.

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