US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers

Re:US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls... by hrktb on Sunday August 11, 2019 @12:17PM (#20668790)

As with everything it depends. Throwing a whole category of input under the bus because it failed when we tried in some uses would be short-sighted. Especially as we’ve had touchscreens for less than a few decades.

> inherently inferior / single-system

From the top of my head, maps work better on touchscreens. Navigating document trees. Making elements link together, group them. And there must be hundreds of uses not obvious now because we haven’t tried enough.

Actually I don’t see how any input system would not have some high-stake single system where it’s a perfect fit. That would just be failure of imagination in my opinion.

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Re:US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls... by BurningFrog on Sunday August 11, 2019 @02:26PM (#20669621)

Right. For anything dynamic, an interface that can redraw itself in milliseconds has enormous advantages over mechanical knobs and levers.

For managing permanent properties, I think mechanical interfaces are the best option, though of course vastly more costly.

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Re:US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls... by hrktb on Sunday August 11, 2019 @04:40PM (#20670343)

You are right, but I think it goes beyond that.

Any control interface is by definition acting on something dynamic, so even pushing a physical button, we expect the some status to reflect the result instantly.

I think touchscreen could be best used as a step above joysticks, when an action cannot just be summed by a on/off (or +/-) state, or a vector in one direction.

Imagine in a military setting if you need to open a communication channel with 4 teams moving close to each other to warn them of a nearby enemy. Would you prefer to switch the “open communication” lever, check the team numbers, push the buttons 1, 5, 6, 12 and the “open channel” button. Or circle them directly on the map and click “open communication” on the right side panel?

I also think that a lot of touchscreen interface are immature and ill thought, but it would be the same issue with stupid buttons like we can find in so many cars for instance (why would the parking brake switch be next to the A/C on/off ?)

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Re:US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls... by other_herbert on Sunday August 11, 2019 @08:20PM (#20671425)

I think you just talked me into making some sort of huge steampunk button controller for slack... Have a label with the contact name, an incandescent lamp for new message status then a button to chose that to go to the conversation... Hmmm now all I need to find is some time

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