At a former company, we were all issued YubiKey Nanos, which just never worked for me. None of my coworkers had a problem, but I couldn’t get the damn thing to register a touch no matter what I did, including swapping keys. Eventually I came across a thread on an internal list for employees over forty, with several other people who were all having the same problem. The solution? Lick your finger. Gross, but it did the trick. And I’m stuck licking my finger every time I need to make a YubiKey work.

There exist some "artificial tongues" that people use to turn pages. It's a rosin-like substance that comes in a small can.

There exist artificial fingers to tap smartphones, sold in cold climates, so you don't need to take off gloves. Regular sausages in their packaging work great.

Carrots and cucumbers work as well. I suppose it's the high moisture content.

I used to have some woollen winter gloves with built in touch-screen fingertips. They worked well, but also made things quite slippery when holding a phone. This once resulted in a shattered screen when the phone slipped out of my gloved hand and flew onto a cold, hard, London pavement…

How cold does it get with you? I have tried all sorts of touch-screen gloves and they all stop working below -5 C. The cheap touch-pencils still work though so carry one of those around my neck if I need the phone outdoors.

You can effectively get these surfaces built into the glove, a number of companies sell such things.

Why they don't need to be wet?

To activate a touchscreen they simply need to have capacitive properties.

Interesting, it sounds like they should try to invent something that works in similar way to nerves on the skin as you can feel slightest touch regardless of moisture.

Maybe multiple accelerometers plus machines learning could improve tao detection?

I remember one elevator button was a large metal bulge, that didn't get pushed, but instead did a little electric jolt to my finger (at a very small distance between finger and the button).

Here you can see it on 0:23 of video tour: https://marketplace.vts.com/building/400-capitol-mall-sacram...

I wonder if that explains the stereotype of old people licking their fingers to turn pages

That’s funny, I hadn’t thought of that. It very well might be true that turning pages is easier for people with more moisture in their skin.

so books are not accessible: kindles are better

I'm unclear if this was intended to be sarcastic, but it's certainly possible for e-readers to be more accessible than books, at least for models that actually have physical buttons (and especially considering that e-readers can have zoomable text).

I am actually reading this on an e-reader. I find it more accessible than either my phone or my desktop. And easier on the eyes.

As far as I can tell, none of the current Kindle models have physical page turn buttons anymore, which is insane to me.

Turning the page is the main thing I do on an ebook, having a button on the side is so much more convenient than touching the screen, I don't obscure what I'm looking at, and I don't smudge the screen.

The BOOX Palma is an e-ink Android device (not a phone) that I run the Kindle app on. It has physical page buttons, and is better than any of the Kindle devices I've used. Also tunable ink speed and color temperature.

Maybe not accessible in the a11y sense, but definitely accessible in the "can read without DRM" sense. I'll take a book I can keep and read whenever and however I want to one that has to phone home and ask a giant corporation if it's ok.

Get a Kobo and install KoReader.

Yes this is very much the reason. It gets dry where I am in the winter, and it never occurred to me to do this. An older gent in a coffee shop once watched me try to turn a page, and enlightened me. I’ve met more than a few people who have a dedicated finger glove for turning pages :)

Wet sponges [0] for people counting money were a very common sight some decades ago before money counting machines and mostly electronic payments. Probably still being used just not so obvious anymore. Regardless of age fingertips will eventually get too dry as the paper absorbs all the moisture and flipping pages or separating banknotes becomes hard.

For touchscreens dry fingers are also called "zombie finger" [1]. The screen registers the too minute change in electrical field as noise and rejects the touch event. Some sweat (but not too much) on the fingers makes all the difference.

[0] https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sponge-finger-wet...

[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/06/zombie-fing...

I'm also in a dry climate, and even as a teenager I often had to lick my fingers in order to get the plastic bags at the grocery store open (I was a bagger so had to do it all day). Eventually we got smart and started putting wet sponges by the bags, which is also an amazing life hack if you have trouble turning pages.

Wet sponges were a common site in offices back before widespread computing and lots of cash.

This thread is so long. It started with tactile buttons being back yet it's mainly about opening plastic bags. I like that. I think that's funny.

That sounds more like a soft percussive maintenance

Old people?

Yes, it does.

Source: when I was 5 I saw my grandmother, RIP, doing that and asked her about it. She explained that as she got older her fingers got drier, and now it's just easier to flip pages that way.

Its also the only way I can open a plastic bag in the meat section of Costco.

I was shopping at a grocery store and a lady saw me visible distraught by not being able to open a clear bag and she told me to touch some of the produce I’m about to pick up or the moisture around them. Never had the problem again. Thank you, random lady!

Or if you have something cold in your cart already, with condensation (cold drinks, ice cream etc).

A similar lady some time ago helped me with a different suggestion: stretch the edge a little near the side and blow in. Problem solved.

One of our local grocery stores has a different brand of plastic bag, This one has a small adhesive spot between the layers near the opening of the bags. As you pull the bag off, the adhesive pulls the next bag open a little bit. Each bag is slightly open when you pull it off. It works surprisingly well.

I may try to suggest that the other grocery stores adopt this brand but they are big national chains and I doubt they would be interested.

for reference, this bag says PULL-N-PAK® Titan Supreme 28-2024-11-2 www.crownpoly.com

I've seen several different solutions to this problem over the decades, and they all have one thing in common: they quickly get value-engineered out of existence.

There's always a fraction of a cent to be saved by adding slightly less adhesive, using slightly cheaper plastic, replacing the perforating tool less often, etc.; couple iterations in, the solution stops working reliably. There's no back pressure, because it's not like anyone is choosing where they shop by whether the single-use plastic bags are easy to open.

Rubbing the opening side of the bag between your palms generates static and opens it too. Learned that from a meat department employee who saw me struggling one day.

I used to do that too. But now the plastic bags are gone and there is these paper bags with slightly offset edges att he opening. Really neat invention, why didn't we do that before? :-)

Rubbing and then blowing on it to enlarge whatever opening has been created usually works just fine.

Same at Walmart. I've never successfully opened one of those without wetting my fingers.

Oddly, the plastic bags in the produce section do not have that problem. I now just grab one of those and use it for my meat.

There’s a whole “fingertip moistener [pad]” thingy if you need it often. Cashiers and secretaries often use them at work.

Off topic, a dog’s wet nose also works. Surprisingly useful on walks, e.g. when a poop bag won’t cooperate in a critical moment and licking your fingers is not an option.

That is a genuinely useful tip, considering the circumstances I've run into! Don't _really_ want to lick my fingers while dealing with dog poop, but the bags are a pain to open sometimes

Well I'm filing this tip away for future use.

expert level dog poo management tip!

The dog's nose is wet, because the dog licks it.

Dog poop is often also wet, and it's right there.

Exactly. You turn a bag inside out afterwards anyway, so the dirty part stays inside.

Then you can immediately rifle through all the cash in your wallet to clean your fingers off

Also useful for magic and playing with cards.

It's not a stereotype and it's not really a mystery.

Licking or wetting your fingers for this purpose has been a standard practice across the globe, when people are dealing with turning pages (e.g. for accounting), counting tickets, coupons, paper money, etc. It was never just something older people did (except in the sense that the practice is not as common now, as people in the US and Europe don't need to do it that much anymore, due to changes like reduced use of cash, etc.).

So, you might not have seen it since the need is mostly obsolete in most of the west, but it's still a thing elsewhere, and was very much a thing in the US and Europe too until a few decades back.

So much so, that there were office gadgets made for this, basically a base holding a small sponge, that you would add water to, and use it to wet your fingers for counting/changing pages. They're still very much sold:

https://www.amazon.com/money-counting-sponge/s?k=money+count...

I'm not stranger to licking my fingers when dealing with cash, or licking stamps and envelopes, etc. but the way some old people do it was always a little mystery to me. I'd see them taking a second or three to quite conspicuously stick their tongue out and slowly lick their finger every single time before turning a page or a banknote. I always figured it's just a force of habit, but they're doing it in maximum power-save mode, and are way past giving a fuck about how gross it looks to everyone around them. I never considered that maybe they really need to do it this way to keep their fingers moist.

(That realization scares me, as it means I too might become an obnoxious finger-licker in a few years.)

Maybe a key chain instead with a moistened pad that doesn't easily go dry? :)

Honestly, and in line with a reply upthread[0], fresh saliva may be more sanitary. I mean, it has some non-zero antimicrobial properties, plus it doesn't accumulate random stuff that could grow over time.

Yeah, I'm starting to understand why old people may be past the point of giving a damn about the optics.

--

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42036400

Please no... at least with cash. Cash is one of the dirtiest things out there. You don't even want to think about how dollar bills get dirty.

Source: bank teller training years ago. We were supplied (always) with little moistening pads at our tills.

I've seen tons cash come out of bras, socks and other crevices, and I was just working at a gas station. Let your imagination run wild!

There’s a whole little range of forgotten/dead products for this. It looks just like a tiny pot of Carmex or other lip balm and it coats your finger to make it that tiny bit more grippy to make handling loads of paper easier. No idea what it’s name is haven’t seen it in 20 years since I stopped having to hang around the church offices while my parents did choir practice.

> That realization scares me, as it means I too might become an obnoxious finger-licker in a few years.

There's always moisturizer.

>I always figured it's just a force of habit, but they're doing it in maximum power-save mode, and are way past giving a fuck about how gross it looks to everyone around them.

That's the other thing about it, when it was being done in the past: people weren't so appealed by having bodies, or frightened of life and anything that's not sterile.

So they weren't as grossed out by everything - including a person merely licking their fingers to count some pages or notes...

The "sanitary" replacement is a wax, I always just knew it as sortkwik (? It's been a while), that you dip your fingers in. I'm sure it's still a thing for literal paper pushers to this day.

Sanitary in quotes since I'm not sure a pot of wax collecting stuff from your fingers for months or years is much better than licking.

Used wax all the time when I worked as a bank teller years and years ago

You can also buy a rubber or silicone finger tip such as this: https://a.co/d/iy5zNDe

> It was never just something older people did

no, but older people often tend to dryer less sensitive skin, so I'd wager it's skewed that direction. Source: am approaching "old".

Those sponges can be seen at every Japanese supermarket, to assist in opening tear-off plastic bags, because licking one's fingers is taboo. In a similar way, birthday cards need to be closed with tape rather than licked.

I wonder if touching a wet sponge which has been touched by hundreds of others is more hygienic? Maybe they add antiseptic.

You mean like a doorknob?

I think the idea is that you aren't putting your dirty fingers in your mouth, or your spit on stuff that other people might handle. The latter really doesn't matter scientifically I think, but the former probably does.

People put their fingers on all kinds of things other people have touched: doorknobs, elevator buttons, shopping basket/cart handles, etc. Adding a moist pad to that isn't going to change anything. Keeping people's hands out of their mouths, however, might.

Oh hell, is that what I’m supposed to do to open the damned things?

I think COVID-times ended that habit quickly around my city. I used to lick my finger to open plastic bags on the supermarket and now try to find something wet instead - usually alcohol bottle.

(I'm asure it was always a bit nasty but when it became a deadly move, my habits finally changed...)

> I used to lick my finger to open plastic bags on the supermarket and now try to find something wet instead - usually alcohol bottle.

I just find something cold in my cart and use the condensation to wet my fingers

I touch a drop of water coming out of the produce sprayer, if available.

(No, I don't touch the sprayer, just a drop.)

On softer plastic bags, stretching the plastic near the opening usually allows you to open it. Does a little bit of damage though.

I can also be used to poison people who read forbidden books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Name_of_the_Rose

I just finished reading this last night at 01:30; what a book!

Truly an incredible work.

I'm a little bit envious. Reading such a great book for the first time.

I recommend re-reading it in a few years. Ecos books grow with you; the more you learn about the world and history, the more you'll find in nuance in that book. Maybe more true for me - as a teenager I've read it first as a mostly weird detective story. Later re-reads made me more interested in the weird parts.

There is, by the way, a separately published Postscript to the Name of the Rose with some notes on writing the book.

I get it now: Jorge had laced its pages with poison, correctly assuming that a reader would have to lick his fingers in order to turn them.

Nice pull.

that's for stickiness, this is for conductivity

just apply some “hawk tuah”, new tagline for yubikey nano

User accounting the with the sibling system.lick the device to prove its your cake or you are thoroughly protected from being thoroughly grossed out by growing up with siblings .

Drink more water.

Check under your eyelid that you are not an android

Moisturizer shoud help too?

I wouldn't drink just any moisturizer.

Great! I'm in my forties and my laptop finger print scanner seems really temperamental, I'll try licking my finger!

I used to rub the side of my nose briefly to make fingerprint reader work on thinkpads, I think this coats the finger with enough oil to make it work reliably.

It works for my phone's fingerprint scanner. I used to have issues with it, and eventually thought it might be caused by the extra "safety glass" glued on top of the screen. Then one day, after another failed fingerprint unlock attempt, I noticed a text on the screen suggesting to moisten my finger. It must have been added in some system update, and I'm very thankful for that, or else I'd have to wait until this HN thread to figure this out.

Ah I'm 56, the touch screen on my phone has gotten finicky. I'll have to see if that would help in a pinch. I wouldn't want to rely on that all the time but under time pressure it is good to know about that.

You should really look at the S series by Samsung. I've been using Note devices since the Note 3, I would not give up the stylus for anything at this point.

I'm almost 40, some years ago I noticed that at winter I get more frustrated with my phones and start thinking of changing them.

It turned out each winter I make screens much more dirty and my fingers are drier. Touch gets more random, fingerprint readers success rate drops from 100% to more like 50%.

Nowadays I make sure I clean the screen with actual dedicated products often, and make sure I keep hands moisturized. It works well, even if the latter contributes to the former.

Haven't changed phone in over 2 years and still don't feel the need for change :)

i thought possibly bloodflow is less prevalent on the surface of your fingers in cold weather, and finger touches are harder to detect as a result, but i don't have data or proof.

Oils or dirt can interfere with touch sensitivity

Not sure if it’s available on your phone, but look for a High touch sensitivity option in display settings. Helps me a lot in winter.

If you’d rather not lick your finger, you can get one of those old-school sponge stamp/envelope moisteners.

I'm not as old as everyone else here is mentioning, but started having this issue a few years ago with my phone. My fix was to rub my hands together for a few seconds. Don't know why but it's always worked for me.

I'm curious if you have issues with pulse oximeters too. The thing they use to check your blood oxygen level when you go to the doctor.

I don't tend to have the issues everyone here is talking about, but those things never work for me on the first try.

Those work off light absorption, so different mechanism.

Understood, but idly wondered if there's a correlation between people with one issue and the other.

I don't remember, it's been a long time since I've seen one.

Or lick the back of your hand and then moisten the finger on that. More discreet and more hygienic (well, hygienic for you at least).

> Lick your finger.

Exactly, i do the same thing with my (new) Macbook Air, it makes the TouchID sensor work much more reliable (also, i use my middle finger by the way...)

Now the terrorists know which finger of yours to cut off!

I remember how my mom's Touch ID didn’t work. Thank goodness they came up with Face ID

Would breathing on it (wide open mouth air blow, I'm not a native speaker) work as well but be contactless way of achieving it?

> I'm not a native speaker

You got it (mostly) right :-) Just one minor mistake: a native would write, "Would breathing on it be a contactless way..." in order to indicate that this is only one of several possibilities. You could also say, "Would breathing on it be the contactless way..." in order to indicate that this was the only possibility.

The rule here is really weird. The qualifier is only required when there is a singular noun being used as an object. "Breathing is way of doing it" sounds weird, but "Breathing and licking are ways of doing it" does not.

"English is super-weird" sounds right. "English is super-weird language" sound weird.

“Breathing on” works as you intended (like breathing on a cold window to make it foggy); the alternative “blowing on” does not.

real life verification can

/s but not so much

EDIT: back in the day cashiers had a thing to moisture your fingers flipping the bills/notes/papers

You can also use some other part of your body that has moisture. My nose and my scalp are really oily, so I can rub my finger on my nose and then do the touch controls and fingerprint sensors and have it work

Glad it didn't end with what where my imagination went.

I can make your wine glass sing by rubbing the edge with my finger.

The first people who got their hands on iPads, I recall did test them in this way.

Apple told us the first iPad supports up to 11 finger multitouch, so people were understandably curious and got creative.

uhh how to describe this... you can control how much saliva you push to the front of your mouth when you spit. The correct amount is next to nothing. Rubbing your thumb over your index finger spreads the moisture and provides feedback.

(I have to open countless garbage bags, licking is not an option)

It would be amazing if Yubico offered a physical button option.

I really hope it’s not the case that capacitive sensors are somehow preferred from a security standpoint (i.e., harder to trigger with a robot).

you can just use a hotdog to trigger it if you only have metal/plastic/composite fingers

Have you checked your A1C (average blood sugar)? I wonder if this is caused by low blood circulation near the surface of your skin.

"Excess blood sugar decreases the elasticity of blood vessels and causes them to narrow, impeding blood flow"

I think it's just dry skin. When I worked in corporate IT we had the same issue with Yubikey 'not working' and almost all of those issues came from people working in an especially arid part of the country. "Lick your finger" fixed it every time.

Spit on your desk and dab it

my desk in elementary school had a little inkwell in it

If this is a laptop, it helps to touch the aluminum chassis or an exposed metal part with your other hand.

Yeah, some touch buttons work through conductivity and are really sensitive. Fittingly for this post, our cloths dryer has a touch "screen" which is to say that it is a slab of plastic with icons that are touch sensitive. Often enough, I can't get them to register a touch unless I press really hard or if I wet my finger first.

When my pixel 7 doesn't recognize my fingerprint, I press my thumb on the side of my nose to pick up a bit of skin oils and then my thumb print is recognized.

The Pixel 7 series has an optical sensor under the display. I wonder how some oil/cream/etc helps? The newer ones have ultrasonic sensors, so that should be better.

If your skin is dry enough it won’t make good contact with the screen so the “picture” will be bad. Adding a thin layer of oil basically acts as an optical transmission layer. Ultrasonic ones would probably have the same issue, honestly.

It's my only frustration with the Pixel 7. Left hand works fine, right is super inconsistent

The device it's connected to also has an impact, IIRC M1 MacBook Pro 14 wouldn't let me trigger my YubiKey without a USB hub

I wonder if it would have worked to rub your finger off the side of your nose, or behind your ear?

It's a trick some flute-players use for the pinky of the right hand, so that it works better rolling between the C, C#/Db and D notes on the bottom. I saw it mentioned in some tutorial once and thought: "no way", and was amazed at how well it worked.

I never really asked myself how it works - something to do with skin on (dead) skin working up some friction, I don't know. I'd be curious to know if it would have worked with your YubiKey issue. But maybe it's too late to try now!

[and Eb, I should say]

> She started getting frustrated, “it’s my fault, I don’t know how to use this thing properly.”

This is heartbreaking. The woman is being excluded through no fault of her own, and she blames herself. I find this to be a common for people who don’t think of themselves as disabled but are made disabled by bad interfaces. They think there must be something wrong with themselves because everyone else has such an easy time, when really it’s the technology.

I once saw an elderly woman trying to receive medical care at an urgent care clinic. She brought her documents and medical insurance card, but the receptionist told her she could only be checked in if she provided a two-factor authentication code from her insurance app. The woman was totally confused. It was heartbreaking to watch.

Where do you live?

And how is this supposed to work? Like, at all? Does the urgent care place have 2FA set up for every insurance company? Just the insurance companies they accept? What about folks that don't have their phone on them (which is reasonable to forget if you need medical care urgently, even if it's not ambulance-grade urgently).

Plus, you've got the fact that the elderly are both a major market for medical services and famously techno-phobic....

Brazil. In my country, technology is growing rapidly, but in an unregulated way.

On one hand, we have a modern banking system that allows instant money transfers to anyone at any time, and the government is developing its own cryptocurrency. With our electronic voting machines, the country knows election results within two hours after polls close.

On the other hand, each company, including those providing essential services, creates its own solution without any regulatory oversight. This fragmentation extends even to official government services.

In the case I mentioned, each private health insurance company freely determines its own procedures for patient check-in at affiliated clinics. With my insurance plan, my ID card is sufficient--for now.

Isn't a document (what you own) + showing up physically so you can be scanned by eyeballs already not 2FA? What better authentication you can get than that?

Only if the document or their system has a photo of you. Usually driver's license is used for this.

> Only if the document or their system has a photo of you. Usually driver's license is used for this.

In my experience, using the identity card is more common. Only drivers have a driver license, but nearly everybody has a identity card (and every identity card has a photo); and AFAIK, the identity card is one of the mandatory documents to get a driver license.

Not in the US at least. My driver's license is the only thing I have with a photo of me on it. There are state non-driver IDs but they're unusual to see.

The context was Brazil (see sibling reply a few levels up), and here indeed all identity cards have photos. Both the old per-state models and the newer federally standardized models have them, and nearly everyone has an identity card. It's not unusual to see identity cards being used everywhere; even some commercial buildings ask for (and take photos of) them from visitors (regulars have badges, and of course they had to present their identity card to get the badge).

The cynical side of me wonders if its not intended to work well

I don’t agree with the practice, but from what I understand, they’re trying to prevent clinics from scamming insurance companies by faking clinical visits. I've heard that this is a thing that happens here.

When the attempt to stop bad actors stops/prevents others from using it, the system is bad. Insert baby/bathwater or nose/face comments here

That was a bit difficult to parse, but I think you're saying that (some) anti-fraud systems can't afford false positives. And I would agree, point-of-use healthcare is certainly one of those systems.

> I find this to be a common for people who don’t think of themselves as disabled but are made disabled by bad interfaces

A lot of disabled people today subscribe to the "social model of disability" [0] rather than the "medical model". Under the social model, the obstacle is not some property of the individual experiencing an access issue, but are created by a system made by other people who didn't provide alternative access methods. Society and its inventions disable, rather than the individual's condition.

Clearly, disabled people have mental or physiological conditions that produce non-mainstream access needs. None of them deny that... but the social model invites us to take a society-wide ownership of this, and to better support a wider range of access needs by default.

In contrast, the medical model tends to situate the disability within the individual, based on their physiological condition. This tends to put the ownership on the individual (or their immediate carers), which in turn tends to perpetuate exclusion and access challenges.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_model_of_disability [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_model_of_disability

That sounds like a lot of meaningless theories made up by somebody who got a high paying, cushy government job to "help" disabled people because he/she is related to a politician.

Pretty typical of modern ideology: find somebody to blame - ideally "society", instead of helping your fellow human.

Disagree. Mandatory access ramps exists because we have decided it's a problem to be fixed by society, not the individual. The result is far greater access for people with wheelchairs.

It's not about who's at fault, it's who has to provide a solution. Society has far more means to provide a solution than each individual.

> Mandatory access ramps exists because we have decided it's a problem to be fixed by society, not the individual. The result is far greater access for people with wheelchairs.

I think that was a bad call. Society should not shape itself for the sake of a minority of people. That's just silly.

I forget where I read it, but this isn't a very thought-out view. _Especially_ with the example of access ramps -- yes, the ramps were originally put in after activism for better wheelchair accessibility. But who ended up using them a whole lot and benefiting from them? Parents with strollers. Would we say that the needs of parents of young children, or young children are a minority? Do we not care about their experience even when we're having a population crisis?

In hindsight, this is a pretty obvious conclusion if we would have taken a bit of extra time to consider why we might want accessibility ramps, but instead we get sidetracked by exactly the kind of thinking displayed by your comment.

When people say "accessibility is good for everyone" it's not a naive feel-good comment. It's an acknowledgement that at some point all of us could use help with accessibility (e.g. when you become a parent, when you get old, etc)

Everyone is or will be a minority at some point.

Wise comment.

I hope I'm missing some sarcasm here.

when you[society] create the problem in the first place, its on you to fix it.

major problem that needs fixing is leave things alone when there is no problem.

forcing new tech, standards and spec, into place so even more money,influence,control can be attained is not a solution to any problem, its a source.

How does your comment relate in any way to the wheelchair ramp comment you're replying to?

Individuals exist, "society" has never existed and will never exist. It's only individuals who can take actions. "Society" does not have any means at all, because it's just a mirage within the imagination of some people.

It's individuals mandating the building of wheelchair ramps, it is individuals who build them, and individuals who use them. You don't need to give your nephew or niece a high paying job to make some weird theories about "society". You can instead just state the truth that some people can't walk and if you have the power you can mandate that business owners need to make their places accessible for these people.

Oh right. Yes, I agree that motivated individuals get the work done for themselves and others. It's just that some people don't acknowledge that we collectively own problems/solutions because they are structural (inherent to the structures of our systems /"society") and tend to blame individuals for their own problems. Of course individuals can be wholey responsible for things, e.g. a corrupt politician. But getting rid of corruption is up to other individuals (I.e. society). It's idealist to imagine that a corrupt politician should just stop being corrupt, it's realistic to overthrow them collectively with other individuals (society).

Atoms exist, "molecules" have never existed and will never exist.

Your argument is essentially that emergent properties don't exist. It's like saying "there are no such things as waves in water, just individual water molecules." Individuals are the water molecules, and "society" is the blanket term for the emergent properties that happen when a lot of people are together. The phenomena are real and have real effects and impacts. Intrinsic and environmental factors affect the system: hydrogen bonds between water molecules (intrinsic) creates the emergent phenomenon we call "surface tension" and wind (environmental) creates waves. So too in people: intrinsic attributes of individuals and connections between them as well as environmental factors affecting entire populations create emergent effects that can be observed and studied.

I suspect you mean to appeal to the recognition that, unlike water molecules, individual humans have free will and agency and the ability to make choices completely independently. I suspect you abhor the notion of 'groupthink' and excuses for behavior that are underpinned by concepts of culture and social constructs. And there is truth to these ideas, but as with most things, they are helpful as part of a broader model, and not as a totalitarian view of human behavior. We are complex creatures, in complex systems; to ignore the tendencies of our emergent behaviors is as risky as turning your back to a rough shorebreak, believing all the individual water molecules will simply be rational and choose not to hit you, only to be engulfed in a wave that really does exist.

I like your comment. Don't agree with your comparisons, but you write in a way adding to the discussion and bringing understanding.

In lack of better comparisons from myself, Santa Claus does not exist. As a concept and an idea he of course exists and has real impact on what people do and what they feel. But part of growing up is differentiating between what is real and what is lie. Enlightened adults shouldn't believe in "society", while still being aware and updated of the possible threats from people who believe in it.

Another example: "Courage" is an abstract idea, but also a very real description of acts by some people. But we all learn when we are kids to not let another kid manipulate us into doing something by saying "Do it or you're a coward!". Even kids learn this early.

Interesting. I don't think I follow your examples, but here's my attempt to read it: It sounds like you may be using the term "real" to be mean specifically something like "tangible." Like, Santa isn't tangible because he's a fictitious character. Courage isn't tangible, it is a term that refers to an idea. It can't be isolated, bottled. And likewise, society isn't tangible either. To reference my earlier example "emergent properties" isn't tangible. Like "courage," it is a term that refers to an idea. Many things can be described by it. And the specific issue you (maybe?) take is with ascribing causality to non-tangible things, in some sense. For example, "emergent properties" didn't knock me over at the beach, a wave did. Or, the answer to "how did you defeat the dragon?" isn't "You had courage," -- it is "You stuck your sword through it's heart which ceased blood circulation and killed it." Those are the tangible actions that led to the outcome.

And that is true and a useful analysis in a lot of circumstances, like when you're asking questions of "how?" To take this back to the ancestor comment, if you're looking at "how did this wheelchair ramp get built?" you can describe the chain of events from the creation of a law to the construction of the ramp and all the individuals involved along the way making decisions and doing actions. And that is a good and useful analysis. Some tangible entity called "society" is not involved in that chain. And I think that might be your original point. And yes, that's accurate, in that kind of analysis.

So now, take that chain of events, and multiply it by, I dunno, a very large number; hell, infinity. Every outcome and the chain of individuals and actions that led up to it. How do we study this? How to we increase our understanding without having to treat every single outcome and every chain of events completely independently? You probably see where this is going already... :) We could treat every possible combination of coin tosses as an infinite set of independent events. What someone flipping a coin 10 times has to do with someone flipping a coin 1000 times isn't anything tangible - the flips, the individuals who make them, and the outcomes are independent. So... shrug and move on? Nope. We study probability. It helps us describe WHY - if 1000 people each flip a coin 1000 times, most will have a near 50/50 split heads/tails. Probability isn't tangible, but it certainly is real.

My revised argument then is: society is a concept like probability. It is like probability distributions that come from an ever-changing sea of individual opinions, predispositions, and actions. We can measure certain parts of it at points in time and review historical outcomes, and develop theories about why certain patterns are more common, certain outcomes more likely, and use this to enhance our decision making and understanding of the behaviors and tendencies of large groups of people. So to say "society isn't real" is true in the sense of tangibility, but also myopic - and like saying "probability isn't real, there are only outcomes."

Hows that?

"Society has never existed and will never exist" is one hell of a take. Are you okay?

Odd comment. Just an old and tired insult á la reddit and nothing else?

No. Everyone, instead of the affected person being blamed. Of course there are those in ivory towers doing a lot of waffling but the structural/societal view is always more productive than an individualist one which is ignoring the networked nature if reality in favour of optmistic idealism (bootstraps!).

> ignoring the networked nature if reality in favour of optmistic idealism (bootstraps!)

From my perspective, bootstrapping is reality. It is the people who deny that who are ignoring reality in favor of idealistic but false paradigms.

> Everyone, instead of the affected person being blamed.

Who would ever blame a disabled person for their condition?

Blaming people who have nothing to do with it is exactly the modern ideology that twists people into evil.

Just a small correction to your question, it’s more like “who would ever say a disabled person is solely responsible for providing their own accommodations?”

Good correction. In my experience, some people will say "It's society who is responsible to help the disabled person", and some people will say "It's I who am responsible to help the disabled person".

That sounds like a typically glib and dismissive comment made without really trying to understand the situation.

Until relatively recently, I never thought of myself as disabled, but in the past year I found this model helpful in understanding how I’m excluded from many parts of society because I’m autistic, and autistic needs are never considered. In reality, there’s nothing wrong with me, but many aspects of society are incompatible with me.

Lucky you, that you don’t have this problem!

This is what I'm trying to explain. Society doesn't exist anywhere besides in your head. When you're somewhere being "confronted with society", it's just other people. Each one an individual like you. So what you're saying is that some other people are never considering your needs.

Dividing the world into "me" and "society" is a simplistic perspective that is far from the truth. The same for "us" and "society". It's always people, and each bears an individual responsibility as to their behaviour.

> Society doesn't exist anywhere besides in your head.

How do you differentiate between what exists only in your head vs what exists elsewhere?

Societies make choices that have physical and pragmatic realities associated with them. Those choices impact our everyday lives.

GP is mostly ranting around some methodological individualism garbage when they could have been reading about the social model of disability and finding it's not that contradictory to their stated beliefs and probably not deserving of outright dismissal.

> Individuals exist, "society" has never existed and will never exist. It's only individuals who can take actions. "Society" does not have any means at all, because it's just a mirage within the imagination of some people.

It's one of those critiques that hits really hard when you've been doing lines of cocaine off of stacks of Hayek and Mises books and doesn't really inspire anyone outside of those niches. "Oooh! Checkmate! Got you now, Statist! That's not a society! it's a collection of individuals!" etc.

If you were to say something like "an individual with impaired eye sight is not considered disabled when they have access to eye glasses. disability does not consist solely of an individual's medical impairment, but in the relationship between the individual, other individuals, and available infrastructural and technological means" maybe it'd hit better for them.

"the obstacle is not some property of the individual experiencing an access issue, but are created by a system made by other people who didn't provide alternative access methods" (roughly the same thing) is just super objectionable though /eyeroll

I'd like to say that your comment speaks for itself - in many ways. It demonstrates how somebody who holds a strong belief in "society" reacts and acts towards another person when their core belief is questioned. Your behaviour is predictable.

> Societies make choices....

No, only people can make choices. Societies can never make choices, because they do not exist in the real world. One of the greatest mind prisons of this age is believing "societies" have any agency. It's always people, always was, always will be.

We can also give up an offering to "luck" and pray for our luck to change, since luck "makes choices" all the time. Choices which impact your everyday life much more than "society". Or we can accept that these things don't have agency.

How to differentiate between what exists in your head and elsewhere? Good question. Metaphysical. Society is an idea, an abstraction. It is only useful for us as long as we understand it doesn't really exist. Man should never be enslaved by man-made ideas. Other abstract ideas are more powerful and more beneficial. These are better to treat as real than "society".

I've snarked at your silliness down-thread, but there is a lot of good history that gives credibility to the notion of the social model of disability.

You may enjoy "Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha’s Vineyard" (Groce '85)

In communities where many individuals share a common sign language, deafness doesn't function as a disability in the same way it does when few individuals speak sign language.

> In communities where many individuals share a common sign language, deafness doesn't function as a disability in the same way it does when few individuals speak sign language.

Isn't that somewhat obvious? If you only speak Greek, it's a disability if you're not in Greece, but an advantage if you're there.

I think it's a pity that sign language is almost never taught outside of for hearing impaired kids. Every person could have great use of sign language being commonly spoken. It lets you communicate silently and at long distances.

This sounds like a good way to think about some disabilities (specific recognised ways of "not being normal") and very misleading and unproductive for other disabilities.

A blind person can't participate in society to the same degree that a sighted person could, but the same is true of the entire world. We can (and arguably should) make their life easier by changing society, but unless you fix the root problem, they'll forever lack visual experiences.

From another angle, life without a human society still has its challenges. Adding a society removes some and adds new ones. Some people only have problems with these new challenges, some struggle with the old as well. These two scenarios should be distinguished, perhaps by applying the "social" and "medical" models appropriately.

> We can (and arguably should) make their life easier by changing society, but unless you fix the root problem, they'll forever lack visual experiences.

But not everybody wants to gain the experiences that would come from not having their condition. (This is especially true in the Deaf community[0], but can be seen in other communities as well.) And honestly? I feel that's a very valid viewpoint to have. The reason they "can't participate in society" to the same extent is because society doesn't let them!

Thankfully, people are starting to realise that.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/08/understan...

I know about these tendencies, but I can't be sympathetic to them. (Re)gaining hearing is a physiological improvement; those with implants can even "turn off" noise. What these deaf people may lose is a specific deaf culture, held together by current necessity. But then the sides are flipped, and they are the ones perpetuating a non-inclusive (sub-)society.

A wider society that supports Deaf culture (or even just deaf ppl) would do things like provide email or SMS support for access to essential services instead of only providing telephone support and expecting the d/Deaf ppl to bring their own translators .

> social model of disability

Scott Alexander convincingly argues against that model and provides a better one: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-the-social-model-of-...

Not that I disagree with Alexander here, but sometimes it feels like I'm taking crazy pills - this kind of integrated model has been WHO standard for over twenty years.

As he noted, many people claim to use an integrated model. It's a motte and bailey.

>I’ve never heard anyone willing to defend the actual Social Model the way it’s taught in every course, written on every website, and defined by every government agency. Everyone says they mean the Interactionist Model. Yet somehow, the official descriptions still say that disability is only social and not related to disease, and that you may only treat it with accommodations and not with medical care.

> the topic is taught in a way that only occasionally nods to such a compromise; more often the Medical Model is condemned as outdated and bigoted, and the Social Model introduced as the new, acceptable version that people should use

He quotes many sources that take the social model literally even in the 2020s

Yeah...I actually didn't want to get all, well, "geographical", but I can't help wonder if that's a US thing? At least here in Austria, the biopsychosocial model has been standard in teaching for a long time, and while it will still take some time for the generational shift in practice to conclude, monofactorial models have generally been accepted as being obsolete.

And regarding the BPS model: I stand corrected about my agreement - the point he makes about it I very much disagree with:

>This isn’t an exact match for a model of disability; the Biopsychosocial Model is most often used to explain the causes of illness, not how it impairs people. Still, I think there is a close enough analogy that it could be easily extended to disability.

He really shoud at least have read the Beginners Guide to the WHO ICF (which is deeply rooted in the BPSM) https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/icf-beginner-s-guide...

Both the model as a model of disability and a focus on impairment can be found front and center.

Considering that all of Scott's quoted sources are American, I wouldn't be surprised if your country doesn't have the same issue. I assure you that a lot of American institutions take the Social Model of Disability literally while claiming to use a multifactorial model.

Have seen laborers and blue collar workers, my father included, that have to use their knuckles because their finger tips are too callused and dry for touchsceens. Seems like many groups have these kind of issues.

Exactly, my brother works on power lines and wears many different types of gloves, all his computer tools are button actionated.

That's me. I'm a double bassist, a kind of blue collar laborer. ;-) It's worst during the winter. It's a shame because I prefer to use a touch screen on my laptop.

I'm not a labourer in the slightest, but I'm a rock climber though. Sometimes for up to two days after a strong session the finger print reader on my keyboard doesn't work. It always eventually starts working again :)

Even indoor bouldering has had an effect for me - my thicker skin just doesn't always register well on my phone screen.

I worked in a fast food restaurant before college. I would be on the closing crew about three or four days a week. I would usually be the one washing and scrubbing the crusty broiler parts every time.

When I got to college, they gave everyone Thinkpads with fingerprint readers. Mine had trouble reading my fingerprints for about 2 months. I guess that I scrubbed my fingerprints away with all that grease, and it took that long for my fingerprints to "regrow" enough for the sensor to recognize them.

It's not touchscreens that are anti-accessibility, it's touch controls. That's a very important distinction.

I can use a proper touchscreen phone just fine, as its OS is advanced enough to run a screen reader, and its touch screen can precisely locate where it was touched and supports flicks, swipes and multi-finger gestures.

Proper touch screens have some very important advantages, notably being able to show different controls at different times. You want to have a different button layout when you're typing a text than when you're watching a movie or playing a game. Physical buttons make this impossible.

Even blind people benefit from this, modern phones have a mode where you can use a touch screen to input characters in Braille, treating different parts of the screen as keys on a brailler (think piano with 6 keys). Each combination of these keys, pressed or touched at once, inputs a specific character[1].

Now touch controls, like those you can find on a washing machine / coffee maker, make no sense. There's no screen behind them, so they're not dynamic in any way, and the primitive software of such devices (as well as the need to seell them in multiple countries without providing specific support for any particular human language) make accessibility impossible to achieve.

> Physical buttons make this impossible.

For many years now we've had various interfaces that use physical buttons whose function can change at different times during operation, the current function being indicated by the screen: Old fashioned ATMs with 4 buttons on each side of the screen, many business-class feature-phones had "soft-keys", even old DOS programs that used Function Keys are conceptually similar.

There are differing degrees of compromise vs utility.

You can’t change the place of the buttons in any of your examples.

Correct - that's a feature. You can learn the pattern of key presses through a series of individual functions to execute more elaborate tasks quite quickly.

I like the strategy used by multi-function displays in plane cockpits. They have physical buttons along the side that can trigger different actions, labelled by text and icons on the screen alongside the button. This allows you to find and press the button even if there is turbulence or engine vibrations making it hard to use a touchscreen.

Touchpads, you mean? Touchpads are waterproof and washable, like membrane keyboards, which is a real plus in the kitchen. Also they're cheap as fuck.

What about touch buttons recessed by a few millimeters to prevent accidents, with braille on the face plate?

Touch controls have one really big advantage, they have no switch to wear out, and no opening to get water damaged. Touch might be a worse UX, at least to highly tactile people who are aware of their fingers often, but it can last decades with the cheapest imaginable hardware.

Even for non-impaired people, the lag on a touch screen is utterly miserable.

Touchscreens are also extra bad in the car. The hands have mass and the motion of a car is shaky due to bumpy roads, curves, braking, etc.

This makes it hard to hit the desired area on a vertical touchscreen at near full extension of the arm.

Software lag isn't unique to touchscreens. Software lag is always a terrible thing, and developers who de-prioritize performance should be ashamed, but that is true regardless of what input is used.

It's kinda bearable with buttons because you get feedback. The ATM I use isn't the speediest thing but the buttons have a very tactile feel and it beeps at you for every press.

Now ask anyone with a touch screen in their car what their error rate on that thing is. Even the really good ones are pretty bad.

A touch screen imposes additional lag, though. Detecting finger swipes for left/right, for example, requires more processing than spinning a fucking dial or pressing on a button. But, like you said, performance doesn't matter anymore to the companies that design these interfaces. We should have criminal laws for this type of thing along with the return to proper hardware interfaces. Lack of performance should be a criminal offense.

Physical buttons allow for memorized action sequences, though. As long as the input layer has some kind of FIFO buffer, it doesn't really matter how much lag the actual application has. If "call home" is always just "button A, 3x button B, button C" it is absolutely trivial to repeat that without even looking at the screen.

Touchscreens don't work quite as well for this. Even if it allows for input queuing, you often still need the previous screen to finish drawing to have a frame-of-reference for your presses. Even the slightest delay turns into an annoyance, and when it involves some kind of drag-scrolling a 50ms delay already becomes unbearable.

Accessibility problems just mean systems are a pain to use. So much so that we describe easy to do things in terms of impairment. I could do it blindfolded, with one arm, two fingers in my nose, in my sleep etc.

The ultimate form of accessibility is not 'designed for impaired people' it is a system that does what you want without having to think about it or lift a finger.

This is so interesting; thanks for sharing. I often see my father-in-law tapping his phone a dozen times to get a response (85), and then I was teaching my mother how to use an iPad and noticed it was not that responsive to her taps. I sometimes need to tap twice to get anything to happen (50+), this helps me understand why.

You should check if there's a system setting to adjust the touch sensitivity, it's usually billed as a way to compensate for screen protectors but it'll probably also help with dry fingers not being detected reliably.

See also the linked article. You can mitigate that by getting a stylus.

Interesting. I’ve noticed this happening for me but I thought it was because my fingertips are calloused from playing guitar. But I’m also in my late forties. So it’s probably a double whammy for me.

I am the opposite, my hands get so sweaty that touchscreens register random inputs because of the residual salty moisture.

However, i thought touch screens in cars are pressure sensitive rather than measuring changes in capacity? If the press is not registered in my car, i press a little harder. You can also use it while wearing normal gloves.

That said, i use the physical knobs a lot more often, since your finger position will easily follow any moving button and nudges in rotating or shifting knobs feel super satisfying.

Those are actually different technologies, and I'm guessing you got used to the pressure sensitivity on older cars. They use resistive touchscreens which are cheaper. Cheap android tablets used to routinely use those instead of the capacitive touchscreens as well. It's been a while since I had to use a resistive touchscreen, and I'm glad for it.

Our milking robot has a resistive touchscreen. In that case it's excellent - you can spray it clean, and it still works while it's wet.

Great point, there are situations where resistive is a lot better. I've definitely cursed my phone screen when it's raining.

The nice thing about resistive is that you can use your fingernails as an impromptu stylus.

It depends on the car. Mine is resistive (like yours I think) and I can just press harder, I also don't have to use my fingers, something like a capped pen works perfectly. Though these kinds of screens are considered low-end compared to capacitive touchscreens because they require a heavy touch and usually don't support multitouch, I think these are the best for cars (if you don't have physical controls).

But many modern cars (ex: Teslas) use capacitive screens like on smartphones.

I'm only 40 but have had this issue for years -- especially with Apple products -- and I think it's compounded by my fingers being pretty callused. Regardless, I'm just unable to reliably use my family's iPad, sign my kids out of daycare, etc.

This is yet another example of accessibility being in everyone's interest.

If your iPad is plugged in, it’s extremely finicky with regard to the type of both the charger and the cable. Touch ID is extremely sensitive to electrical currents near it, it seems, and on home button/Touch ID it’s right near the charging socket. Oops. Unplug it, Touch ID works.

> Touchscreens just stop registering your touch when you get old. The older you get the less moisture there's in your skin, which at some point makes touch screens ignore you.

I had no idea that was a thing but it makes sense now that you said it. I will now be a lot more understanding when older folks have trouble using their phones, self-checkout, etc.

I thought so too at first, but in hindsight this is a bad take.

Pinch-to-zoom was revolutionary for people with low vision. VoiceOver was revolutionary for people with no vision. Blind people ended up being early adopters of iPhones because of how much better the UX is compared to phones with physical controls, where memorization of the controls and menus is much more necessary.

The flexibility of UI enabled by touchscreens was revolutionary for people with dexterity and cognitive issues. See the Assistive Access feature, for example, which has made Jitterbug phones obsolete for many people.

Touchscreens not responding to dry skin is a real problem, though I’ve only ever seen that on cheap hardware. Testing the device is obviously necessary.

I still want physical controls for simple and common cases, such as the vents in my car. But I now think of them more in terms of convenience and safety rather than accessibility.

I'm a caregiver for a couple people with dexterity and cognitive issues and I'm pretty sure a physical button is the absolutely simplest thing for them as much as for anyone else. And sure, an Ipad definitely can solve some accessible issues for some things but my clients watch things on TVs and monitors rather than Ipads (even when they have them).

But more to the point, I love my clients and friends with such issues but they don't drive and shouldn't drive.

I wasn’t suggesting anything about driving. I brought up the car as an example of where, yes, touchscreens have gone too far and physical controls are often preferable.

TV remotes are among the most inaccessible consumer electronics devices. They can be made much better with a touchpad or a phone app or even a voice assistant. It’s still nice to have physical volume controls, of course.

The apple tv is a nightmare to use. First, the form factor with its sharp edges. Then, the swipable area, which I had to disable. In comparison, my AVR receiver is way better: soft keys with good travel, great tacticle recognition, fit well in the hand, and practically impossible to lose. It’s not as beautiful, but it’s very practical.

If you have an iPhone, go into Settings > Control Center and add the Apple TV Remote to the list.

Now your phone can act as a remote. Just swipe down from the top right to access the control center and tap the TV remote icon.

I personally like the blocky design, but a phone case can make the edges very rounded if you like that. And of course the touchpad is much improved with it being on your phone screen compared to the physical remote.

I have a relative with dementia who still has enough volition to want to call people and chat. It's been eye opening to see how fluctuating abilities impact use of the smartphone UX.

Periodically, I have to remind them to turn their volume up when they complain they cannot hear me. Their grip on the phone can inadvertently hold the "volume down" button.

Their reduced motor control mixes up tap versus long press and accidentally triggers all kinds of functions. I've seen the home screen littered with shortcuts accidentally created in this manner.

Somehow, they periodically managed to call me, put me on hold, and call me again. I'm sure this was not intentional, but the rapid replacement of on-screen buttons causes different functions to be activated without any real awareness of what is happening.

The "Emergency" button on a locked phone screen can be misunderstood as a sign of danger.

The random assignment of a color icon to names on a recent calls list, contact list, or favorites list can be misinterpreted as some kind of message about the health of that named individual.

I tried to disable emergency alerts, but I fear the chaos at the care home if an emergency alert comes through and triggers that horrible alert siren.

All of this.

It really makes you wonder, and by that I mean it really makes me think unflattering things, about the monoculture of 26 year old infants who designed and built all of this.

Design over function

If they would see beyond their own circle of friends and hire someone with varied life experience, the business may actually benefit.

It's the same people who put charging ports under the mouse so that you can't use it while it is charging. Otherwise the consumers could choose to have it always plugged in, which would make it look like an "ordinary" mouse, and the designers can't allow that :-)

I don't have any experience with this, but I know that some phone brands (like Doro) exists for elderly people

https://www.doro.com/en-us/

> I don't have any experience with this, but I know that some phone brands (like Doro) exists for elderly people

> https://www.doro.com/en-us/

They don't actually seem to list any phones on their site, but some image search brought up a phone with big buttons to call a few specific contacts.

https://www.hifi.lu/en/p/51004198-gsm-780x-4g-white

Assistive Access in iOS/iPadOS puts the device into a special UI with a defined list of options (calls, music, etc.). It also allows you to disable volume buttons to prevent the scenario that you mentioned.

Good for them, bad for everyone else.

There are some cases where you actually need physical controls.

One example is card payment terminals. Vision impaired users don't know where the buttons are for entering the pin code. On a phone they could allow the phone to read out numbers, but you don't want your pin numbers to be read out loud in a public space.

Once again, VoiceOver + Apple Pay blows them all out of the water. No secret numbers need to be read out loud, including your phone passcode if you use Face ID. And even if you don’t have Face ID set up, earbuds can be used.

There’s so much misunderstanding of what it’s like to be vision impaired here and what solutions are available for common tasks.

I can confirm the troubles with age. Another problem are cold and hot environments (sweat).

Anyway. Tactile input is generally better where an efficient placement of physical input controls is possible.

Garmin is a seldom example of a company doing it right with the Edge 840. They merged the tactile 530 and the touch 830 into one device. The best of both worlds. Guess what I prefer?

It is the Edge 530. Better screen to body ratio :)

The rise of the touchscreens are an accident. Because MBAs believe iPhone == touch == good. It isn’t. The iPhone is just small, physical switches expensive (remember the slider smartphones) and you can merge output with input (this a pro and a con). Nice when you want to zoom a map. Horrible if Okay changes the position, worse when the keyboard requires the half screen and interaction is generally ineffective.

I recommend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things

    1. Layout your tactile interface in a way that it allows the user to create a mental model of it.
    2. In best case this model exists already.
    3. Make it hard to use it wrong.
    4. Make it easy to use it right.
    5. Also applies to the output. If the turn indicator is ON, make it ON.

PS: Right now I struggle to hide my touch keyboard. No „DONE“ or „HIDE“ and I cannot access my bookmarks for my recommendation.

Can I express an wish?

Dear device manufacturers. Please used high quality switches with travel, resistance and a click „BIPPITY-BUMP“. Add a spring. Built in a indicator light within!

Perhaps there were multiple iterations of the Garmin Edge 530, and we're talking about two different interfaces, but this is the process for zooming and panning the map on my Edge 530:

From the map screen, to change zoom, hold a button until a +/- appears next to other buttons. Use those other buttons to zoom in or out. To pan up or down, hold that same button again, until up/down arrows appear next to the other buttons. Use those other buttons to pan up or down. To pan left or right, repeat this process once more.

The entire value proposition of a bike mounted map is to be able to navigate without stopping to use your phone. But if the interface to adjust the map is this cumbersome, stopping to look at a phone is the smart move, never mind the better user experience.

> The rise of the touchscreens are an accident. Because MBAs believe iPhone == touch == good.

Which they are, given the application. It also goes beyond size and cost. How long will those tactile buttons last, particularly given that the device is meant to be used frequently and is frequently stuffed into a pocket?

Don't get me wrong. I have an ereader with buttons because I like buttons. Yet those buttons are not going to endure the same amount of abuse as they would on a phone.

> How long will those tactile buttons last, particularly given that the device is meant to be used frequently and is frequently stuffed into a pocket?

Decades. Which I guess is too much for a world that's driven by "value engineering".

I mean, we actually have hard data for this. "Dumb phones" (even those that would run J2ME and had apps and stuff) can easily last for decades, and their buttons work fine after 5+ years of intensive use. In contrast, it's rare to find someone whose smartphone lasted more than a year without getting its screen cracked.

(Not sure about the stats for that one, but from my personal experience, a three year old smartphone that wasn't already replaced tends to have at least one screen replacement job behind it.)

In your personal experience, does no one use phone cases or what?

Of course everyone is using phone cases - without them, hardly any smartphone would last a month without needing a screen replacement.

(It was better a decade ago, when smartphones were still thick and made of hard plastic. Now that they're all thin and metal, they're too slippery to handle safely.)

I'm not using a phone case, never have. You can have a smartphone for many years if you don't mind micro-scratches. Just don't drop it too often from too high up.

This is outsourcing a problem solution to the user. And the covers are a mere workaround.

   * Shall not be needed for a well designed device.
   * Covers are ugly.
   * Make devices even bigger than they are already.
   * Don’t protect against high forces.

Don’t get me wrong. A cover reduces the risks. My phone is alive despite I don’t use one but that is luck (and some care).

Manufacturers get away with weird design decisions.

   * Hard (fragile) screens. Somewhat okay?
   * Camera lenses extending out of device body.
   * Camera bump extending out of device body.
   * Glued sealant instead of replaceable sealing rubber (Apple *does not* guarantee that the iPhone survives water - the glued sealant ages).
   * Glas backside to make it more fragile. Which improves Qi-Charging needed for metal bodies. Which wouldn’t be needed with polymers bodies.
  

And then there is the Nokia 5110. Surfing everything except water. And the next gen? Nokia built the antenna inside because they improved it. The didn’t sold „more is better“. Nokia improved the device itself :)

Feature phones were entirely different beasts. Screens were typically smaller, and much better protected (either with a platic window covering the screen or by the keyboard folding over the screen, which also protected the buttons). Likewise, the buttons tended to be much better protected (either when folded closed, or by having a keyboard on a slider). On top of that, they were very user hostile. Consider your texting example. Between cost and size, most people were repeatedly bashing each key on a numeric keypad to get a single letter. Few phones had touch screens (the screens were too small for them to be practical), so navigating through options was considerably more difficult.

Oh, I know that alternatives existed. Complete keyboards. Larger screens (but by no means large by current standards) with touch input complimenting the keyboard. I had one of them. Yet it was nothing compared to what we have today, and I doubt that we could have what we have today with what we had then (buttons!) without seriously compromising the size of the device or the durability of those buttons.

I've got a BlackBerry Key2 that runs Android. The only reason I am about to replace it is that it has a locked bootloader and I can't upgrade Android, and several key apps I rely on have dropped support for Android 8. (Hooray for "secure" bootloaders.)

It was made in 2019, if I could hand it to you I think you'd reconsider your beliefs about what is and isn't possible, it's a very well-made device, the keyboard is lovely. It has one pretty fun feature which might be counter to the spirit of this thread - the entire keyboard is touch-sensitive and functions as a touchpad area. Software support for this is hit-or-miss, but I'm going to miss it when I have to get rid of it for an all-touch device. Especially I will miss being able to easily use my phone when there's rain drizzling.

> it's rare to find someone whose smartphone lasted more than a year without getting its screen cracked, or three years without at least one screen replacement job

How? I've used smartphones without any case since the Galaxy S1 and I have never had a cracked screen.

But yeah, I definitely prefer physical keys too. Since the Blackberry Passport every newer phone was a disappointment. If they made a new one with updated hardware and unlocked Android I'd preorder it immediately.

> How? I've used smartphones without any case since the Galaxy S1 and I have never had a cracked screen.

The only smartphone in my close circles I know to have outlasted its usefulness without having its screen cracked is an LG P350 - my first ever smartphone (which incidentally was barely powerful enough to run its own OS; from then on, I always just saved up money and bought a flagship). Since then, I've seen friends getting new Pixels one day, and breaking their screens the next; in the Galaxy line alone, I had my S4 screen replaced twice, I personally replaced the screen in my wife's S3, my S7 died with a black screen after hitting the pavement (it was in a case, but the impact angle was unlucky); my wife just got the screen replaced on her S23. A family member broke a new Galaxy Tab when their briefcase hit the ground, etc. Same for cheaper devices too.

(EDIT: well, OK, my wife's Huawei P8 didn't live long enough to get its screen broken - 6 months in, it wasn't able to make a phone call without freezing. Replaced it with an S9, whose screen theoretically never cracked - instead, at some point, top half of the display got hue-shifted towards pink.)

Things got much worse when phones became glass/metal instead of glass/plastic; I personally am not brave enough to operate a modern smartphone without a case while standing on hard floor (bathroom tiles, or pavement outside).

I don't know - maybe myself and people around me all have really bad luck? Regardless, before smartphones, neither the screen nor the buttons were particularly fragile; you only ever worried about breaking the plastic case (or the flip mechanism in flip phones) after using the phone as a hammer one too many times...

> never had a cracked screen

That is interesting. People usually just buy screen protectors and call it a day since screens are pretty fragile and phones hate gravity.

Possible reason/s for not having a cracked screen for 15 years:

1) No kids around

2) No wife/fiancé around

3) not much of a social life

4) never walked in public with phone in use

5) phone only used in certain places with carpets to cushion fall.

6) only ever had 2 smartphones. The other is the beefy CAT phone.

7) not a sports fan

8) the phone is hardly ever used for anything more than a simple call or text.

Is it any of the above?

> How long will those tactile buttons last

Button manufacturers rate their products for this kind of thing. ie. "10k cycles" (not that high), "1M cycles" (better), etc.

So it really depends upon the device manufacturer to pick something appropriate.

Random examples:

• https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/push-button-switches/1336473

Datasheet for that has 10k cycles: https://docs.rs-online.com/512f/0900766b8137f3b1.pdf

• https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/push-button-switches/1759621

Datasheet for that lists 1M cycles: https://docs.rs-online.com/4ef8/0900766b81680212.pdf

> How long will those tactile buttons last

I can say without a doubt that I've had more touchscreens fail on me in my life than buttons. This is despite buttons being far more common for most of my lifespan.

Good point! I still call that an Easter Egg because it is hidden. It took me months until I figured out that a long press on Enter allows movement of the map viewpoint. And then there is the sub menu providing the same feature.

For outsiders:

You’re move the map by turning your handlebar and riding in another direction. It automatically follows your position, heading and zooms in an out (depending on travel speed and upcoming turns). And routes are planned ahead of time on the computer (i. e. GPX) because you usually don’t want the shortest route between to points.

So the feature flyingcircus is mentions isn’t needed?

It is seldom needed. You can use it if a road is blocked to search the area for alternatives or looking for another riders current position (GroupTrack is awesome and complicated to setup) if far away.

The 840 (buttons + touch) solves that, for twice the price and is bigger/heavier. Or if you want avoid touch, more buttons :)

The old eTrex series feature a kind of TrackPoint serving as cursor-keys and enter-keys. I kept mine, because it shows many good design decisions (AA-Batteries, SD-Card, TrackPoint…) but of course it cannot compete with the Edge 530 (Turn-By-Turn Nav, Training-Status, Sensors, WiFi…).

An Edge with this kind of TrackPoint would be awesome.

  The rise of the touchscreens are an accident. Because MBAs believe iPhone == touch == good. It isn’t. 

Amen! There so many flaws to touchscreens.

With the most common touchscreen implementations:

• user must hover hand above screen to avoid errant 'clicks' which is physically tiresome during prolonged use

• user cannot locate button without looking at screen, and feedback, if any, is several ms delayed (ie: till audio 'click' sound plays)

• user cannot easily control GUI on large, or multiple displays, since input-to-output scale is 1-to-1

• user cannot view the content under the target without workarounds (eg: iOS's loop widget) since user's finger blocks part of screen, and a human finger is relatively large compared to screen

>iOS's loop widget

You mean the magnifying glass during text selection?

Oops, maybe the spelling is 'loupe', but yes.

It is. And outside of contexts where a particular trade or profession uses them as a tool, they're typically called magnifying glasses.

I don't know for certain, but I suspect Adobe introduced its 'loupe tool' in 1987 when it released Photoshop. Whether or not 'loupe' is pretentious, it is now a ubiquitous term in the software industry. It's also four syllables shorter than 'magnifying glass' which, in my view (and when correctly spelled!), absolves it.

> Dear device manufacturers. Please used high quality switches with travel, resistance and a click „BIPPITY-BUMP“. Add a spring. Built in a indicator light within!

Essentially, you are asking what the avionics industry is already doing. Just look at the cockpit of a plane.

Unfortunately, if you then look at the price tag attached to that plane, you'll know why no one else is doing it :/.

Planes are expensive due to the difficulty of certifying them and maintaining the right to sell them under various regulations, not because they're using physical switches.

Yes, but large price and low volume (and actual technical acceptance criteria) also means they're not gonna be obsessing over saving fractional cents on control panels.

Amen, I use a Unihertz Titan for this reason.

MBAs? Biggest advocates I've seen for touchscreen are product designers, they tend to be obsessed with perfectly flat, unobstructed surfaces.

Designers can be the bane of usability. Small text is an example. There's a strong conflict between "design for usability" and "design for looks". Function versus form.

The opposite side of this is unpredictable or unintended behavior from too much moisture, which in my experience has been an acknowledgement with touch screens for quite some time.

As touch screens for applications started to become common, this naturally filtered into tactical and service work fields. There is an advantage in this as it allows a more compact interface that can change more easily based on what the user needs. However the down side is, in harsh fast paced environments where the user may be moving quickly and sweating, it's much harder to register intended user feedback to the interface.

The problem is not just if touch screens should be used, but also how they should be implemented. Especially on the side of general consumer electronics, like mobile phones, iOS and Android have built in interfaces for accessibility. In some cases you can get built in accessibility out of the box with very little effort, but the reality is, it takes a decent effort in most cases to get it right and users who need this behavior are not a heavy majority. This results in a deprioritization of accessibility in many mobile applications.

This gets much worse with more hardware centric devices like thermostats, ovens, refrigerators, etc which have a higher tendency to have user interfaces developed in house and lacking any accessibility. Compounding this problem, with the popularity of touch screen interfaces, and post COVID supply chain problems, many users who needed accessible functionally were (maybe still are) left without many options, likely either having to pay a heavy premium for something with usable accessibility features, but probably more realistically, just taking what they can get.

Modern technology makes accessibility easier than ever now, and enables accessibility in places that didn't previously exist, but the lack of willingness to implement accessible features on the part of some corporations is not just providing terrible accessibility, it's taking accessibility away from places where it previously existed.

Interesting comment! I frequently run into problems with the treadmill touchscreens at my gym. Obviously this is a very sweaty environment.

I'm not at all opposed to technology but it should be superior to what it replaces.

Older people are already having problems with screens on voting machines which feeds into the conspiracy theories.

And dangerous in cars.

There are laws forbidding us from touching our phones, but touching the embedded display is fair game? Bring back buttons, knobs and dials please. I shouldn't have to try to aim my finger at something intangible to change a setting while driving a ton of steel at 60mph.

Just knowing where the buttons are and feeling the surface of the buttons while I can keep my eyes and attention on the road is paramount.

Honestly, even without the danger factor it's a terrible interface. Last night I was trying to operate the touch screen in my wife's car, and the slight movement of the car as she drove meant that my hand kept missing the spot I was trying to hit. So even when you're a passenger and can focus on the screen, they still are less effective than buttons!

one of the main things i love about my mazda is that the display is not a touch screen, i can control everything with the knob and barely take my eyes off the road

It's one of those unexpected tech challenges with age

It’s also inaccessible for able people of young age. I’ve noticed many car companies don’t have a mindset for good design. So they make touch screen interfaces with very small targets. These are hard to hit when the car is in motion and require distraction. Core functions should be physical by law. Some companies with dial based controls like BMW’s iDrive got it right.

Same thing happens if you play the guitar a lot and build up calluses on your fretting hand. Touchscreens stop registering certain parts of your fingertip where the skin is sufficiently thickened.

Ironically fingerprint sensors just don't work for my dad, hes been an artisan all his life so even when he needs to actually give fingerprints ( police or whatever) they actually struggle to get prints off his hands.

Unrelated note, maybe Apple has this in mind when they implemented faceID...

> Touchscreens are anti-accessibility.

They're anti-accesibility for one group and accessibility for another. I'm part of the latter group that struggles with tactile buttons for physical reasons. The former group may be bigger (no idea what the data looks like), but it's not black and white.

iOS is surprisingly accessibly for the blind and visually impaired. Apple has shown that it can be done and between app review and accessibility support in the frameworks, despite the lack of buttons, the iPhone has long been the preferred phone for the visually impaired.

Never heard this about touchscreens not registering your touch when you get old. I guess my 83-year-old mother¹ and 92-year-old father aren’t old enough to experience this yet.

⸻

1. On the other hand, because her fingerprints have essentially vanished, my mother was never able to get touch ID to work.

iOS is accessible to blind people because of Voiceover, not because it has a touch screen. There really isn't a great alternative if you want access to all the mainstream apps. I used to have a Sony android phone with a tiny physical keyboard, and I still miss the keyboard even though Talkback on android in those days (Android 4) was unbelievably bad.

Before that, I could text quicker on a t9 keypad than I can with the qwerty keyboard on a touch screen.

The feedback from tactile keys also means you don't have to constantly listen exclusively to the phone while operating it. I find it impossible to use Voiceover in a noisy environment or when someone is talking to me.

I work in the medical industry where hygiene is very important and on some days I have to disinfect my hands multiple times. Capacitive touch screens ignore me regularly. There is disinfectant that allegedly retains some moisture/fat, but they can only do so much.

But here touch screens do make sense, because they are so easy to clean. I don't need them anywhere else though.

I wonder what an experience of using a touchscreen with tactile feedback built in, I think it could be done with flexible display and then an array of haptic engines/vibro motors or something like that, perhaps even just magnetic array with plates.

All of this, so that the display could actually provide location specific tactile feedback (unlike just the whole device shaking).