User Interface, Interface Design, Usability, Human Factors

[Dynamic]

@pennstac

had my face bashed with flagpoles so I was bloody and bruised, would my phone know me?

Maybe not. You can enter your password then.

[pennstac]

I can’t remember my password. That’s the side effect of never having to use it due to face recognition. I believe this is called “the law of unintended consequences”.

[Dynamic]

You can’t remember 4 digits that you probably set to your brith year?

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

[pennstac]

0007 is my birth year? I was a Bond fan. And I don’t think they have negative numbers. I’ve explained that I’m a Gondwanaland expat. My parents came over on the land bridge. Lucy was my aunt.

[Torq]

@pennstac

0007

Per MI6 …

00 is “license to kill”.

000 is “license to piddle in the pool”.

[Lars]

RME makes equipment for professional recording studios; I would expect their UI to be a bit different for recording engineers than for home audiophiles… I love my RME ADI-2 DAC and find the UI to be no more difficult than for any digital camera with a menu system.

[pennstac]

@Lars

UI to be no more difficult than for any digital camera with a menu system.

There’s a can of worms. Digital camera with a menu system. I am proud owner of a Fujifilm XT-30. For about a year now. Still working on learning the friggin’ menu system.
My first camera was one of these:

Nice interface. Took some OK pics with it. Little flash bulbs when needed. Two settings, Flash and Daylight.
Then I graduated to this:

I took much better pictures. No automatic nothing. Waist level finder. You had to memorize some stuff and learn to judge light. You took the film’s ISO into account. Sunny? f16/ISO with a 50mm lens. So Plus X (ISO 125) f16/125. Want bokeh? open up the F stop and increase shutter speed - the maximum was 1/500. I could pick up that camera today and take good pictures, and hardly have to think. Everything was at hand.

Next, I had the camera’s big brother, the Exakta. Interchangeable viewfinder. More lenses and more choice of shutter speeds. Still the same basic thing, and the skills were transferable.

For a while, I used one of these - I couldn’t afford the Rollis, but this added a light meter, so I didn’t carry my Weston Master III.

Wonderful UI. Easy to set. Took some great pictures. Excellent for candids and street photography, because you just hung it around your neck, and nobody realized you were taking a picture using the waist - level viewfinder. Ground glass is SO freaking good to focus with. In some ways it just didn’t get better than this.

So I got though high school, was photo editor of our yearbook - along with another guy. He did sports photos and became a local newspaper photog. We won a national award for the yearbook.
I had a part time job in late high school and college at a camera store. Finally bought my first sort of automatic - capable camera.

I used this camera for years, had many lenses. It was manual focus. I missed the interchangeable viewfinder, but it was a budget compromise. Had quite a few lenses. Even though it was manual focus, you could still set aperture and shutter speeds, or you could chose one and let the camera do the other. Internal light metering, choice of modes. Not a huge bunch of menus, things still harkened back to the traditional manual cameras. You used dials.

Then came the death of film and point and shoot:

These cameras were different. I had to learn where to find a manual setting, but I could point and click just like with the old Brownie Starmite. And they took better pictures. This was the first time where my actual knowledge of photography and cameras started to get in the way. The user interface was dumbed down. Also all of my darkroom skills were obsolete (even though I hadn’t used the darkroom in years and sold my enlarger). There were canned programs - portrait, fireworks.

Y’all can look up the multi hundred page manual for my current Fuji. One of the reasons I bought it is that there are still some dials you can set.

But there are buttons, knobs and wheels and functions that can switch things around. And you can hit them by mistake, so what was setting shutter speed now sets ISO, or fries pickles or something. And with digital, there is more to set. Film speed - you used the ISO guide, or you knew you were going to push the film with Edwal FG7 in the darkroom when you shot the roll. Now you can change from shot to shot. And different lenses add (or subtract) functions sometime.

I’m sure that if I had started with a camera like this, I’d find the UI intuitive. Even find the interminable multi-level menu system reasonable.

My hands like things just a tad larger. But my wallet does not. And once I take pictures, I don’t develop myself (B&W or Ektachrome) or drop it off at the local pharmacy with the instructions to “send to Kodak” or go the the camera store and order film plus contact sheets. NOOOooooo. I’m supposed to learn Photoshop to manipulate RAW images properly. I’m reasonably competent with Lightroom, and gave up on GIMP. But PS is a learning curve. And I only have my spare time, I’m not @MRHifiReviews.

Speaking of whom, his comments on UI/UX would be pretty interesting.
So, I’ve digressed from audio, but I did say “mostly headphone” when I started this thread, and we have a few nice photo threads going so I know there is interest.

[generic]

The purpose of a technical design is to allow users to progress from one state of affairs to a desired state of affairs quickly and easily. Pass fail. Consumer goals are often radically different than those of engineers and designers. They come to a task with fresh eyes and must learn a new process. They can lack ability, motivation, or both.

I was taught this is an example of an ideal user interface. No ambiguity, no confusion.

This device was pretty foolproof, as they generally didn’t record over one’s cassettes. The biggest issue was to find one’s place on the correct side of the tape:

Despite sleek looks and utopian marketing, the iPod actually caused plenty of confusion per its hybrid wheel/menu system. My wife hated it, and Apple dropped it as soon as touch screens became practical:

[Lars]

Thanks for the post - that was very interesting!! I started with Brownies and Instamatics, then got my first 35mm, a Yashica Lynx 5000; in 1968, I got my Nikon F, which I used starting then all the way through college, where I majored in Professional Photography at Rochester Institute of Technology for 4 years. Never worked as a professional photographer, going into the music/record business instead, and then into computer programming. I did a lot of concert photography through the 70’s, and all of that was done with my Nikon F, and yeah, I developed and printed my own stuff. But I’m a much better digital printer than I ever was a darkroom one.

[Tom_Ato]

Top Usability 2021

I would be interested in knowing what the DAP with the best usability is in 2021. There’s some new stuff out and maybe someone here has bought /tested something interesting recently!?

For me in terms of overall usability including hardware and of clourse the stock player apps, the Astell&Kern SP1000M the best I own /have tested. That does not mean it’s perfect, in fact it isn’t.

What about you fellow usability cracks?

[monochromios]

Pioneer XDP300 R with all his ages and minor lags/short battery life (without @antdroid mod, with it it is way better) remains to me one of the best user interface experience in a DAP. Simple, intuitive reader that works flawlessly and makes you access to all possible audio setting in one sliding page EQ included.

[Tom_Ato]

Thanks a lot for the input! Would you have some photos/screens eventually?

[monochromios]

Sure. Later I’ll be home and can grab it. It isn’t very useful driving ambulance. When I’ll forget about it (because I’ll do for sure) drop me a line please.

[monochromios]

Sorry for the crappy phone pics.
From the home menu you slide left and you have the player.
Slide down and enter in player setting.
Simple, fast, effective.
It’s Android 4 so you can’t install things like Wavelet or newer apps without mods.
The orange bars indicate eco battery mode.
Don’t mind the protective film. I’m maniacal with my gear.

[Tom_Ato]

Thank you for the pictures. Indeed it looks very clean! This reminds me of my Acoustic Research AR-M2 lying around somewhere. It also had Android 4 but the device is still very nice and as far as I can remember, the player app wasn’t bad either.

[monochromios]

I thought about this thread today when I tried Rune Audio for Raspberry Pi 4 today.
In one single browser page the best UI interface I’ve seen in years.
And it is free and open for developing.

[Dynamic]

@Tom_Ato I assume you meant here.

I returned my iBasso dx300 for one glaringly bad issue. The exterior play/skip/pause buttons stop working frequently. As far as I can tell, this was primarily due to if you switched apps that are playing. Example: switching between Apple Music and Amazon HD. It seemed to effect all apps.

Secondly, I connected a bluetooth button:

But, when the problem occurs, this stops working to. This indicates something is stealing keyboard input from the active app.

What this meant, is not only did I have to dig out the DAP buried in a pocket, I have to take it all the way out and use software buttons.

For me, this is not functional. This relegated the DAP to evening sitting listen only. And frankly, the iDSD Micro Signature is better for that.

It might have worked if I didn’t have playlists on multiple services. But since I do, and I am planning to introduce more services as I try things out, I opted to not deal with this right now.

[pennstac]

This may be the same for all or most true wireless earbuds. I’m getting a bit tired of seeing people Skyping in to TV shows with earbud microphones. The sound quality ranges from mediocre to awful. I do think that room noise may be a factor, but how much quality can you get from a tiny port and an even smaller transducer?

This is brought to mind because I’ve been breaking in the Hifiman TWS 600, once listed for $600, recently on what I suspect was a close-out sale at $49. They include a paper insert in the case suggesting in noisy environments that you take one of the buds out of your ear and hold it in front of your mouth. As there are microphones in both earbuds, I’m not sure how it senses this stunt, but it would be amusing to watch some talking head try it.

On the plus side, you can listen and talk in mono by only using one earbud - they suggest the left.

Anyway, I think I hear better sound from people using a wired headphone with a mic near the mouth, especially a gaming style headphone. Me, I don’t skype on the go, so I always use a desk microphone, and nobody complains that my voice is fuzzy, just my ideas.

[SenyorC]

I tried the TWS600 for calls and found that holding one in front of your mouth does actually improve it, but if I need to use a hand I might as well just hold my phone.