Tactile Controls In A Digital World

First let’s point out the elephant in the room: an analog approach will be more limited functionally. That’s why most screens exist today, whether it’s on your smart fridge or your EV car: screens are popular as you can cram dozens of small buttons on them. But as we said before, this is mostly a production concern, it ignores the many ergonomic, safety, and even sensual aspects of physical controls.

Why is everything becoming a digital screen? Because screens are easier. They allow you to be lazy and not make trade-offs.

Engineers tend to think mathematically while Designers tend to think statistically. Both are correct, they just have different goals. If your ONLY goal is to cover every possible feature, then having a touchscreen is reasonable. However, if you think statistically and ask “What do people do 99% of the time?” you get a much different answer.

Kinda wish more software took this line of thinking.