Apparently the relevant design/usability term is "affordances", which are the "sensory characteristics [of an object that] intuitively imply its functionality and use"[1]. Affordances in UI design have evidently gone out of style, which effectively means that people are just expected to learn the arbitrary (and ever-changing) rules of how to interacting with computers (and other computing devices), instead of having the computing devices cater to how people expect them to work.
I think this also leads back to the idea that the touchscreen as a user interface is absolutely awful in every way except for the one huge advantage of its reconfigurability. (I forget the source for this, but there's a specific article I'm thinking of.)
What kills me is how car radios are getting touchscreens now. What good is a touchscreen in a car radio? The whole beauty of the traditional design is you can operate it without taking your eyes off the road.
I had a 2012 jetta that had this. It was complete touchscreen with only a couple basic function buttons. I found it extremely annoying to use. To make matters worse, when the flimsy screen got a tiny crack in it, I lost all control of the radio because I could no longer touch to interact with it. I guess that would be a big deal breaker from me if I had means to be in the market for a tesla. I'm not big on having everything in a touchscreen.
The lexus I recently purchased uses a mouse essentially to interact with the screen which I find pleasant to use and also offers a full range of buttons for the radio and climate control. I find this to be a much better experience for myself.
Still, the 'mouse' seems like a poor choice. As the op said - isn't the idea of big dumb buttons that we don't have to take our attention off the road to interact with them?
Go through the products available at a site like sparkfun or adafruit and tell me you couldn't make some awesome customization control panel system? Larger buttons for smartphone-specific functions, some with their own small (and low-cost) discrete display perhaps?
A modular control system, featuring 100% plug and play elements (knobs, sliders, mini-displays, buttons) mountable in a range of simple chassis (19"rack, keyboard size, mini desktop box, mixing-console-size control center) that can be configured by a trivial to use piece of software and thereafter control any device (PC, tablet).
I've been wanting this for twenty-five years.
There are things that do some of this, but not very well, and not very cost-effectively. There is software that simulates this on a touchscreen (grr). Anyone fancy a hardware startup?
I realize this probably isn't quite what you want, but have you looked at using MIDI? A lot of modern MIDI gear is quite cheap, connects to your computer over USB, and with the appropriate software can be used to control anything on your computer. There are MIDI devices with just about any kind of physical input you could want - pots, sliders, pedals, buttons, pressure-sensitive pads, optical and sound-based inputs, and much more.
There are a variety of development boards (Livid Brain, uCApps MIDIbox) designed to allow semi-technical users to build their own MIDI controllers. It's also reasonably straightforward to configure an Arduino Micro or a Teensy to work as a USB HID interface. If you can use a soldering iron and a drill, you can build a custom controller.
Absolutely. I've been known to break out the breadboard to that end. But soldering irons and arduinos are a level of too much... erm... wires, for what I'm thinking. Not to mention that making it control what you want takes time and debugging and perhaps a sympathetic operating system or app.
How about forgetting the electronics, and seeing controllers as just another UI problem. Software, implemented in plastic.
What would you want to build if it were that easy? Custom controllers for games? Custom games? MIDI Instruments? Dashboards with physical elements? Home / media center controls? POS interfaces? Hardware usability testing prototypes? Kitchen gadgets?
Maybe I'd be the only market, but I think it would be a big blurring of the line between hacker and maker culture.
I am one of the fools who bought an optimus popularis - it's optimus lame.
Also those relegendable knobs and sliders are very popular in the music industry already 0 - so it would be fairly trivial to bring it to a consumer device.
Not touchscreen related but monitors used to have dials for brightness/contrast control. But now we have these pain in the butt multi-function buttons that you gotta use to pull up the OSD, scroll through a bunch of menus and then finally you can adjust a setting.
Same thing with volume controls, used to be dials now it's buttons. Maybe I just like dials.
Aren't most affordances just arbitrary rules that most people can be expected to already know? I'm not sure that an adult introduced to computers for the first time in their live would figure out convex-looking buttons much faster.
Affordances aren't arbitrary. The idea behind affordances is that the tool fits the user, not the other way around. If something is meant to be gripped in a person's hand, then it should be the right size and shape for a hand to grip it. Conversely, if something is the right size and shape to grip in a hand, that intuitively suggests that it is for gripping.
True, but affordances on screen are a different story. There's nothing to grip there. There are just pixels on a flat surface, that may or may not simulate a 3D effect. And you operate them using a mouse, which itself is a layer of indirection. So I don't buy the concept that affordances in software are not arbitrary - they don't refer to somewhat fundamental concepts for human (like grabbing), they refer to the last 100 or so years, when physical buttons became a common element of the environment one lives in.
I see learning UI in computers as a process that begins with a new user having basic UI concepts explained to him, and then just following the changing trends, where a new trend usually makes "affordances" refer to the previous trend.
I think this also leads back to the idea that the touchscreen as a user interface is absolutely awful in every way except for the one huge advantage of its reconfigurability. (I forget the source for this, but there's a specific article I'm thinking of.)
[1] http://www.usabilityfirst.com/glossary/affordance/