Oh God, I hope they don't start supporting Flash. I hate Flash websites, so I can't imagine I would like Flash touch panels. UI design always seems to go out the window when Flash is used.
Paul
I guess you've not seen some decent looking UI using flash.
When I was at Vantage training (years ago), we went over Designer Toolbox (not sure if they still have it / support it), but was interesting to see some very simple layouts, made with flash, with a few bells and whistles attached. Their templates (then) looked pretty slick.
I will agree that there are UI in flash that just downright suck, but if it's kept simple, and used appropriately, I'm not sure why you would be so against it if it added a certain effect that you couldn't otherwise achieve *easily* with TPD4. I think that's what's appealing to me: using special effects that you can't do in TPD4.
Good Flash design is an art, and there are too many hacks out there doing it with their bootleg or school copies. They give the true artists a bad name.
Good Flash design is an art, and there are too many hacks out there doing it with their bootleg or school copies. They give the true artists a bad name.
Oh God, I hope they don't start supporting Flash. I hate Flash websites, so I can't imagine I would like Flash touch panels. UI design always seems to go out the window when Flash is used.
Paul
How many of us have seen a horrendous AMX TP design? I know I've seen plenty. It has nothing to do with the platform, it is all about the design. Flash is no more responsible for the design going "out the window" than AMX is for those terrible TP designs.
I agree that a lot of Flash websites are all arts-y and difficult to use, but Flash is very powerful. It just needs to be used for Good, not Evil.
I think Paul asked how AMX was limiting UI design. No-one had said it was btw; what had been said was that AMX needed to lift/change the game when it came to UI. And now we're in a debate about the merits of Flash?
Isn't the point that alternative touch panel platforms have UI engines considerably ahead of those we can easily use in our workflows? if you've played around with the iPhone SDK then it's difficult to look at TPD4 with particularly fond eyes. AMX's UI potential is limited at the moment. By that I mean an extremely good AMX UI faces being seen as dull by an end user who has a TP platform in their pocket that can do a whole heap more for a lot less cost.
An iPhone mkaes a lousy whole house controller at the moment. However, I believe it provides a better TP experience than any current Modero when used in particular tasks.
I am not sure I would want to see flash on touch panels, because the number of horrible panel designs being pumped into the market would skyrocket. I can already see business owners hiring cheap people with Flash "experience" at minimum wage and unleashing them on their touch panels. This will inevitably lead to a "Cool" panel that is very flashy (pardon the pun), but probably not user friendly. Because it is cheap and eye grabbing, the business will be happy and tell the clients that it is state-of-the-art. Clients will agree that it is amazing, until they need to use it on a daily basis. Any client that can't figure it out will be deemed an idiot and the blame for problems will be placed on them. (This view is being affected by the less than stellar start to my day today )
That being said, I would really like it if they beefed up the graphics processing on the touch panels to allow the effects they already have to run smoother. I would also like to see them add new effects to TPD4. I don't think we need to add support for flash to accomplish this as doing so would put AMX at the mercy of Flash for bug fixes and updates, not to mention, the potential for malicious code floating around in Flash. If AMX could add some more transitions, the ability to change palettes on the fly, better graphics manipulation on the fly (dynamic images) and a couple more small features, I think it would be more than sufficient. The biggest thing is increasing the hardware performance to allow the effects to occur seamlessly and without lag.
An iPhone mkaes a lousy whole house controller at the moment. However, I believe it provides a better TP experience than any current Modero when used in particular tasks.
I would make a claim that this is the fault of the designer of the touch panel interface more than that of the hardware. Sure, the iPhone has some amazing graphics, but there is no reason that a G4 touch panel cannot be made to perform just as well at tasks it was intended to perform. As for the iPhone being such a great interface, why is there so much talk of people switching back to their Blackberry because they found the iPhone difficult to use for the tasks they do daily?
As for the iPhone being such a great interface, why is there so much talk of people switching back to their Blackberry because they found the iPhone difficult to use for the tasks they do daily?
I do not find the iPhone difficult to do daily tasks, or any other tasks for that matter.
The toolbox available to someone developing on the iPhone platform gives UI capability you simply can't reproduce on a Modero panel. Simple example, Managing long lists of stuff? Managing dynamic lists? Simple on an iPhone, clunky on a Modero. It's not just eye candy, it's better, quicker, more natural
I reiterate. I'm not knocking AMX, I'm an AMX dealer. I just think the UI paradigm has shifted.
I agree with Jeff, even though I do use Flash to interface with AMX currently. I think the touch screens need a little more juice.
One thing flash does do really well is to allow JavaScript to manipulate graphics to your wildest dreams. I forgot who it was that made the analog clock on for the touchscreen (someone take credit?), having a separate images for every position is ridiculous. Here's my Wish list;
- Ability to rotate an Image (via code)
- Ability to scale an image (via code)
- iPod/iPhone like lists (with momentum, and no need for arrows)
- Ability to create lists with images (scrolling through TV icons)
- No latency while you have multiple video streams on the screen
- Ability run some independent code on the TP (for a analog clock, or rss feed directly)
Those are off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more..
I would make a claim that this is the fault of the designer of the touch panel interface more than that of the hardware.
Agreed. The iPhone is a small interface compared to most AMX panels. You definitely have to design for the hardware.
That being said, I'm still a huge fan of Jaadu VNC. My feeling is a homeowner knows how to use their touch screen. Why invent a completely new interface (and code to support it) to work on an iPhone...why not let them use the same interface they are used to. Sure, they will have to zoom and pan a lot, but they already know their way around the screen.
I would make a claim that this is the fault of the designer of the touch panel interface more than that of the hardware. Sure, the iPhone has some amazing graphics, but there is no reason that a G4 touch panel cannot be made to perform just as well at tasks it was intended to perform. As for the iPhone being such a great interface, why is there so much talk of people switching back to their Blackberry because they found the iPhone difficult to use for the tasks they do daily?
Jeff
One major difference is the the 'gesturing' that you can do on an iPhone. This is just head and shoulders above the current AMX touch panels. The new Savant panels will have this feature by the way.
I would make a claim that this is the fault of the designer of the touch panel interface more than that of the hardware
The designer of the Touch Panel Interface works within the bounds of the toolkit available to them. I can build better interfaces when I have better tools. I can build better interfaces when I'm developing for OSX platforms than when I'm developing interfaces in TPD4 and I don't agree that's the fault of the touch panel interface designer. I'm not on a one man mission to get banned from this forum, I'm putting forward a view that says that our core UI engine is looking a bit backward right now.
Maybe my view is slanted because 100% of our work is residential. Resi design seems to have a different set of design constraints / principles / expectations to the ones I see in commercial work. If that is a crass oversimplification then I apologise in advance
Maybe my view is slanted because 100% of our work is residential. Resi design seems to have a different set of design constraints / principles / expectations to the ones I see in commercial work. If that is a crass oversimplification then I apologise in advance
This might be an important distinction. I can see how the coolness of the interface is probably more important in Resi. When I did all commercial, we thought the Modero was just a waste of money and hoped and prayed that AMX would keep the CA10 G3 Panel. For our classrooms, it was more than enough.
The Apple guy I mentioned in my big letter said that Apple had a conference room with C-tron that was acting up all the time. He mentioned his personal Savant system and they agreed to give them a try on the conference room. So, they put it in and had zero problems. Now they're in the process of changing out all their AMX conference rooms to Savant. While they were touting this as Savant's entrance into the commercial world, a conference room tends to be more Resi than strictly commercial at times. (particularly in this kind of business.)
All the conference rooms we do are very Resi in design whereas a class room or more industrial-strength conference rooms tend to be very commercial.
The Apple guy I mentioned in my big letter said that Apple had a conference room with C-tron that was acting up all the time. He mentioned his personal Savant system and they agreed to give them a try on the conference room. So, they put it in and had zero problems. Now they're in the process of changing out all their AMX conference rooms to Savant. While they were touting this as Savant's entrance into the commercial world, a conference room tends to be more Resi than strictly commercial at times. (particularly in this kind of business.)
Wait, so they determined Savant > Crestron, so from that they got Savant > AMX? Aren't we missing a step here?
I guess you've not seen some decent looking UI using flash.
I have seen some good looking ones, I just haven't used any good using ones. I am more biased toward usability than lookability likely because I tend to think that people like UIs that are designed well. What seems to happen is that at first users look at the UI, but after a short time they don't see it anymore, and then its all about usability. How often do you look at the pattern on your wallpaper? Its probably invisible to you at this point. By using Flash you force them to always 'see' the UI and that is tiresome over time. I haven't found too many clients that stare at the touch panel for hours in awe of my animation sequences. I like it when the UI gets out of the user's way, and doesn't force its presence, almost to the point where it isn't consciously noticed.
I will agree that there are UI in flash that just downright suck, but if it's kept simple, and used appropriately, I'm not sure why you would be so against it if it added a certain effect that you couldn't otherwise achieve *easily* with TPD4. I think that's what's appealing to me: using special effects that you can't do in TPD4.
I have done quite a bit of creative animation with TPD, but invariably once I start using the system for real, not just 'testing', I end up pulling it. I have had the need to rotate images though, so if that could be added that would be nice. Flash would use too many resources. Imagine having a panel that used Quicktime or Java for graphics. Would you buy it?
Besides, I get a weird kick out of pushing the graphical boundaries of what TPD can do when its slow.
Paul
It's not about the animation folks. It's the new way to move about the touch panel. It's called gesturing.
That's a function of the glass used for the overlay and having enough processing power to move the graphics around.
If you want to see how a current Amx panel looks like doing this kind of thing create a large popul page with lots of buttons and a big picture. Then set it's show and hide to swipe left with fade. Try a fade time of 4 to 8. See how 'not smooth' it is...
Those of us who own iPhones know how gesturing allows you to get a lot more out of a small UI. I'd love to have it on the 5200.
It's not about the animation folks. It's the new way to move about the touch panel. It's called gesturing.
If you want to see how a current Amx panel looks like doing this kind of thing create a large popul page with lots of buttons and a big picture. Then set it's show and hide to swipe left with fade. Try a fade time of 4 to 8. See how 'not smooth' it is...
Those of us who own iPhones know how gesturing allows you to get a lot more out of a small UI. I'd love to have it on the 5200.
I haven't done the show/hide thing you mention and I will take your word for it that it isn't smooth, but I have created gestures on an AMX TP before. They worked well, but I ended up going back to button presses. Why make the user make a gesture when you can just as easily accomplish the same thing with a simpler button press?
Paul
What gesture would you use to shut the system down?
Paul
Vertical line, top to bottom, like turning a switch off? Or drawing a circle around the shutdown button. Shutdown buttons are usually in the corner though... you can tell I'm not a gesture expert, but it's a good example of something you might want to require a gesture for because then you can have a system off button on every page in the same place, which is convenient, without adding the danger of it being tapped accidentally.
Vertical line, top to bottom, like turning a switch off? Or drawing a circle around the shutdown button. Shutdown buttons are usually in the corner though... you can tell I'm not a gesture expert, but it's a good example of something you might want to require a gesture for because then you can have a system off button on every page in the same place, which is convenient, without adding the danger of it being tapped accidentally.
Interesting. I usually use a confirmation dialog box with an alert sound and it seems to have worked well so far with little instruction required. So you would have a Off button, but the user wouldn't press that, but rather make a gesture across the whole screen?
Paul
I haven't done the show/hide thing you mention and I will take your word for it that it isn't smooth, but I have created gestures on an AMX TP before. They worked well, but I ended up going back to button presses. Why make the user make a gesture when you can just as easily accomplish the same thing with a simpler button press?
Paul
Because a gesture allows for a hell of a lot more input possibilites than pushing a button. With a button you can push it, release it and hold it. With a gesture you can push, release, hold, move in a specific direction, vary your movement speed, vary the points through which you move, stop at various point along your path of movement etc. If you are using hardware that is capable of more modern real-time graffical manipulation you can also provide a lot of very realistic and useful visual feedback whilst this is taking place. With a touch interface you are not performing a physical interaction such as that of a keypad. Touch interfaces such as the AMX panels give no haptic feedback what so ever so the only communication you have back to the user is through visual or aural information from the panel or devices which it controls. The interface you create on the panel is a virtual environment which the user must interact with in order to perform a desired function. For the interactions to be convincing the virtual environment must react in a way the user can identify with. Most users of control systems tend to be computer literate to at a minimum the point of being able to say navigate a web interface or operate simple desktop computer software. As such they are already familar with the paradigm of being able to 'push' this visual representation of a physical button and have the software perform the action the button is labelled as.
However, users live in the physical world and can recognise the results of physics on objects. As such it it possible to give virtual objects the illusion of possessing physical properties and utilize the phsycological implications of this within an interface to give components of the interface more depth than a static visual respresentation allows. Most users have spent the majority of their life in the physical world and are a lot more confident with interacting with objects in that realm, if you can emulate this experience within a virtual environment, and do it well, then you are going to have a interface that is a lot more intuitive and functional to more of the users.
Interesting. I usually use a confirmation dialog box with an alert sound and it seems to have worked well so far with little instruction required. So you would have a Off button, but the user wouldn't press that, but rather make a gesture across the whole screen?
Paul
I'd imagine it would resemble a switch and you would just gesture across the button downward... resembling a physical interaction as Kim just described. There's no reason you couldn't have it both ways either ... tapping the button brings up the confirmation box with a button in another place for the user to tap to turn the system off, but gesturing across the button turns the system off without any other input from the client, i.e. an advanced feature that saves time.
I'd imagine it would resemble a switch and you would just gesture across the button downward... resembling a physical interaction as Kim just described. There's no reason you couldn't have it both ways either ... tapping the button brings up the confirmation box with a button in another place for the user to tap to turn the system off, but gesturing across the button turns the system off without any other input from the client, i.e. an advanced feature that saves time.
That kind of gesture you can do now with AMX with an active bargraph control. But anything more complex than that you would really want done on the hardware level; it would be a nightmare coding all possible movements with pressure parameters ... but then again, I don't see much use for it in this kind of control system anyway. For data management, gaming, yes ... but not with what I currently do with a home control. Key word there being "currently."
That kind of gesture you can do now with AMX with an active bargraph control. But anything more complex than that you would really want done on the hardware level; it would be a nightmare coding all possible movements with pressure parameters ... but then again, I don't see much use for it in this kind of control system anyway. For data management, gaming, yes ... but not with what I currently do with a home control. Key word there being "currently."
I agree Dave. I have a hard enough time getting some client to understand that pushing the OFF button turns off the system. God help me if I had to explain that they need to use three fingers and swipe right to left to turn the system off. The beauty of simply using buttons is that you do not need to train someone to control the system in a basic manner. That being said, I do like the idea of adding advanced features with gestures, but I would venture to guess that maybe 10% of our clients might actually take the time to learn them.
Now, as multi-touch and gestures gain traction in the market and it becomes a common thing, I can see younger clients requesting the ability to use them. At some point, it will become a necessity as more people start to use this on a daily basis.
I can't help feeling that somewhere in the last dozen or so posts, the simplicity of some gestures has been lost.
If you want to browse a list of stuff - let's say a long list of albums on a music server, a raft of tweets on twitter, a list of feeds - then flicking that list to accelerate through it is a pretty simple gesture. And once you've done that and got used to it, the "simplicity" of buttons that let you very deliberately page down through lists can feel archaic and horribly slow.
Not just us the programming geeks who say that. It's our conservative, elderly iPhone or iPod touch wielding clients. How many devices have Apple got to sell before multi-touch is accepted as having "gained traction"? It's a touch screen and interface paradigm far more people are familiar with than our own precious panels.
Two uses of speech marks in one post. ...damn, hate losing my cool.
flicking that list to accelerate through it is a pretty simple gesture. And once you've done that and got used to it, the "simplicity" of buttons that let you very deliberately page down through lists can feel archaic and horribly slow.
I understand what you mean. But accelerated list scrolling means that I can't really read what's going by, so why bother scrolling at all? I would rather just get where I want to go without the show. For an AV example, the Kaleidescape movie list has accelerated scrolling, and the acceleration increases the longer you hold the button. I don't like that at all because there is no way to gauge when to time the release and I can't really read the text going by, so I am constantly going past the item I want and then have to go back or I release too soon, and then have to press/hold and wait for the acceleration to start again, and then once I have landed close I have to decide if its better to press and hold or just press a bunch of times quickly to get to the item. Even though its a slick trick to watch, it reduces usability so after the novelty has worn off its just annoying to use. I use the 'jump' keyboard to find a title in the list because it will scroll immediately to the first title using the letter I chose with one button press and then I can usually see the item in the list and get to it quickly.
Paul
Comments
I guess you've not seen some decent looking UI using flash.
When I was at Vantage training (years ago), we went over Designer Toolbox (not sure if they still have it / support it), but was interesting to see some very simple layouts, made with flash, with a few bells and whistles attached. Their templates (then) looked pretty slick.
I will agree that there are UI in flash that just downright suck, but if it's kept simple, and used appropriately, I'm not sure why you would be so against it if it added a certain effect that you couldn't otherwise achieve *easily* with TPD4. I think that's what's appealing to me: using special effects that you can't do in TPD4.
Here's true Flash Artistry
http://www.homestarrunner.com
How many of us have seen a horrendous AMX TP design? I know I've seen plenty. It has nothing to do with the platform, it is all about the design. Flash is no more responsible for the design going "out the window" than AMX is for those terrible TP designs.
I agree that a lot of Flash websites are all arts-y and difficult to use, but Flash is very powerful. It just needs to be used for Good, not Evil.
"Checkin' my email, checkin' my email" - Strong Bad
Best website ever!!
Isn't the point that alternative touch panel platforms have UI engines considerably ahead of those we can easily use in our workflows? if you've played around with the iPhone SDK then it's difficult to look at TPD4 with particularly fond eyes. AMX's UI potential is limited at the moment. By that I mean an extremely good AMX UI faces being seen as dull by an end user who has a TP platform in their pocket that can do a whole heap more for a lot less cost.
An iPhone mkaes a lousy whole house controller at the moment. However, I believe it provides a better TP experience than any current Modero when used in particular tasks.
That being said, I would really like it if they beefed up the graphics processing on the touch panels to allow the effects they already have to run smoother. I would also like to see them add new effects to TPD4. I don't think we need to add support for flash to accomplish this as doing so would put AMX at the mercy of Flash for bug fixes and updates, not to mention, the potential for malicious code floating around in Flash. If AMX could add some more transitions, the ability to change palettes on the fly, better graphics manipulation on the fly (dynamic images) and a couple more small features, I think it would be more than sufficient. The biggest thing is increasing the hardware performance to allow the effects to occur seamlessly and without lag.
Jeff
I would make a claim that this is the fault of the designer of the touch panel interface more than that of the hardware. Sure, the iPhone has some amazing graphics, but there is no reason that a G4 touch panel cannot be made to perform just as well at tasks it was intended to perform. As for the iPhone being such a great interface, why is there so much talk of people switching back to their Blackberry because they found the iPhone difficult to use for the tasks they do daily?
Jeff
I do not find the iPhone difficult to do daily tasks, or any other tasks for that matter.
The toolbox available to someone developing on the iPhone platform gives UI capability you simply can't reproduce on a Modero panel. Simple example, Managing long lists of stuff? Managing dynamic lists? Simple on an iPhone, clunky on a Modero. It's not just eye candy, it's better, quicker, more natural
I reiterate. I'm not knocking AMX, I'm an AMX dealer. I just think the UI paradigm has shifted.
One thing flash does do really well is to allow JavaScript to manipulate graphics to your wildest dreams. I forgot who it was that made the analog clock on for the touchscreen (someone take credit?), having a separate images for every position is ridiculous. Here's my Wish list;
- Ability to rotate an Image (via code)
- Ability to scale an image (via code)
- iPod/iPhone like lists (with momentum, and no need for arrows)
- Ability to create lists with images (scrolling through TV icons)
- No latency while you have multiple video streams on the screen
- Ability run some independent code on the TP (for a analog clock, or rss feed directly)
Those are off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more..
Agreed. The iPhone is a small interface compared to most AMX panels. You definitely have to design for the hardware.
That being said, I'm still a huge fan of Jaadu VNC. My feeling is a homeowner knows how to use their touch screen. Why invent a completely new interface (and code to support it) to work on an iPhone...why not let them use the same interface they are used to. Sure, they will have to zoom and pan a lot, but they already know their way around the screen.
One major difference is the the 'gesturing' that you can do on an iPhone. This is just head and shoulders above the current AMX touch panels. The new Savant panels will have this feature by the way.
The designer of the Touch Panel Interface works within the bounds of the toolkit available to them. I can build better interfaces when I have better tools. I can build better interfaces when I'm developing for OSX platforms than when I'm developing interfaces in TPD4 and I don't agree that's the fault of the touch panel interface designer. I'm not on a one man mission to get banned from this forum, I'm putting forward a view that says that our core UI engine is looking a bit backward right now.
Maybe my view is slanted because 100% of our work is residential. Resi design seems to have a different set of design constraints / principles / expectations to the ones I see in commercial work. If that is a crass oversimplification then I apologise in advance
This might be an important distinction. I can see how the coolness of the interface is probably more important in Resi. When I did all commercial, we thought the Modero was just a waste of money and hoped and prayed that AMX would keep the CA10 G3 Panel. For our classrooms, it was more than enough.
The Apple guy I mentioned in my big letter said that Apple had a conference room with C-tron that was acting up all the time. He mentioned his personal Savant system and they agreed to give them a try on the conference room. So, they put it in and had zero problems. Now they're in the process of changing out all their AMX conference rooms to Savant. While they were touting this as Savant's entrance into the commercial world, a conference room tends to be more Resi than strictly commercial at times. (particularly in this kind of business.)
All the conference rooms we do are very Resi in design whereas a class room or more industrial-strength conference rooms tend to be very commercial.
Wait, so they determined Savant > Crestron, so from that they got Savant > AMX? Aren't we missing a step here?
logic doesn't mean much in this case.
Perception=Reality when it comes to the client
I have seen some good looking ones, I just haven't used any good using ones. I am more biased toward usability than lookability likely because I tend to think that people like UIs that are designed well. What seems to happen is that at first users look at the UI, but after a short time they don't see it anymore, and then its all about usability. How often do you look at the pattern on your wallpaper? Its probably invisible to you at this point. By using Flash you force them to always 'see' the UI and that is tiresome over time. I haven't found too many clients that stare at the touch panel for hours in awe of my animation sequences. I like it when the UI gets out of the user's way, and doesn't force its presence, almost to the point where it isn't consciously noticed.
I have done quite a bit of creative animation with TPD, but invariably once I start using the system for real, not just 'testing', I end up pulling it. I have had the need to rotate images though, so if that could be added that would be nice. Flash would use too many resources. Imagine having a panel that used Quicktime or Java for graphics. Would you buy it?
Besides, I get a weird kick out of pushing the graphical boundaries of what TPD can do when its slow.
Paul
That's a function of the glass used for the overlay and having enough processing power to move the graphics around.
If you want to see how a current Amx panel looks like doing this kind of thing create a large popul page with lots of buttons and a big picture. Then set it's show and hide to swipe left with fade. Try a fade time of 4 to 8. See how 'not smooth' it is...
Those of us who own iPhones know how gesturing allows you to get a lot more out of a small UI. I'd love to have it on the 5200.
I haven't done the show/hide thing you mention and I will take your word for it that it isn't smooth, but I have created gestures on an AMX TP before. They worked well, but I ended up going back to button presses. Why make the user make a gesture when you can just as easily accomplish the same thing with a simpler button press?
Paul
What gesture would you use to shut the system down?
Paul
Interesting. I usually use a confirmation dialog box with an alert sound and it seems to have worked well so far with little instruction required. So you would have a Off button, but the user wouldn't press that, but rather make a gesture across the whole screen?
Paul
Because a gesture allows for a hell of a lot more input possibilites than pushing a button. With a button you can push it, release it and hold it. With a gesture you can push, release, hold, move in a specific direction, vary your movement speed, vary the points through which you move, stop at various point along your path of movement etc. If you are using hardware that is capable of more modern real-time graffical manipulation you can also provide a lot of very realistic and useful visual feedback whilst this is taking place. With a touch interface you are not performing a physical interaction such as that of a keypad. Touch interfaces such as the AMX panels give no haptic feedback what so ever so the only communication you have back to the user is through visual or aural information from the panel or devices which it controls. The interface you create on the panel is a virtual environment which the user must interact with in order to perform a desired function. For the interactions to be convincing the virtual environment must react in a way the user can identify with. Most users of control systems tend to be computer literate to at a minimum the point of being able to say navigate a web interface or operate simple desktop computer software. As such they are already familar with the paradigm of being able to 'push' this visual representation of a physical button and have the software perform the action the button is labelled as.
However, users live in the physical world and can recognise the results of physics on objects. As such it it possible to give virtual objects the illusion of possessing physical properties and utilize the phsycological implications of this within an interface to give components of the interface more depth than a static visual respresentation allows. Most users have spent the majority of their life in the physical world and are a lot more confident with interacting with objects in that realm, if you can emulate this experience within a virtual environment, and do it well, then you are going to have a interface that is a lot more intuitive and functional to more of the users.
That kind of gesture you can do now with AMX with an active bargraph control. But anything more complex than that you would really want done on the hardware level; it would be a nightmare coding all possible movements with pressure parameters ... but then again, I don't see much use for it in this kind of control system anyway. For data management, gaming, yes ... but not with what I currently do with a home control. Key word there being "currently."
I agree Dave. I have a hard enough time getting some client to understand that pushing the OFF button turns off the system. God help me if I had to explain that they need to use three fingers and swipe right to left to turn the system off. The beauty of simply using buttons is that you do not need to train someone to control the system in a basic manner. That being said, I do like the idea of adding advanced features with gestures, but I would venture to guess that maybe 10% of our clients might actually take the time to learn them.
Now, as multi-touch and gestures gain traction in the market and it becomes a common thing, I can see younger clients requesting the ability to use them. At some point, it will become a necessity as more people start to use this on a daily basis.
Jeff
I can't help feeling that somewhere in the last dozen or so posts, the simplicity of some gestures has been lost.
If you want to browse a list of stuff - let's say a long list of albums on a music server, a raft of tweets on twitter, a list of feeds - then flicking that list to accelerate through it is a pretty simple gesture. And once you've done that and got used to it, the "simplicity" of buttons that let you very deliberately page down through lists can feel archaic and horribly slow.
Not just us the programming geeks who say that. It's our conservative, elderly iPhone or iPod touch wielding clients. How many devices have Apple got to sell before multi-touch is accepted as having "gained traction"? It's a touch screen and interface paradigm far more people are familiar with than our own precious panels.
Two uses of speech marks in one post. ...damn, hate losing my cool.
I understand what you mean. But accelerated list scrolling means that I can't really read what's going by, so why bother scrolling at all? I would rather just get where I want to go without the show. For an AV example, the Kaleidescape movie list has accelerated scrolling, and the acceleration increases the longer you hold the button. I don't like that at all because there is no way to gauge when to time the release and I can't really read the text going by, so I am constantly going past the item I want and then have to go back or I release too soon, and then have to press/hold and wait for the acceleration to start again, and then once I have landed close I have to decide if its better to press and hold or just press a bunch of times quickly to get to the item. Even though its a slick trick to watch, it reduces usability so after the novelty has worn off its just annoying to use. I use the 'jump' keyboard to find a title in the list because it will scroll immediately to the first title using the letter I chose with one button press and then I can usually see the item in the list and get to it quickly.
Paul