@paco The idea that human beings navigate the world by sight alone has caused so many accidents. Touch navigation (shape coding) was codified after a spate of mysterious B-17 runway crashes, found to be caused by two controls - one to be used during landing & the other decidedly not - looking identical & being right next to each other. Adding a tactile identifier to each stopped the crash epidemic in its tracks, but not until a guy had the idea of sitting behind the pilots & observing them.
@jwcph @paco Oh, there's been more than a few aircraft types where the initial designs caused the pilot to grab one control and mistake it for another. IIRC the Bristol Blenheim had three identical hydraulic valves to activate the undercarriage, flaps, and gun turret (it couldn't power more than one of those system at a time), which were "conveniently located behind the pilot's elbow". And the Airbus A320 models has four knobs to operate the autopilot, which today have distinctive shapes - the early models they were similar shapes and there were some crashes where the pilot turned the wrong one
@jackeric @paco Considering that we KNOW THESE THINGS & in some cases have known them for ages, the world is disturbingly good at crapping out dangerously badly-designed user interfaces anyway... https://www.cracked.com/article_19776_6-disasters-caused-by-poorly-designed-user-interfaces.html
@jwcph @paco From my own experience making little control boards for hobby projects - I can say it is drastically simpler and more flexible for the designer to provide a touchscreen, or a screen plus a d-pad, rather than a bunch of discrete and single-purpose switches and buttons and status lights.
With discrete components you need to do the whole design up front, mount and wire all the components (or design a bespoke circuit board to hold them), and making changes becomes a pain in the neck.
Vs a touchscreen, it's just the one component, you can do all the config in software, and it's pretty easy to make changes
(or even easier still: provide nothing except a web page the user accesses with their phone!)
However what's convenient for the designer/manufacturer works out to be awful for the user. Any kind of screen-based control, I need to look at the screen to be sure I'm using it correctly. Vs discrete controls I can operate with muscle memory and touch while my eyes stay on the road!