108
You are totally right
As with many other devices (eg the QWERTY keyboard) the hot/cold tap persists not because it's the most usable design, but because of:
Cost since proper temperature control requires an electromechanical feedback loop design, or calibrated thermostatic valves which needs to be periodically adjusted or replaced. This drives up the cost ...
39
In an actual plane, the steering column isn't really pulled up or down. Instead the pilot pushes the steering wheel or joystick away to dive, and pulls it towards him to pull up. Same goes for games which you control with a joystick. You push it away to go forward, and back to go backward.
This forward and backward motion is most probably why inverted ...
33
I suppose it's mostly a question of how much money you want to invest into your fittings. In most cases you'll have one pipe for hot and one for cold water. The knobs then just open and close those pipes – I can hardly think of any easier / cheaper solution. However there are actually different solutions that do exactly what you describe:
Visiting Canada ...
25
Very few isometric games have a keyboard control scheme.
The few I remember playing that used the arrow keys to move treated a single key as an orthogonal direction. To get diagonal movement you needed to press two keys like down and right. Some even mapped all 8 surrounding squares to the numbers on the keypad (except 5) so you had a full range of motion. (...
22
The interfaces may look very similar to you, but they are constantly evolving, and have been refined for many years. Firefox in particular is very open about their UX process, and how they rely on user telemetry to understand how people use their browser. They don't simply copy features. They try to understand their users.
In the early days, browsers could ...
20
An isometric view of a game doesn't have to be presented as a symmetric view.
For example PacMania is pacman with a pseudo-3D isometric view, but still lets you use the left-right, up-down keys without ambiguity in their direction.
19
I can honestly say I have never seen a shower that has separate hot/cold knobs like you describe, and I've lived everywhere up and down both the east and west US coast.
Every shower I've ever seen has two concentric wheels. The inner one controls temperature while the outer one controls pressure.
Here's what they look like (although the labels around the ...
18
Working as a sound designer in the games industry the response I have get from most programmers regarding this is that they simply don't realise that linear volume scaling is wrong. Once shown the difference they are converts (I've seen this multiple times).
It's an incredibly easy (one line) fix that will make your controls feel significantly nicer and ...
16
Here is a nice explanation from What Grinds My Gears:
Flight simulators were one of the first three-dimensional PC games where the mouse could be used as a controller, to control the orientation of the camera (in other words, the airplane). The most natural mapping of the mouse axes to control the "aircraft" was, of course, to simulate the movement of the ...
15
The top of panels is usually reserved for controls over the panel itself, not the content of the panel.
For instance, in your example you have the Full Screen icon in the top-right, which at a glance is strikingly similar to the close 'X' icon that would dismiss the panel altogether.
Also, out of context it's hard to tell whether it'd work. As a single ...
13
There's no official pattern name for it but the NN/g termed it as "False Floors". They've written an article on it and have discussed how this practice leads to bad UX as it does not naturally encourage the users to scroll. Good designs shouldn't need an arrow to tell users to scroll. To quote from the article:
When pages of any size offer little content ...
12
Hot and cold knobs work great, and everyone intuitively understands that turning the knob makes more water come out, ie more water pressure. The practical reason is it gives maximum control with the fewest parts. Also, the range for usable water pressure is not very large, and dedicating an entire knob to it seems to be a waste. Your solution would require ...
12
If you want it to be intuitive then you could be a bit clever about it.
Add an item into the level a few squares away from them, and tell them to "Using The Arrow Keys, Move Forward Towards The Macguffin"
Then whatever button they use to do this is the one you map to that direction.
That way you're matching their own mental model of how the navigation ...
10
All similar systems ultimately converge to the most optimum solution. It's happened with browsers, text editors, IDEs. You'll find that very few tend to deviate drastically from the norm. This extends to real world entities as well. TV's, Phones, etc.
The more drastic your deviation from the similar-system norms, the more steep the learning curve for your ...
10
They don't any more. They used to because it is the most mechanically simple implementation of temperature control. However, this is only historical.
None of the other answers mention the legalities of this. The International Building Code (what most US local codes are modeled on these days) mandates that all new shower controls must be temperature ...
9
Its a question of design consistency as people will migrate from one browser from another and if the browsers have similar icons and functionalities and user flows, the learning curve will be relatively lesser.
To quote this article
Consistent representation of these objects means the user recognizes them for > what they are when encountered. Consider ...
9
What names are there?
Microsoft calls this a List Builder. As does the 2006 book 'Designing Interfaces' by O'Reilly.
Google calls this in Material Design UI a "transfer list" (or "shuttle").
OpenFaces (an AJAX based component library) calls this TwoListSelection.
Virtuosoft has a couple variations on what they call Dual Listbox. Codeplex also has a ...
8
Without knowing the full details I would think of a common pagination like
< 5 / 23 >
The previous/next arrows should be bigger than the text - and touchable. Although the swipe still should be the main interaction to go from one page to the other.
I guess this would make things perfectly clear. Although you'll loose the option to directly jump to a ...
8
As a leftie myself, I would challenge your assertion that game controlers are left handed.
Lifting your finger / thumb off the game pad to press different buttons requires more dexterity than holding your thumb on the joystick / direction pad. The joystick movements have direct visual feedback on the screen as you turn around, helping you to make ...
7
Accordions
What Problem Does This Solve?
When there are too many items to fit into a limited space or when the number of items, if displayed all at once, would overwhelm the user, then the question is how to give the user access to all of the items in digestible chunks and without requiring scrolling, which can remove the user from the context or page ...
7
The short answer
Simply use labels.
The long answer
If you are to design anything based on future possibilities, you will never finish a design, because possibilities are endless.
There are basically 3 design approaches (UX or software):
Throwaway (revolutionary)
When you have little understanding of the problem (high level of uncertainty)
You design ...
7
It's a splitter and pane…
The draggable control itself is a splitter, of one kind or another. The separate space that is created by dragging the splitter usually called a pane or sometimes a panel. To confirm that this is the kind of interaction you meant to describe, have a look at these samples: Telerik example or DevExpress example. There are other ...
7
Instead of asking "why shouldn't I?", ask "why should I?".
Currently the de-facto standard is to put the timeline at the bottom. Changing this will cause mental friction, so you've got to have a good reason not to follow standards. If you have a good enough reason, then yes, maybe, maybe, move it up. But consider alternative solutions first.
Why do you ...
6
The answer is simple. There is no "ergonomics", "fatigue" and other speculation. When Sony made a gamepad for original PlayStation - its design was patented. Therefore, Microsoft had no choice but to change the design a little in order not to get a lawsuit. That's all. The PlayStation console exists for 7 years longer than the Xbox and no one has complained ...
6
In aviation this is called a "trim tab" or a "trim wheel":
In this context, it is used to adjust control surfaces (commonly the elevator), so that the "hands-off" pitch of the aircraft is maintained at the angle the pilot wants.
Another, probably more universally familiar context, are classic hand-held transistor radios:
On a ...
6
I have always heard them called "splash screens" (especially on mobile). I think the traditional splash screen doesn't include the down arrow but this site includes many examples that include them.
http://line25.com/articles/web-design-trend-showcase-splash-screen-revival
Modern examples of splash screens are built right into the main page, filling the ...
5
You can have a tri-state button.
Simple and easy to understand.
5
Don't think about it as tapping on the ON part or OFF part of the switch, think of it as one single switch. Since it is a toggle, tapping or clicking on any part of the toggle switch should change the status. The important thing here is to clearly display the current state using word or color so user will know, at a glance, the state of the setting.
...
5
I've always been a fan of this approach. It's easy for the user to see that one decreases, the other increases. They also aren't tasked with choosing from a large variety of font sizes or fiddling with getting a slider exactly where they want it. This is essentially option 3 but with iconography that directly relates to what the user can expect upon taking ...
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