I work in the pro audio world, and have had many opportunities over the years to participate in the design review process for multiple synthesizer musical instruments.
One of the most common issues that gets people riled up is Fitts Law:
It seems that many synth UI designers have small, thin, bony fingers, and overlook the issues that comes from having knobs placed too close together. They like to design tight, compact, "valuable looking" knob panels, and I like to inform them that these designs are nonsense and some consideration should be given to the spacing of things.
This has an impact on the end user with fat fingers, since moving one knob should not provide the opportunity to accidentally 'bump' or 'jog' another adjacent knob - there simply has to be space to allow for market finger types.
(In spite of the fact that these are mostly German designers, asking them to review their designs in the context of automative controls, has been a herculean effort.)
So one of my favourite toys in my arsenal when confronted with a new, fresh-faced designer full of impactful and dense design ideas, is an Arduino with an LCD display attached to a breadboard, and 4 movable knobs which can be placed in an approximation of the design. I wrote a tool that displays a UI with a fine-tune parameter, and whenever I get a chance I lay out the knobs using the designers intended dimensions, and ask them to fine-tune the parameter.
If they can do it one-handed without bumping other knobs (and thus triggering the :P emoji and siren noise), they get a pass and a check-mark on their design doc.
If, however, their dimensions make it impossible to move only a single knob, they get a little :P mark on their review documents, and my designer-killer tool gets put back in the drawer for another day.
I will have to review this toy for the context of display-in-control style interfaces in the future, it seems ..
One of the most common issues that gets people riled up is Fitts Law:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law
It seems that many synth UI designers have small, thin, bony fingers, and overlook the issues that comes from having knobs placed too close together. They like to design tight, compact, "valuable looking" knob panels, and I like to inform them that these designs are nonsense and some consideration should be given to the spacing of things.
This has an impact on the end user with fat fingers, since moving one knob should not provide the opportunity to accidentally 'bump' or 'jog' another adjacent knob - there simply has to be space to allow for market finger types.
(In spite of the fact that these are mostly German designers, asking them to review their designs in the context of automative controls, has been a herculean effort.)
So one of my favourite toys in my arsenal when confronted with a new, fresh-faced designer full of impactful and dense design ideas, is an Arduino with an LCD display attached to a breadboard, and 4 movable knobs which can be placed in an approximation of the design. I wrote a tool that displays a UI with a fine-tune parameter, and whenever I get a chance I lay out the knobs using the designers intended dimensions, and ask them to fine-tune the parameter.
If they can do it one-handed without bumping other knobs (and thus triggering the :P emoji and siren noise), they get a pass and a check-mark on their design doc.
If, however, their dimensions make it impossible to move only a single knob, they get a little :P mark on their review documents, and my designer-killer tool gets put back in the drawer for another day.
I will have to review this toy for the context of display-in-control style interfaces in the future, it seems ..