Eight press, even cook.

Stove, microwave, radio alarm clock, camera - which was filmed earlier, you must now often tap. A step backwards! Knobs are faster and more intuitive to use - but slightly more expensive.
  The kitchen of my old office looked like any well, the graphic artists and editors to share: In the mold of forgotten fridge yogurt, the mold is not always disappeared back to anger the owners, and of course the manual was missing the microwave. And so did at least clean, unused because it was impossible without an instruction set the cooking time.

The chic silver Heizriese had only controls a lot of small black buttons on the front? how to time and temperature setting, remains without a cryptic instructions.
There is, but since the first tube radios an ingenious, intuitively control approach to values such as volume, temperature, frequency or time interval: knobs. It immediately detects the direction in which they are to rotate and can sometimes very fast and then very slowly and carefully.
A high on the knob!
The computer scientists Andreas Butz media, in whose chair at the University of Munich and the usability of IT equipment will be explored, praises the advantages of rotary knobs: "They are faster to use, provide direct visual and haptic feedback and support existing conceptual models of mechanical times. "
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Butz is itself at the key operation of a microwave failed. The usability expert had a device with six buttons, display and menu system purchased. He says: "After I accidentally evening twice the clock to zero and had had to restart, I have it back the next morning and met a model with two rotary knobs purchased one for power and one for the time." How easy to operate this device is, you notice that this one sentence is enough to the operating principle to understand.
Scientists fail on ceramic stove
Zugucken rearing and, as the clock zurückläuft until it makes Ping - so simple can that be. Yet even now disappear on the electric stove knobs. Some ceramic hobs, for example, can have touch-sensitive buttons control. That has an advantage: it no longer needs the rotary switch plates match - next to each hob, the corresponding switch.
RSS: NEW RELEASES BY FEEDFehlfunktion - Technology Macken, the millions of nerve-click the icon. The browser allows you to the RSS feed to add. to help ... The major disadvantage of this approach control I felt so than me on a stove in an apartment the pasta water überkochte, the buttons only reacted with mild delay and the temperature slowly, step for step, keystroke for keystroke lowered, while me the boiling water splashed on the fingers.
This stove buttons, although paralyzed, but at least understandable. Microsoft programmer Tom Hollander complains that the keys stove in his new apartment at the first attempt proved as unbedienbar - "I, I could not even turn on or one of the symbols on the keys to decipher without the manual to read."
Buttons cost slightly less
That requires a programmer who regularly talks about his complex discipline holds. Hollander says the operating problems this way: "This is one of the flock with a completely smooth surface without a rotary switch. He has a number of flat keys, with symbols to remind me of nothing."
The final verdict of the scientist over his stove: "He cooks very well, but if you need eight buttons touches to the plate on the bottom right medium heat to make something is wrong."
The same complaints heard and read about many devices for which the keys have replaced knobs:
Clock radio, where you felt three hands need to alarm, and radio and then save. Monitors, where brightness and contrast with earlier own rotary switches adjust ließen.Anspruchsvollere digital compact cameras, which can trim the number and exposure time manually - with controls such as mini-joystick on the camera back, the noticeably slower than with a simple dial.
Buttons or button? The question is on the Web by users with any device fiercely debated anew. Butz media scientist proposes a compromise: "buttons and switches for selection, buttons for setting values."
What really speaks against buttons?
Butz: "They are slightly more expensive." And at the precise keys are fine-tuning some small knob on. And above all knobs are now even slightly. For small appliances is a real problem, says Torsten jaw of the usability consultant Sirvaluse: "buttons can be on these devices such as MP3 players and mobile phones much easier to integrate."
As an interim solution to miss manufacturer technology dwarfs meanwhile intermediate solutions such as the Click Wheel or switch. Odd that we are now on MP3 players, but not in microwaves and electric stoves found.
Butz scientist has his keys microwave the next day brought back into the business. Since then he has the device exchanges with the two rotary knobs - "I'm so happy."
WHAT YOU TECHNIKÄRGERNIS annoying? WRITE TO U.S.! Hidden Einschaltknöpfe, confusing instructions, crazy machines - in the series "malfunction" we follow Technikärgernisse in bulk to the millions of nerves. Send us your suggestions with a short explanatory note. The best e-mail.