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Techno-Follies

Select samples of silliness in the modern world

Consider this page a place to vent. Rant factor may be higher than usual.

Blue LED Blues

These days, almost any electronic device that wants to be modern, flashy and/or gimmicky just has to use blue LEDs somewhere - be it as status indicator, LC display backlight or more or less just for fun. Those implementing them do not always seem to be aware of the implications.

  1. As with a lot of things fashion related, it wears off. The effect may be nice at first, but in the long run it's just lame. Blue LEDs have become common and inexpensive, so in the meantime everyone and their dog use them.
  2. Fashion aside, the blue LED light poses some significant ergonomic issues. It cannot be focused correctly be the human eye, which most obviously shows itself as halos around such light sources in only moderately dark surroundings (to make matters worse, the LEDs usually are plenty bright, too). Blue backlights are equally affected and thus counterproductive when optimum readability is to be ensured (which should be the goal for just about any display).
  3. Bright blue LEDs tend to be placed where they are most disturbing to the user – more thoughtlessly than intentionally, I guess.

As you can see, just because something is flashy and new doesn't mean that it should become standard without further thought.

Some tips for implementation:

  1. Think about what you're doing. This is the first and most important step.
  2. If you do want to use blue LEDs, be conservative with the current. Take a look at a prototype of the product under average to low lighting to ensure the light is not disturbing. I don't want to know how many of the little buggers have ended up being taped over – at least three in this household.
  3. If high efficiency lighting is desired that is easy on the eyes, use amber / orange LEDs. (Green ones are a little behind in terms of radiation, and even the higher eye sensitivity there cannot compensate this. Yellow ones with good efficiency should be available, but personally I don't consider the color to be all too cozy.)
  4. For nighttime use, e.g. clock numerals, I'm a fan of classic red. Perhaps this points to red lighting having been used in subs for good reason?
  5. If you do feel like getting gimmicky, try implementing something useful. Ambient light based brightness controls, for example, are to be seen far too rarely on devices that could use them (and they're nothing new – Grundig used LDR based circuits in clock radios 30 years ago).

Don't give users the blues. Leave halos to saints.

Glossy LCD Panels

This is a classic example of regression being sold as progress. Noone in their right mind would have dared selling a display without even the slightest bit of anti-reflective measures 10, 20 or 30 years ago. These days, you may walk into an electronics store and find that every single notebook computer sold there has a glossy, "glare-type" LCD panel, with only a few expensive samples having some anti-reflective coating (like the Sonys that pioneered this kind of surface).

The classic matte surface is not the be-all and end-all, of course. In the days of CRTs, it was an inexpensive option for greatly reducing reflections on curved surfaces, which are not easily coated precisely at all. It is quite effective, but trades off some contrast by allowing ambient light to be diffusely reflected.

This is why glossy screens can give very good contrast and usually look good during movie playback. The advantage becomes very questionable, however, when the display makes a good mirror and not only shows the user's face, but also any brighter light source in the background during common "office-type" tasks. Accordingly, notebooks with glossy screens tend to be unsuited for outdoor usage, where their matte-screen counterparts remain at least somewhat usable.

Given this, I am absolutely at a loss of an explanation for why glossy panels are so dominant among mobile computer screens these days – if proper anti-reflective coating is too expensive, matte certainly is the better option by far. Now I wouldn't care if at least one had the choice, but alas, you really have to look hard to find matte screens in notebooks targeted at Joe Average. (My dad's new one has a matte screen – it still has a glossy black palm rest that'll attract dirt, but at least offers comprehensive connectivity in return.)

Enigmatic Icons

Sometimes I'm under the impression that the newer the software, the less good the application icons. Today they are more flashy, 3D-ish, colorful and pretty than ever, but frequently also less useful than ever! Why? Well, if we're talking Windows, try identifying an application quickly when switching tasks or in the taskbar. Icons that exhibit low contrast and don't even show a characteristic shape against the usual grey background will lose out pretty badly under these conditions. And among today's hi-color icons, these aren't too uncommon!

Examples (obtained with ResourceHacker):

I know: Designing good icons is not at all easy. You typically need to take care of:

That means just as many versions. All of these have to maintain a characteristic shape and good contrast. Quite a bit of work, and consumed time of course. Good icons, when done commercially, are not cheap! If you need a whole bunch, it could become slightly expensive. In the case of Microsoft, this is likely to be part of the problem – besides, I'd guess that marketing types would take a prettier, but not very functional icon set over one that is not as flashy, but does far better in all-day life any day of the week. Things that are pretty but impractical always sell, while those with continued value may need a little more explanation – and long-term thinking currently is out of fashion anyway.

Mysterious Menu Operation on Monitors

Well, the menus themselves tend to be more or less self-explanatory, but navigation with the associated buttons (even when those are easy to find and identify and have a reasonable size, which is not always the case) can be frustrating. For example, I always have trouble with those vertically arranged menus that you find on many less expensive models, apparently BenQ OEM'd. (My Samsung 191T's menu by comparison is a joy to navigate.)

Stupid Rubber Buttons on Measurement Gear

With measurement gear having a price tag comfortably in the 5-digit range, you can usually rely on it being built like the proverbial tank – solid metal chassis, die-cast front, pretty much like it was 20 years ago. Well, almost. There is just one little thing that drives me up the wall: Instead of having good old mechanical key switches for buttons, the current crop of devices typically uses primitive chiclet keys. It is probably cheaper, allows more flexibility in terms of button sizing and shape and reduces height internally, but the result is very mushy-feeling and imprecise – in other words, from a user perspective it's junk. (A button press might not register, or even register twice, which on some devices can make the software hiccup.) It feels very cheap, too. Now would anyone consider equipping a car (which costs about the same) with a flimsy little plastic steering wheel from a children's toy car? I don't think so.

Interestingly enough, a large number of such devices are manufactured right here in ol' Germany (both Agilent and R&S), and there certainly is no shortage of switch manufacturers here, quite the contrary.

Therefore, if you are in charge of developing a front panel for such a device, please consider using mechanical keyswitches, at least for the softkeys. (On the R&S FSUP that I used, for example, there was no obvious way of performing their functions when using an external keyboard.)

Bus User Gripes

Since I am dependent on public transport, I see quite a few different buses, predominantly Mercedes-Benz' or Setras of highly varying vintage. (Interestingly, my favs are models that seem to be about 25 years old.) The newer ones in particular have a few user interface issues as well:

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Created: 2008-03-16
Last modified: 2010-05-17