Entertaining concept video from 1987…reminds me of a simpler version of last year’s Aurora concept video by Adaptive Path, with the collaborative content sharing/creation.

I don’t know whether to be impressed by Apple’s forward thinking, or depressed that we don’t have it yet. The touchscreen only came of age in the past couple years thanks to the iPhone, but voice recognition hasn’t broken out past GPS systems. It’s crazy that something like natural language interaction is so difficult to perfect, when we as humans learn and utilize language so easily.

I’ve been agonizing over what to post first here, but I figure I should just throw something here and get the ball rolling :) So, welcome to UXjam, where I ramble about terrible interactions like the one above, and post and ponder about stuff related to good design. This is the touchscreen interface at Strikes where I went bowling with the iSchool students and staff a few weeks ago. It is a TOUCHSCREEN that makes you use ARROWS to cycle through the options. You can’t just poke one of those big red blocks. I’m assuming at one point there was a keyboard/arrow keys and not a touchscreen, and they just left the same software…and made it work on the touchscreen? But seriously…c’mon people. It’s frustrating enough when pins don’t get counted or need reset — you can’t walk down to the end of the lane and fix them, so the least the system could do is minimize the level of abstraction between the user and the solution. The fewer actions I need to fix a problem and get back to the game, the better. There’s nothing like an aggravating encounter with a touchscreen to throw off my groove. Not to mention, it’s just plain ugly. Some aspect of bowling alleys should always be retro, but that doesn’t mean the computer system has to be. The good ol’ Ephrata Public Library had a better touchscreen for its OPAC when I was in elementary school (mid 90s)…even if the targeting was always misaligned.
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I’ve been agonizing over what to post first here, but I figure I should just throw something here and get the ball rolling :)

So, welcome to UXjam, where I ramble about terrible interactions like the one above, and post and ponder about stuff related to good design.

This is the touchscreen interface at Strikes where I went bowling with the iSchool students and staff a few weeks ago. It is a TOUCHSCREEN that makes you use ARROWS to cycle through the options. You can’t just poke one of those big red blocks. I’m assuming at one point there was a keyboard/arrow keys and not a touchscreen, and they just left the same software…and made it work on the touchscreen?

But seriously…c’mon people. It’s frustrating enough when pins don’t get counted or need reset — you can’t walk down to the end of the lane and fix them, so the least the system could do is minimize the level of abstraction between the user and the solution. The fewer actions I need to fix a problem and get back to the game, the better. There’s nothing like an aggravating encounter with a touchscreen to throw off my groove.

Not to mention, it’s just plain ugly. Some aspect of bowling alleys should always be retro, but that doesn’t mean the computer system has to be. The good ol’ Ephrata Public Library had a better touchscreen for its OPAC when I was in elementary school (mid 90s)…even if the targeting was always misaligned.