Norman Zune
What do the Zune's clickwheel and this door handle have in common? They both offer misleading cues about function. Gave the Zune a spin last week at a retail store, and turns out the clickwheel doesn't spin -- it's merely a 4-way button under the guise of a touch-sensitive clickwheel ala iPod. It's neither touch-sensitive nor wheel. Discuss.
Comments and faves
westerndave (67 months ago | reply)
lol... what are they thinking? well i know what they are thinking... 'if it looks like an ipod, maybe people will think it's just as cool and work like an ipod. suckers!' anyone have any sales data on the zune?
Marko Mihelcic (67 months ago | reply)
:D
jaredigital (67 months ago | reply)
I played with one over the weekend, too. The wheel design is very misleading, and the topic seems to be gaining traction (seen it mentioned a couple other places).
Sadly, my car stereo has an equally misleading interface in the form of the volume knob; the knob turns, but it "clicks" into preset volume "notches" instead of allowing granular volume adjustment. Quite annoying.
Cameron Moll (67 months ago | reply)
Oooo, how I share your hatred for volume notches!
climbingfiend (67 months ago | reply)
mapping and affordance = good design. Apple gets why the click wheel works. Others don't. Poor design ensues ad nauseum...
SagPipe (66 months ago | reply)
These are designs forced on us by well-meaning designers. Remember the sliding volume control from 70's era Hi-Fi's? They were good for mixing consoles, but scary when bumping up the volume in the car.
The loudness selector, by the way, is the worst example of a forced design. A rheostat makes more sense for this feature and gives the user smoother transitions to volume. I think Yamaha was the first to do this.
Jan Brašna (66 months ago | reply)
Car stereos ... well ... usual suspects ... Every newer model of Sony Xplōd has worse and worse interface, e.g. a clicking volume knob to access settings, instead of common on/off switch. Not even talking about various buttons randomly laid out like the ones for changing music sources, playback mode or switching the whole thing off.
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