Is Bandwidth/memory depth a waste of money in oscilloscopes?

[Specmaster]

It's a massive advantage if at least one person in the design team actually have used scopes so that they have a good knowledge of commonly used controls within each section so that they can be ergonomically positioned close to each other within their respective functional group.

Before you do any of that you have to think whether or not a twisty-push-knob is a good way to navigate menus.

And especially if a twisty-knob without detents is a good way to navigate menus (I believe the encoder they use has a detent option, most of them do)

Detent are a must have in that situation, no excuses.

[rsjsouza]

To note, user studies don't always have a positive correlation with a successful UI. We spent lots of money finding that out. I have done a lot of user interface stuff in the past and also discovered that.

Knowing the problem domain and people's workflows and all the horrible things competitors do that make people want to gouge their own eyes out gets you a lot further.  Make the common tasks fast and in your face. Make the less common tasks discoverable. Visual cues everywhere. Consistency and colour. Even the size of UI elements is important.

Lest you end up with some fucked up shit like windows 8 was.

That's one of the reasons it's a complicated matter. There isn't a guaranteed route to success and things aren't always what they seem. Humans are a fickle lot. It a nasty mess of psychology combined with past experiences, worn in behaviour and many other factors.

In the earlier years of the feature phone there was for example quite a noticeable difference between Asian and Western phones. Just a different design approach based on different expectations.

I think you nailed it, especially the past experiences and worn in behaviour. Based on how my kids are naturally adapted to touch screens, I suspect the newer generations would probably be very uncomfortable at the number of buttons in your combiscope and would much rather have a mix between a touch interface (for channel selections,  and pinch zoom, for example) and a lot less buttons or even a keypad (for more accurate settings, for example).

The manufacturers have been migrating towards touch interfaces not without reason - the demand will surely be there.

[David Hess]

To note, user studies don't always have a positive correlation with a successful UI. We spent lots of money finding that out. I have done a lot of user interface stuff in the past and also discovered that.

Knowing the problem domain and people's workflows and all the horrible things competitors do that make people want to gouge their own eyes out gets you a lot further.  Make the common tasks fast and in your face. Make the less common tasks discoverable. Visual cues everywhere. Consistency and colour. Even the size of UI elements is important.

Lest you end up with some fucked up shit like windows 8 was.

That's one of the reasons it's a complicated matter. There isn't a guaranteed route to success and things aren't always what they seem. Humans are a fickle lot. It a nasty mess of psychology combined with past experiences, worn in behaviour and many other factors.

In the earlier years of the feature phone there was for example quite a noticeable difference between Asian and Western phones. Just a different design approach based on different expectations.

I think you nailed it, especially the past experiences and worn in behaviour. Based on how my kids are naturally adapted to touch screens, I suspect the newer generations would probably be very uncomfortable at the number of buttons in your combiscope and would much rather have a mix between a touch interface (for channel selections,  and pinch zoom, for example) and a lot less buttons or even a keypad (for more accurate settings, for example).

The situation is more complicated than that.  Touch interfaces are great for portable devices where interface area is limited but also trade performance for flexibility.  They take more time and effort to accomplish the same thing once a user becomes experienced.  For instance contrast a keyboard centric user interface versus mouse and keyboard.  Adding a touch screen makes things even slower.  Newer users lack experience with older interfaces so do not know what they are missing.

The manufacturers have been migrating towards touch interfaces not without reason - the demand will surely be there.

Touch interfaces have their own problems including smudged screens, screen glare, and poor feedback.  And then there is the gorilla arm issue in some applications.

[bd139]

Have to agree with touch screens being bad. They’re imprecise, impossible to use unless you are directly focused on the element you are trying to manipulate, don’t work if they’re not relatively clean and the elements have to be very large comparatively as instantaneous positioning is difficult.

A large insurance company here recently switched their front office mobile sales over to iPads. They’re back on laptops again already after only 9 months because the mistakes that are being made are slightly terrible.

[rsjsouza]

Oh yeah, I don't disagree with both of you - I am not discussing the pros and cons of one interface over the other and I grew (and prefer) using "non-virtual/mechanical" UIs as well. However, that doesn't mean this change will never happen - in my opinion and experience it certainly will change to cater to the preference of the majority, which is quickly moving towards touchscreen.

In my opinion, if left to the manufacturers alone, a touch screen would be the ideal interface as it reduces the material costs of ever shrinking profit margins. That, tied to an ever growing population completely familiar with touchscreens, will set the trend towards less buttons. It may not become an HP's "single button" product line of the 1980's/1990's, but it is certainly being reduced with offers with shared controls and functions per button, which are tolerated by more and more customers. 

[Mr. Scram]

No, that's how you make horrible things like Windoiws8/10, or justify your high consultancy fees.

A lot of user interface design is simple common sense.

A lot of engineering is common sense. That doesn't mean you can just slap a bridge together. Neither good engineering nor good UX design tend to happen by accident, to paraphrase GeorgeOfTheJungle.

[KaneTW]

UI design is not as easy as just using common sense, and it's a really bad misconception many software engineers have. Good UI design is hard.

I like the touchscreen interface on my RTB2004, but I'm also paying appropriately for the quality.

[nctnico]

Have to agree with touch screens being bad. They’re imprecise, impossible to use unless you are directly focused on the element you are trying to manipulate, don’t work if they’re not relatively clean and the elements have to be very large comparatively as instantaneous positioning is difficult.

A large insurance company here recently switched their front office mobile sales over to iPads. They’re back on laptops again already after only 9 months because the mistakes that are being made are slightly terrible.

I disagree with you. I'm a product of the early 70's but I like touch screens IF the UI has been designed for a touch screen. Slapping a touch screen onto a UI designed for a mouse is a recipy for dissaster. However if you look at the MicSig tBook and R&S RTB2000/RTM3000 then the touch screen makes a lot of sense because the UI has be optimised for it. On the R&S scopes the physical buttons are kinda redundant.

[David Hess]

A lot of interfaces suffer that fate when they move into the larger consumer space.  We face the Eternal September of test equipment.  HP was just tragically ahead of their time being courageous.

Yes, I just compared Rigol and Apple to AOL. 

No, that's how you make horrible things like Windoiws8/10, or justify your high consultancy fees.

A lot of user interface design is simple common sense.

Doesn't interface design fall under human factors engineering?  Wasn't there a classic book written on the subject?

Microsoft and Apple have been throwing a lot of basic interface principles under the bus for the sake of unifying desktop and portable interfaces.  This was just a bad idea and they should feel bad for attempting it.

Apple had already lost the desktop market so they had nothing to lose but Microsoft tried to use their desktop dominance to leverage a position in portable devices.  That was great for a majority of new consumers but it sucks for people who want to get actual work done and I expect eventually that part of the market to split off and tell Apple and Microsoft to fuck off.  They certainly are not going to release an interface catering to these people despite them encompassing the entire desktop/workstation using population for a long time.

A lot of engineering is common sense. That doesn't mean you can just slap a bridge together. Neither good engineering nor good UX design tend to happen by accident, to paraphrase GeorgeOfTheJungle.

Oddly enough, I know how to slap a working bridge together with common sense.  Masonry does not produce an efficient bridge but that is why the Romans were able to do it without engineering.  Modern engineering is about building efficient structures and the same might be said about modern product design but efficient for whom?

I laugh now every time I see some product with a stylishly curved enclosure.  That is code for "don't stack this because our thermal engineering sucks".

[Mr. Scram]

Obviously completely off-topic, but what makes you think Romans didn't engineer their structures? Things like aqueducts are actually remarkably efficient considering the available technology at the time, although they also developed various technologies we still use or use again today. Concrete is a well known example of an invention lost to time and reinvented later. They may not have know how to calculate things like we do today, but they certainly had a more than trivial understanding of how forces are distributed in structures and how different materials react to pressure and tension.

[nctnico]

Oddly enough, I know how to slap a working bridge together with common sense.  Masonry does not produce an efficient bridge but that is why the Romans were able to do it without engineering.

Hold your horses here. I'm very sure the Romans used engineering (=math + limits based on materials testing) to build their buildings. Unfortunately very little of the knowledge has been preserved so what we are left with are a huge amount of buildings. There are lots of buildings from the Roman era which still stand today and that is not by chance. Some still hold world records for their size and type of construction.

[David Hess]

Masonry is one of the few examples of a building material which can be used to scale up structures without regard to the square-cube law because it is orders of magnitude stronger in compression than its crush limit.  So the Romans did not need to know how masonry reacts to pressure; they could build a model and scale up.  But this same construction technique is inefficient which is why Roman structures lasted so long.

They figured out how to keep the center of gravity within their structures by trial and error like the Egyptians figured out the unstable slope angle.  No engineering was needed.

[Mr. Scram]

Masonry is one of the few examples of a building material which can be used to scale up structures without regard to the square-cube law because it is orders of magnitude stronger in compression than its crush limit.  So the Romans did not need to know how masonry reacts to pressure; they could build a model and scale up.  But this same construction technique is inefficient which is why Roman structures lasted so long.

They figured out how to keep the center of gravity within their structures by trial and error like the Egyptians figured out the unstable slope angle.  No engineering was needed.

You do need to understand how forces work to make arches work, especially when used in large numbers next to each other. There are some very amusing Gothic churches that show what happens when the understanding isn't quite right, and quite a few more that didn't survive. Of course, Romans also built with marble, concrete and various other materials. The Roman waterworks also involved a lot more than just arches, including underground high pressure pipework. It's hard to overestimate their knowledge of materials and their application.

Besides, building models is engineering too. Things like sky scrapers, racing cars and boat hulls are tested in model form today. Until very recently, this was pretty much the only way to do it.

[David Hess]

You do need to understand how forces work to make arches work, especially when used in large numbers next to each other. There are some very amusing Gothic churches that show what happens when the understanding isn't quite right, and quite a few more that didn't survive.

One of my mechanical engineering books has a great photograph of bent columns at Salisbury Cathedral; just looking at it makes my hair stand up.  They got lucky.

Besides, building models is engineering too. Things like sky scrapers, racing cars and boat hulls are tested in model form today. Until very recently, this was pretty much the only way to do it.

It is different when you only have to worry about compression and your material of choice will never crush.  That leaves keeping the center of gravity within the structural elements but the Romans never figured that out and limited themselves to arches (And domes?  I forget but domes have their own problem.) which work great and scaling up models which works when crush strength is not an issue.  You could build a sky scraper out of stone but it would be awfully heavy.

[Mr. Scram]

One of my mechanical engineering books has a great photograph of bent columns at Salisbury Cathedral; just looking at it makes my hair stand up.  They got lucky.

It is different when you only have to worry about compression and your material of choice will never crush.  That leaves keeping the center of gravity within the structural elements but the Romans never figured that out and limited themselves to arches (And domes?  I forget but domes have their own problem.) which work great and scaling up models which works when crush strength is not an issue.  You could build a sky scraper out of stone but it would be awfully heavy.

They built domes for sure. The Pantheon is a massive concrete dome that stands until this day. It's was the largest dome in the world for 1300 years and it's still the largest unreinforced concrete dome in existence. They used different concrete mixes for different parts of the dome to optimize strength versus weight. It's also built progressively thinner as it gets taller, despite the inside being basically a perfect sphere and seemingly decorative patterns on the inside further lighten the dome without compromising strength.

All this doesn't point towards and "build 'm heavy and build 'm high" approach. It suggests the builders were very aware of the fact that a heavy monolithic dome wouldn't survive and they expertly applied their knowledge to lighten the structure as much as was needed. Even if they got lucky, it shows that they were very much aware of the different structural properties of various materials.