Miniaturization and the human factor

By now the story is familiar: the electronics industry continues its unabated quest to make products smaller and more functional. This means tiny displays, ICs with more gates, and sensors that you can barely see on your fingertip. Thanks to this continuing frenzy of product development, we can listen to music on our portable CD or MP3 player, yap away on cell phones, and log onto the Internet through PDAs and laptops. Sounds great.

Today's smaller, increasingly sophisticated electronic devices perform many functions, but often present ergonomic challenges.

I have a beef, however. All of these consumer electronic devices seem to pack more buttons and displays than ever. Navigating these controls is an exercise in dexterity and–occasionally–frustration. For instance, my Nokia 5160 cell phone presents an array of tiny buttons that require a firm press to operate. More often than not, I wind up pressing buttons several times in order to make a call in a hurry–even to call preprogrammed numbers. Having relatively thin fingers doesn't help that much. Moreover, it's not fun to read the phone's tiny alphanumeric display in poor ambient lighting. Sometimes I wonder if the phone has a mind of its own: leaving the phone on and storing it in a shirt or jacket pocket often results in several buttons being accidentally pressed and ready to call someone. Go figure. If today's cell phones present such challenges, what will happen when phones with Internet access become commonplace? Do I really want to scroll up and down and strain to see the tiny display of a wireless Web phone? My quibbles are not just confined to portable and wireless products. Recently, I purchased a new VCR to replace an eight-year old model that can no longer be programmed. This new VCR's remote presents a complicated maze of buttons, many of them controlling multiple functions. Sure, the functions are explained in the owner's manual (Yes, I still read the manual), but it's all too easy to activate the wrong function on the remote. Sometimes the human hand just does the opposite of what the human brain tells it to do. In short, all this product miniaturization sometimes presents a mixed blessing as far as product ease of use is concerned. Because speech recognition does not appear to be making rapid strides into many electronic consumer products, it looks like displays, switches, and pushbuttons will continue to be predominant in the foreseeable future. I just hope product designers realize that there are human hands of all shapes and sizes and human eyes with various vision acuities interfacing on a daily basis with the products they design. Spencer Chin, Senior Editor