by Phil Patton (writes about design and cars for the New York Times)
Don't call it a comeback: Knobs could save infotainment.
I like knobs. Steve Jobs liked knobs. John Varvatos, the fashion designer with his own Chrysler 300 edition, likes knobs. In fact, Varvatos has created what might be thought of as a temple dedicated to knobs. In his New York store, occupying the former CBGB’s, the legendary punk bar on the Bowery, he displays a prime collection of 1960s and 1970s audio equipment with large, brushed-metal knobs, solid as the turrets of Admiral Dewey’s battleships, faces gleaming with ever-shifting reflections. Touch the knobs on such equipment and they convey to the fingers a solid feel, light but sure. Turning carefully calibrated knobs can be immensely satisfying. They have the quality we are searching for and find largely missing in the many interfaces in our lives. We want the same happy relationship of finger to surface in a touch screen, say, as we swipe and pinch or drag and zoom. No wonder the knob is making a comeback. Especially in the complex infotainment systems where voice and touch have come up short, knobs are back. Ford executive Joe Hinrichs recently said he would fix the much maligned MyFord Touch with more knobs. Steve Jobs, who of course put a knob on the original iPod (Apple called it a “scroll wheel”), was also a big fan of the stereo equipment on display at Varvatos—those huge units from Pioneer, Marantz, and McIntosh, with big two- or three-inch knobs that could be tuned precisely. Jobs loved stereo equipment, and legend holds that McIntosh, along with the apple, was one of the inspirations for the Macintosh name. However, the ultimate knob experts may be Audi’s knob gnomes, researchers who are part of the company’s haptics team, which focuses on sensory—especially touch—experiences, in Ingolstadt, Germany.
The knob gnomes are proof that car knobs have become more than simple utilitarian controls; they are now elements of brand differentiation. Jaguar’s shift knob rises dramatically from the console on startup, and Audi is proud of what it calls the “Audi click.” The lab guys can show you on a machine the exact resistance that makes for the Audi click (it’s really a double click). Getting a knob’s feel right would seem easy, but after visiting Audi, other vehicle knobs suddenly felt sticky or mushy. A good knob can be as satisfying as precise steering or well-balanced brakes, while a bad one ruins the experience.
Knob design is part of the haptics discipline. The sense of touch depends on several different kinds of nerves. Each is named for a scientist; Ruffini endings and Merkel mechanoreceptors convey pressure and texture, for example, and Meissner’s corpuscles offer information from a lighter touch while Pacinian corpuscles, located deeper beneath the surface, require more pressure. But measuring the responses of these nerves is difficult. “Haptics are difficult to express in numbers. Haptic evaluation is very subjective,” explains Audi’s Johann Schneider, director of the company’s lab. The goal is for the driver to immediately feel comfortable and have a sense of precision. The knob team tries to define such elements as ease of motion, well-defined end stops, uniform actuation sound, and clear feedback. “You won’t be able to please every customer,” says Schneider’s colleague, Manfred Mittermeier. “Actuation haptics and operating acoustics are usually perceived subconsciously. If we achieve 80 percent, that means we have a very good concept.”
People often speak of good controls as intuitive, but that usually means they follow familiar patterns. Although a knob’s operation generally needs no explaining, it is not an especially apt control tool for every job. In his classic 1959 text, The Measure of Man and Woman: Human Factors in Design, designer Henry Dreyfuss states that the input device needs to fit the nature of the input. He advocated one- or two-inch knobs for selecting amounts of things or quantities. Push buttons are better for choosing among discrete entities, such as park and reverse.
Even so, knobs in cars are taking over new functions. Ram is very proud of its dashboard shifter knob and highlights it in television ads. Car knobs are indirect evolutions of stereo knobs, and are, in part, based on the turn-and-push knobs devised by the late legendary designer David Lewis for Bang & Olufsen electronics. He told me once that he first devised these knobs for a 1960s audio project, inspired by the big knobs already on stereo equipment, but placed flush with the surface and equipped with a “dimple” for fingertip control. “That tactile feedback of turning and clicking is reassuring,” Lewis said. “The idea was to concentrate many functions in one button.”
The best interfaces, he said, are those based on years of familiarity. “We were building on established conventions that were known and understood, going back to the early telephone.” Considering that today’s handheld phones are often nothing but a screen, tomorrow’s knobs will have to be good if they are to survive.
Phil Patton
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