Analog humans in an increasingly digital world

Portable Design March, 2005
Author(s) : Craig Vachon

With digital media/content expanding exponentially and new delivery devices evolving faster than pre-Cambrian life forms, it’s a truism that digital technology reigns supreme. Although it sounds like modern heresy, in some applications, digital technology is less potent than an older, less hip, predecessor technology: analog. The trend toward digital hegemony is unquestionable. Yet there’s a simple fact often overlooked: We are not digital. Human beings are analog creatures who interact with our environment through means honed over millennia of evolution. We interact with technology using sight, sound, and touch to access and control the glut of information increasingly inherent in our world.

Unfortunately, the devices that deliver this content don’t reflect this fact. When it gets down to extracting what we want when we want it, we end up using the lowliest device of digital technology, the digital switch, one that has just two states: on and off. As more data becomes available, it’s more urgent to find a way to move all that data on/off the display screen with greater facility. We’re seeing some innovations in this regard, such as the scroll wheel on a mouse or Blackberry. It’s a minor thing, but how many of us would be willing to give up the wheel? Variable control is important, and improving control in the environment of a digital world may be the critical missing link in the successful evolution of many of these devices.

Fortunately, help is on the way. Product designers, software developers, and the repetitive stress cries of the multitudes have given impetus to new types of analog controls that will help the situation. Manufacturers are providing clever solutions well suited to the small form factors and price constraints of today’s devices, including capacitive, Hall-effect, stress gauge, and resistive technologies. All of these analog-type control technologies offer the more intuitive proportional control suited to fine-motor control. However, there are practical technical considerations to each that make them more or less suited to a particular application. Perhaps the most promising of these new technologies is the oldest: resistive technology.

Resistive technology is well known to us in the many knobs and sliders based on potentiometers. These devices have advantages, particularly in today’s wireless world, including low power consumption, small form factors, reliability, flexible design parameters, and the low risk associated with a proven technology. Although old by technological standards, many companies are breathing new life into analog technology by finding innovative ways to employ it in joysticks, navigation discs, touchpads, etc.

How many of the applications could benefit from improved analog control? 3D gaming with a miniature analog joystick? Need to navigate a GPS map? Need to rewind that MP3 or fast-forward that DVD movie? Analog control rules!

ID and product-design influencers are feeling the pressure to continually improve their products, to make them stand above the digital frenzy. Evolving these products to the humans that use them only makes sense, since simplicity and effectiveness of control are critical gating issues in all products we use. Analog proportional control is a key element in that process. The products that adapt to this reality may win Darwin’s ultimate prize-they will survive.


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