Designers shouldn’t get the last word: Philips Touch-fail

Philips 243E2 Monitor - Touch Buttons Here’s an example of how the Philips-designers have totally failed, they used touch-controls for the menu system. Touch-controls are nice, but only on a screen-surface.
I’ve to push extremely hard to navigate through the system, it feels like I’m breaking the screen.

  • A menu-system should be easy to navigate through
  • Have a nice tactile feed-back that matches each menu-step
  • Easy accessible buttons
  • The placement of the buttons should match the lineup of the GUI-menu

Here’s a good example of a IBM monitor, they use clearly visible buttons that lines up vertically with the menu.
IBM Monitor Buttons

Many designers lay to much energy into appearance and less into accessibility. Accessibility is such a vital part of our life.

… also, computer-monitors shouldn’t have integrated speakers. That trashy speakers produce some really bad sound-quality and take too much room in the monitor. I’ve never seen someone actually used integrated monitor-speakers.

If the appearance starts to effect the functionality and accessibility of a product it’s wrong.