User friendly control panels

Beth and I were talking last Institute about the "freshman 15" or the weight that one puts on during their first year in college. Well, since I began grad school in 2006, I have put on a freshman, softmore AND junior 15 so this year I bought a really nice treadmill. The biggest problem with grad school hasn't been the grad work, but the second job that I've been carrying as well as my full-time one, which has me in front of a computer way more than any human should be.

I was a bit nervous that the control panel of this machine would be difficult to use, but it is not. I have not (like most Americans) even opened the instruction manual. All that I need to do to make this work is put the red key in (bottom middle) and press the start button on the lower left. This makes the machine go at a half a mile per hour. Then I can simply click the speed button along the righthand side to increase the speed, and I can change the incline on the lefthand side as well. There are also handles on each side that have up and down arrow buttons for speed on the right handle and incline on the left handle. SO easy - start slow, increase after a couple of minutes, get up to heartrate and do the amount of time there and then slowly cool down. What can be easier. There are all kinds of programmable buttons along the middle horizon...but for now I don't feel the need to program anything...

In The Design of Everyday Things Donald Norman speaks to control panels that are easy looking but not necessarily easy to use. This results from what he describes as the complexity of actions that can can be accomplished only through a rich complexity of execution by the user. I think this panel above is the perfect marriage of ease and complexity. If you want ease it is there, if you want programmability - have at it! And this interface meets Norman's criteria of grouping the buttons into logical, functional modules. Bravo Sole!