cassettes are interesting and i'm going to open this by saying! i'm probably going to be a little aimless for a bit. i swear i'm going somewhere mrow! but. i might not.
with that out of the way
i think that generally speaking, all devices should have some sort of tactility to them!
the differences in feel help immensely in identifying what it is they do, and why they work the way that they do.
You knew your music was going to play as soon as you stick the tape in there, plug in that jack, walk around with a device dedicated to just listening to music.
And its genuinely awesome we got devices that can do so much more than that in modern day. But I feel like in the process of getting these devices, alot of feedback was lost.
Now, you have to know if your song is downloaded to your phone, you have to check if your earbuds are connected, you have to guess if it'll play when you want it, all the while.
You don't even really own your song.
and, while all of it is convenient, I think there is merit to storing something dedicated and physically has those songs present. But while I don't miss how much work you had to put in to listen to any song back in the 80's (I wouldn't know, I wasn't born then..)
What I can say, is that having more feedback would make it easier to manage.
An extra sense besides visual.
This already applies to music, you know your earbuds are working because they make a connection sound. You know they're working when music comes through them, and they make all sorts of alerts.
But a downside of modern design, trying to be ultra slick and smooth. Now every bud comes with some kind of touch controls, things that skip your song forward, or pull it back, pause and play..
and you get no indication that it'll happen beyond that it just does.
you don't know if your pillow or your hands just grazed them, never mind just taking off the buds.
Something you can feel, or something you can grab.
I saw AirPods with stems that you grab that seem like a wonderful step in the right direction.
But, this lack of other feedback permeates every piece of software we use.
It's cheaper to use a touchscreen in a car, but those require you look, and these days, everything seems to demand your attention.
You can't feel for a knob to turn down the volume of the speakers in your car, you just have to hope the screen gets anywhere, but what if you were deaf?
That's one less indicator you can use to drive the car while you try to do something, like turn down the AC.
Newer cars are being built with buttons instead of the stick, so you can no longer feel where the stick is, but instead look for a specific button that feels exactly the same as every other button.
But if you're disabled, what do you do?
Maybe you shouldn't be driving a car anyway, but who's really capable of saying besides the disabled person, and I feel as though every space needs to accommodate them in some capacity, say.
what about the stove..?
those things seem to get sleeker and cleaner every year, and yet.
now its hard to tell if it's even on, or if it'll burn you. (at least if you have an electric stove.)
It's all smooth glass and your pot.. somewhere on there.
If you cannot see very well, what good is the dim lights on the stove, or the white indicators.
But, you could stick magnets to grip pans, give you more information to work with..
Say, it played a small fire sound if it was on.
I'm sure quite a few people would remember that the oven is on before they leave it (if you say... have ADHD or something like that.)
and yet we're all so used to not receiving feedback these days.
I'm sure if the coinstar made no shuffling sounds now, most would maybe double check, but not question it.
But, appealing to every sense helps more, and more people.
My mom uses vibration on controllers to help feel tactility in a game, if she jumped or if she did anything, and that's another quick way of picking up information.
and she can't hear the game, the dirt in grass under her feet crunching doesn't tell her anything.
If you can make something give more than one sense, you can signal to people in (much easier) ways than their eyes that something is happening.
a bubble popping sound, a regular beep, the feel of a controller and the vibrations of a speaker.
you can also use them for safety.
Say, you have this white, colorless chemical.
It looks just like sugar in this crystalline state. But if you eat it, you'd die.
There's a number of ways to keep someone from touching it, say, just writing that it's poison or.. making it a little pokey.
But, if you make it smell bad..
suddenly it's obvious that it's not sugar at all!
but you could also dye it blue, do any number of things to indicate in small ways that this thing is not like the others.
if you appeal to more than one sense, you can accommodate more people
the smell, sound, texture indicates to the visually impaired, the sight to those who cannot hear...
but what about those without able bodies..
those lacking arms, or things like it.
wheel chairs, things like that.
You could make things easier to reach, bigger, easier to feel, all the while making your tool easier to use for everyone.
all it is, is that it's more work to do.
its simply harder to accommodate everyone into whatever it is you may be working on..
but.
maybe just by acting on this sentiment, you'll bring back that style of design.
when things were more mechanical and not as software focused.
maybe you could work in tandem.
maybe every time you play a song in your streaming app, you could bring it in like a cassette you listen to.