Interface 3 – Ipod touch
For the final part of my 3 piece series i’m going to explain the pros and cons of an ipod touch. The Ipod touch was developed and created by Apple and is a multi functional device that allows the user to entertain themselves by watching movies, listening to music, play games and even browse the internet.
There are many good parts to an Ipod touch. It will keep the user entertained for hours as there are many different features included. It has many different sizes ranging from an 8GB to a 32 GB version. The user can browse on the internet the same way they can if they were on a computer. Also, the user can enjoy up to 7 hours of video and up to a huge 40 hours of audio on its long life battery. There are many games available to download in the app store and the newer models have Facetime which allows video calling and a camera on the front and the back to take pictures on.
There are admittedly a lot of pros to the Ipod touch but there are also a couple of flaws that Apple have created on the Touch. The slim, physical design of the Ipod Touch is nice to look at but is very vulnerable to being broken. The screen is very advanced but isn’t a strong screen and therefore without a protective cover can smash easily.
Another flaw with the Ipod Touch is that the whole product is touch screen. This is very advanced feature but after a while if the product has been used a lot, the touch screen sensitivity becomes less and less sensitive and eventually breaks and needs repairing. This is major flaw as there is no alternative way of using the Ipod Touch if this happens.
In my opinion. I believe that the ipod Touch is an amazing piece of technology and would strongly recommend having one. They have a small amount of flaws admittedly but compared to the amount of features that they have, they are definitely worth taking the risks for.
Interface 2 – Self Service Checkouts
In the second part of my interface series i am going to explain the good and bad areas of the self service checkouts that are found within supermarkets. The idea behind a self service checkout is to allow customers to speed up their shopping experience by being able to quickly make a purchase on a small amount of items rather than having to que behind another customer who has a full shopping trolley full when all you want is a can of beans. This allows a more relaxed approach to shopping and makes it an easier experiance for everyone.
Now on to the pros and cons of a self service checkout. The good parts behind the self service checkouts as previously explained are that it upgrades the speed of a shopping trip, but apart from that there isn’t anything else that really impresses me personally. The scanners need to be improved majorly in my opinion as they aren’t very responsive and it takes a few times for the checkout to read the product you have attempted to scan.
Another flaw with the self service checkouts is that once the customer has finally managed to scan the item they wish to purchase they then have to put it in the bagging area and if the item isn’t placed down in this area the checkout wont let you proceed to the next item that they wish to purchase. This isn’t such a bad idea if you only have one or two items but if a customer is buying 5 or 6 items ( bare in mind the self service checkouts have a limit of 10 items maximum) then there isn’t enough room on the self service checkout bagging area to put all your shopping on, therefore you have to replace it back into your basket/trolley, however when you do this it says the item needs to be put back in the bagging area. This is a major flaw. As you can see in the image below the bagging area isn’t that big.
In general though, i believe that the self service checkouts could be a really good feature to have in the supermarkets as they are a quick way to purchase your shopping, but in my opinion they need a bit of improvement first.
Interface 1 – In car technology
In the first part of this 3 part series i am going to explain how touch screen interfaces are useful in cars. They are a very common feature within a car nowadays. They can be purchased as an optional accessory or can come as standard within the more expensive cars. I believe that the in car touch screen interface is a very good accessory for a car to have. Some of the features that they include are music, dvd player, bluetooth and in the more expensive models, satellite navigation. The technology is a rather expensive feature to have within a car as its so advanced and multi functional.
A more advanced, expensive car, as i said before have this function as a standard feature straight from the manufacturer. These features will be personalised to the make of the car and will have logos to represent the make and model of the car as shown in the image below.
Some of these interfaces however could be improved. The bluetooth feature within some of the interfaces are very temperamental. sometimes they will work really well but other times they wont due to lack of signal in the area that the driver is in. This is design flaw as the interface itself has a reception built in to pick up good quality signals.
Also, The satellite navigation feature could also be improved in many ways. A typical example of this is when a new road has been built or a current piece of road has been edited, the satellite navigation system doesn’t always pick this change up and malfunctions due to it getting confused and wondering where the driver has gone. This could cause the driver to get lost or on a more serious level could result in a crash due to hesitation on where to go.
In general though, The in car interface is genuinely a fantastic feature to have inside your vehicle. The features that it does include despite some of the minor flaws it may have are astounding.
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