WHITE PAPERS SPONSORED PROFILES JOB BOARD WEBINAR CENTER FREE SOFTWARE BZ RESEARCH ALMSHAREPOINT EVENTS CALENDAR PRINT/PDF EDITION PRINT/PDF BACK ISSUES

SUBSCRIBE TODAY CUSTOMER SERVICE EDITORIAL BEATS GUEST VIEW GUIDE SD TIMES 100 GUIDE EVENTS CALENDAR ADVERTISING ARTICLE REPRINTS REPORT A BUG SITE MAP

ABOUT US BZ MEDIA NEWS BZ RESEARCH NEWS ON MONDAY SPTECHREPORT SPTECHWEB SPTECHCON IPHONE/IPAD DEVCON ANDROID DEVCON PRIVACY POLICY CONTACT US

HOME >> OPINIONS

Guest View: Contrasts in embedded systems

By Sebastien Marineau-Mes

September 1, 2010 — (Page 1 of 3)
Are you familiar with the contrast effect? If not, you had better start paying attention to it, because it will determine the success of your next embedded design.

The contrast effect occurs whenever you experience two similar but unequal phenomena within a short period of time. For instance, have you ever visited an electronics store and been impressed by the sound of a home theater system—until the salesperson played the same soundtrack through an even better system? Chances are, the first system suddenly seemed unworthy of your credit card. That’s an example of the contrast effect.

The contrast effect influences our perception (and thus our judgment) of everything we come across, including sights, smells, tastes, temperatures and even people. We may find someone attractive, but the minute an even more attractive person walks through the door, our standard of beauty becomes a little more exacting.

So here’s the thing: When designing your next embedded system, you must anticipate what customers will compare it to. Naturally, they will compare it to similar products in the market. But if your system has any kind of user interface, they will also compare it to the smartphone—or smartpad—sitting in their hand. And they’ll make this comparison even if your system has nothing to do with texting, messaging, e-mailing or Facebooking.

Surprising? Not really. Every time one of your customers picks up a smartphone (which could be dozens or hundreds of times a day), he or she becomes more conditioned to the user experience it delivers. And the more conditioned they become, the more they expect a similar experience in other systems—and the more they miss that experience when a system doesn’t provide it.

An anecdote is in order. Recently, a colleague of mine saw an engineer attempt to use a pinch-and-spread finger gesture on the display of an oscilloscope. The engineer was so conditioned by the multi-touch interface of his smartphone that he unconsciously expected his oscilloscope to support the same form of interaction.

Related Search Term(s): embedded development

Pages 1 2 3

Share this link: http://sdt.bz/34595

Most Read Latest News Blog Resources

Android is the focus of two new design tools
Anywhere Software and Xamarin provide ways for developers to create and test their applications on PCs

LEADTOOLS HTML5 add-on modules released
Including New HTML5 Zero Footprint Viewer, JavaScript Libraries and RESTful Web Services for Document and Medical SDKs

How to speed up your Cukes
Using a five-step process derived from Six Sigma, Cucumber tests can go much faster

WhiteSource offers open-source license management as a service
Software gives companies insight into the open-source components in products

SmartBear rolls out new quality solution: API Complete
Software gives organizations ability to write test scripts and monitor APIs by bridging the DevOps divide

Android is the focus of two new design tools
Anywhere Software and Xamarin provide ways for developers to create and test their applications on PCs

WhiteSource offers open-source license management as a service
Software gives companies insight into the open-source components in products

Top five devices you can integrate with your applications
A five-fingered list of common, household items with which you can talk to (via software, of course)

Slick...but who needs it?
compilr.com is a well-designed site and the folks behind it seem to have their heart in the right place. But...who needs it?

How to be a better software developer
Want to be a better developer? You won't get there by mastering an interesting language or learning a new set of APIs.

Wooing Galatea
Do yourself a favor and check out Galatea 2.2, a wonderful book by novelist Richard Powers.

The world as story
An artificial-intelligence system at Carnegie Mellon seeks to understand the world by making statements about it.

Five SCM Best Practices Two-thirds of all software projects fail, according to the Standish Group’s CHAOS study. Improper usage of software configuration management...

Best Practices for Branching and Merging Patterns

Development teams often create a branching pattern, usually drawn out on a white board or in a Visio document, that is used as a model to...

Automated Error Reporting We invite you to read a short e-zine that tells you all about automated error reporting for .NET applications. This 8-page e-zine is packed...

The End of Application Redeploys Imagine that every time you wanted to write, send or receive an email, you needed to restart your computer. How much time would this take, a...

Technorati

Digg

Slashdot

Facebook

Friendfeed

Twitter

del.icio.us

Short Takes: Lack-of-oil-driven software development Our editors go over the ways you can shorten your commute through technology, reactions to Yahoo's rebuffing of Microsoft and Snow Leopard's appearance at the Apple WWDC, and the winner of SAP's Project Green contest.

Pondering best agile practices Companies are still trying to find best practices for their own agile development implementations. Agile practitioners from FoxHedge, IBM and Serena Software give their ideas of what agile best practices are.

Agile for a new age The 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto still ring true, agree agile experts at IBM, Serena and training consultancies. But they offer different views on how agile development can work in today's development environment, where cloud computing, multicore and global projects add complexity.

Add comment

Name*
Email*
Country

Comment

Short Takes: Lack-of-oil-driven software development
Our editors go over the ways you can shorten your commute through technology, reactions to Yahoo's rebuffing of Microsoft and Snow Leopard's appearance at the Apple WWDC, and the winner of SAP's Project Green contest Read More...

News on Monday
more>>
SharePoint Tech Report
more>>

Download Current Issue
MAY 2012 PDF ISSUE

Need Back Issues?
DOWNLOAD HERE

Want to subscribe?

Slick...but who needs it?
compilr.com is a well-designed site and the folks behind it seem to have their heart in the right place. But...who needs it?
05/16/2012 12:45 PM EST

How to be a better software developer
Want to be a better developer? You won't get there by mastering an interesting language or learning a new set of APIs.
05/14/2012 12:18 PM EST

Wooing Galatea
Do yourself a favor and check out Galatea 2.2, a wonderful book by novelist Richard Powers.
05/12/2012 07:05 PM EST

The world as story
An artificial-intelligence system at Carnegie Mellon seeks to understand the world by making statements about it.
05/10/2012 06:39 AM EST

The Rise of the Brogrammer, or the Rise of the Sexist Programmer?
Women in Silicon Valley get vocal about sexist ads and campaigns that contribute to a tense work environment.
05/09/2012 03:14 PM EST

Retriever Communications Releases RADE3
Organizations concerned about the growing popularity of bring your own device to work policies may be comforted by the release of RADE3.
05/09/2012 11:46 AM EST