OMETIMES YOU JUST want to reach out and touch something. But product designers don't always want to let you. Not so long ago, if I wanted to adjust the heat in my car, or the volume on my car radio, I could grab a nice, simple knob. Turn it to the right, and the car got warmer, or the radio got louder. Turn it the other way, and the opposite occurred. I could always sense how far I was adjusting things-without ever taking my eyes off the road-because millions of years of evolution have produced a neurological feedback mechanism that lets me know just how much I'm turning my wrist. Easy, effective, intuitive. That's simply good design, right? You'd think. But in most late-model cars, making those kinds of adjustments requires pushing buttons multiple times, or navigating menus within menus, and-almost always-taking your eyes off the road. That's the trouble with buttons: Instead of working in a continuous analog motion the way knobs do, they only operate in discrete digital steps. And, since there's no tactile feedback, the only way to tell what the button is doing is to squint at an LCD readout.
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