Action button labels

[SNESFAN]

pyra being "close enough" to phyrrha chosen for "ease of use" at the expense of accuracy

extremely little known greek alphabet with a commonly known roman numeral that are often confused with each other, ease of use vs accuracy

that's what the point is

 

[Neelix]

I'm not saying Roman numerals were any less relevant as a suggestion than greek letters,  (though I don't think they are a good fit for the reasons I stated above) but that does not make your assertion that they are 'Greek-ish' any less absurd.

- Neelix

 

[SNESFAN]

it's not a history book, it's a game thing is all I'm saying. It follows the same style if style is what the end goal is.

 

[Fzero]

If u say press the A "button" it's Very clear what he needs to press.

Clear to you perhaps, but only because this is a convention you know and accept. The reality is that all the keys are buttons, and there is no reason why someone new to the scene would make that association.

- Neelix


EDIT: As an experiment, I showed Mum the pandora, pointed out the two A's and asked which she would press if I told her to press the A button. Mum may not be a tech head but she knows her way around a computer.


She pointed to the one in the keyboard section.

No offense intended, but don't you think this might be a matter of your mum not being a gamer at all?


You yourself, do you ever have this problem with the Pandora convention? I don't.


I think it's context related too.


If I'm told to 'type' [A] I would assume the 'key'.


If I'm told to 'press' [A] I would assume the 'button'.


Also I guess depends on the kind of applications I'm using, most games I'd automatically assume they meant the buttons rather than the keys.


I like how the PND Manager deals with this...


...Though even if it didn't I would have assumed the button was meant rather than the keys...


...But how they indicate the letter in a circle, to confirm it is on fact the button not the keys.


Do many people have this problem then with their Pandora, anyone find themselves pressing keys when meant to be pressing buttons, or vice versa?


I guess that would let us know how much of an issue this really is. I've not encountered the problem myself, I'm thinking perhaps some strategy type games might have caused such confusion as they can often be k/board based control systems eh... But I don't tend to play many of those myself

 

[Neelix]

No offense intended, but don't you think this might be a matter of your mum not being a gamer at all?

Why should this be important?   The Pandora and Pyra are more than just games consoles.   You can't assume that all users will be coming from a gaming background.

- Neelix

 

[Fzero]

Because I see the confusion likely being related to the task...


For example, your mum went for the Key over Button... Probably because she has experience with computer applications but no so much with games, thus those 4 gaming buttons on the right of Pandora probably a bit alien to her and probably wouldn't have noticed even had you not pointed them out to her.


If I'm within an application which is non game related, I can see how the application may be referring to a Key.


However in a game, I'd expect any reference to be to a Button.


That was all.


Which is why I'm wondering if anyone has a problem with their Pandora seeing as it too has the [A] key and button.


I've never had any such confusion in all the programs I've used so far, not that I can recall

 

[Kiga]

What about something like this:

Something like that without colors, with mate buttons and glossy letters would be amazing.

pyra being "close enough" to phyrrha chosen for "ease of use" at the expense of accuracy

False, the real spelling of Pyra is Πύρρα and the most legitimate transcription is "Pyra" since Greek themselves chose it.

About Roman numeral, they look good and still better than latin. But unary symbols isn't ideal. There is a reason why number are never chosen over 2 and why they chose A,B,X,Y instead of A,B,C,D.

This can be illustrated by that:

Compare:

Δ  JUMP


Ω  PUNCH


X  FIRE

Π  INVENTORY



Ψ CAST SPELL

Φ DROP BOMB

 

or

 

I   JUMP

II  PUNCH

III  FIRE

IV INVENTORY

V CAST SPELL

VI DROP BOMB

 

[Neelix]

Because I see the confusion likely being related to the task...


For example, your mum went for the Key over Button... Probably because she has experience with computer applications but no so much with games, thus those 4 gaming buttons on the right of Pandora probably a bit alien to her and probably wouldn't have noticed even had you not pointed them out to her.


If I'm within an application which is non game related, I can see how the application may be referring to a Key.


However in a game, I'd expect any reference to be to a Button.

If your primary prior gaming experience has been with consoles then I can see why you might think that way, but most of my prior gaming experience has been on a PC  and PC games tend to make use of keyboard keys, so there really isn't that same strong association with gaming and the use of those buttons.   You also can't assume that all the users who are gamers are console gamers.

- Neelix

 

[Fzero]

True, but have you had this problem on your Pandora?


I play Spectrum games on mine, and most keys used are not those same letters. Like Chuckie Egg as example, it's to start, [R] to redefine... Not the letters we'd use on Pandora or Pyra buttons.


But as you've noted, I do play consoles more.


Are the proposed button letters commonplace in computer k/board based games..abxy

 

[Fzero]

Just looking at other solutions which have k/board and gaming buttons.


Archos TV Connect went with a/b/x/y


Veto Mimi went with 1/2/3/4


I'd prefer a combination of these, which then eliminates the confusion discussed above, and still easier for most than Greek I would imagine.


Have the buttons as A1/A2/A3/A4 as top row and B1/B2/B3/B4 on the row beneath

 

[Kiga]

Archos TV Connect went with a/b/x/y


Veto Mimi went with 1/2/3/4

So what? Most prefer tactile keyboard, should we take that too? Just because two or three unknow device make a bad choice, don't mean we should make it too.

I'd prefer a combination of these, which then eliminates the confusion discussed above, and still easier for most than Greek I would imagine.


Have the buttons as A1/A2/A3/A4 as top row and B1/B2/B3/B4 on the row beneath

Ugly and unary but still better than the senseless axby

 

[Neelix]

Just looking at other solutions which have k/board and gaming buttons.


Archos TV Connect went with a/b/x/y


Veto Mimi went with 1/2/3/4


I'd prefer a combination of these, which then eliminates the confusion discussed above, and still easier for most than Greek I would imagine.


Have the buttons as A1/A2/A3/A4 as top row and B1/B2/B3/B4 on the row beneath

Funnily enough I suggested something similar a couple of pages ago,  but no-one seemed interested in the idea.

- Neelix

 

[Fzero]

@Kiga, No, I'm not saying we should copy all ideas from other known devices... I'm saying that using English is pretty commonplace it would seem.


Imo Greek is a bad choice. Dodgy characters which to me mean nothing would be worse than English letters, numbers or a combination of both.


I'm just expressing my preference for keeping with common English characters, or perhaps shape glyphs like PlayStation, but common shapes like circles and triangles... Not Omega, Pi, or those other Greek characters which I can't name or even describe without using lots of words...


"...that one that looks like a square but missing the bottom line, yeah, press that one"


@Neelix, I think that would be a decent idea myself, simple enough and shouldn't cause error.


So long as don't prefix with 'L' or 'R' as those would be triggers too, or use 'F' as obviously we'd have function keys using that.


I'd be happy with that myself and shouldn't be confusing

 

[God Ginrai]

This really isn't an issue and it doesn't matter one iota how the buttons are labelled, because while playing you won't be looking at them anyway.

 OK, I somewhat agree to that, but why then such a strong opinion on using Latin letters to label them?

 Because they are easy to communicate to others, unlike Greek letters.

I don't really like symbols that are too "specialized", like playing card suits, chess pieces, music notes, etc. They give a false impression that the device is not universal but is specifically designed to play card games / chess / music composition. Mathematical symbols may also somewhat suffer from that, and additionally I think that it would be confusing in mathematical software, because most likely those keys would not produce the corresponding symbols, but just map to Home/End/PgUp/PgDn like in any other desktop application.

 By this reasoning, Greek letters would give the false impression that the Pyra is a graphing calculator. I honestly can't believe you tried to float this argument. It's utter BS and you know it.

EDIT:  As an experiment, I showed Mum the pandora, pointed out the two A's and asked which she would press if I told her to press the A button.  Mum may not be a tech head but she knows her way around a computer. 

She pointed to the one in the keyboard section.

Except you didn't do a complete experiment. You forgot some steps.

Step 2: "Alright Mum, now let's say that didn't have the desired reaction. Which button would you press now?"

Step 3: Assuming she then pressed the A button, "Alright, now let's say that had the desired reaction. Now when I ask you to press the A button again, which one are you going to press?"

All you tested is the fact that someone could get it wrong with one try. You didn't test their ability to learn from their mistakes.

Also, I highly doubt you said "There's 2 As here". You probably confused her with wording like: "There's 2 A buttons".

But then you have to go through the same process again with every new program, and then you have to remember which A each program is likely to be referring to, or go though the process again. It shouldn't be a matter of trial and error! If told press A I shouldn't have to guess which A button because there should be only one of each button on the device.

So you're telling me that every single time you open a program you make this same mistake? Because the only time that you would repeat the process is when you press the wrong button or key. It is highly improbable to do it wrong for every single application.

-God Ginrai

 

[milkshake]

Since when do people who grew up with spectrum or c64 etc refer to keys as buttons? if they did that's news to me.

Everyone knows the difference between a "key" and a "button" i.e. a doorbell is a button. A piano's use keys and so do keyboards so if you were to use those items then you generally would know the terms "key" and "type" and if someone told you to press the A "button" you would likely not associate that with a "key" and vice versa.

I'm not being funny but this argument about the nouns "keys" and "buttons" or the verbs "type" and "press" being hard to grasp or differentiate is just silly. 

 

[God Ginrai]

That is worth mentioning. Everyone knows it as a "keyboard". I've never heard PC users refer to them as buttons. The only people I have heard that from are young children who mostly have experience with consoles up until that point. And in that case, their first instinct on seeing "A button" would be to press the gaming controls.

-God Ginrai

 

[Fzero]

I agree with you milkshake, but I think some people would still have confusion here it seems.


Or perhaps some programs might not use those preferred verbs, for example:


Hit [A] to continue


That could cause some doubt perhaps, and unfortunately we can't ensure all programs reference using Type/Press

 

[God Ginrai]

That could cause some doubt perhaps, and unfortunately we can't ensure all programs reference using Type/Press

Yes, but as has been mentioned before. If you make press the wrong button, it takes all of 2 seconds to try the other. Once you learn which one does the right function, you won't forget it.

-God Ginrai

 

[Fzero]

Yep, I agree with that too

 

[milkshake]

in that case the verb hit could be followed by "the A key" or "the A button" or even better for keyboard keys would be to swap the "hit" verb for the verb to "tap"?