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Journal Editorial + CVu Journal Vol 27, #3 - July 2015
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Title: Editorial: What is a user interface?

Author: Martin Moene

Date: 14 July 2015 21:35:38 +01:00 or Tue, 14 July 2015 21:35:38 +01:00

Summary: 

Body: 

I recently bought a new amplifier for my guitar. It’s great! Modern technology means it comes with a variety of different ways to disturb the peace of the neighbourhood. The three channels built-in to the box – clean, dirty, and solo which can be ‘programmed’ independently of the other two – all sound fantastic, but having to take your hands off of the guitar to switch between them is very inconvenient when you’ve been overcome by the urge to improvise wildly. So I bought a foot-switch.

It has two pedals – ideal, you’d think, for choosing between three channels. My instinct on how to use it seems to match the expectations of other players I’ve rant^H^H^H^H asked: one pedal to switch between the clean and dirty channels, the other switch to toggle the solo channel. My pedal has one switch which alternates between clean and dirty (tick), and the second switch to turn on the solo channel. Pressing it when the solo channel is already selected...does nothing at all. To switch away from the solo channel, I must press the other switch, which also has the effect of changing the main channel selection. It does have the facility to set the polarity for each pedal, and for each switch to be latched or not...but I’ll never make use of those features.

In days of yore and valve amplifiers, the foot switch was often a mechanical one which enabled a boost in the power amp, making solos a little louder. All that’s really different in my pedal is the extra complexity of also having clean and dirty channels as options. I was a little surprised that the foot switch requires a battery (perhaps to power the LED?), but I’m left with the nagging suspicion that the manufacturer has taken a simple requirement, and come up with something much more complicated than it needs to be, and doesn’t behave in quite the way I expect.

There is something familiar about that, but I can’t quite put my finger on it...

Notes: 

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