[throwawayReply]

Radial gauges are an example of bad skeuomorphism.

They don't convey any history and more importantly they don't have useful meaning unless you have a measurable first differential (i.e. no step change).

They're useful for literal physical speed, because the movement of the needle helps give a sense of acceleration as well as speed. But if you don't care about acceleration (or more generally the delta of the primary variable) then it's not helpful to have a needle wobble about.

And if that wobble is just artificially added (such as the bouncing thermometer) because it's responding to a step change in a discrete sequence, then it's now removed any sense of reality.

And I've seen even worse of gauges, for example for things which can't even reduce. There's no point having a speedometer type gauge for "percent complete" or other monotonic variable!

Sorry for the rant, you're just responding to a demand. It's a demand I'd rather see met through educating better data visualisation than through prettier gauges.

[manyxcxi]

I disagree. Radial gauges immediately convey accepted boundaries and where your real time measurement is within those.

For example, I've done a fair bit of racing in my day- we take the tach and any other various gauges and rotate them so that when the needle is pointing straight up, it's where you expect the reading to be.

Say you have a CPU monitor where under a certain threshold reduces nodes in the cluster and over adds. This can vary from application to application and you're monitoring 5. Sure is nice to get the high, low, and current in one glance.

Now, there certainly could be equal as or better ways of displaying it. You could do away with a skeumorphic face for sure. But a radial gauge itself I would argue is very useful.

[throwawayIndian]

+1. Totally agree!

I hate this bullshit propaganda that goes like "this is skeuomorphic and the other thing is not". There is nothing in the world of software that isn't a skeuomorphic equivalent of some thing or some process that has already existed in this world.

Look at Object Oriented Programming, for example. Look at 'Code is poetry' for a comparison. Look at button design. Look at page design {Header, Footer, Body} of a webpage. Look at flat design for that matter! Look at iWatch interface with hands of a clock/watch. Look at the dialpad on your mobile phone.

Tell me which one isn't skeuomorphic? Zilch! Yawns… at these skeuomorphism police.

[throwawayReply]

I didn't say all skeuomorphism is bad, I said that gauges are an example of bad skeuomorphism. Buttons are an example of good skeuomorphism.

[throwawayIndian]

So you don't like the "default skin" of the application. That should be pretty easy to replace with something that suits your taste.

Consideration of "good" vs. "bad" of anything is essentially a trait of use vs. them propaganda. Better to skip it.

Yes, buttons are good form of actionable design!

[coldtea]

>Consideration of "good" vs. "bad" of anything is essentially a trait of use vs. them propaganda.

Value judgements are both very, well, valuable AND not "propaganda".

Some things ARE plainly worse than others for some uses or in general too.

Nothing "propagandish" about aknowledging that. Even if you are wrong in your evaluation it's simply a mistake, not propaganda.

Propaganda is a method you employ to convey things (not necessarily judgements even, could be calls to action, warnings, etc) in order to brainwash people to accept them.

As such, it is orthogonal to judging things as good vs bad.

Thus, I deem this argument "bad". And not in a Michael Jackson way.

[throwawayIndian]

I agree with you mostly.

Not with the anti-skeuomorphism tirade however. That is pure propaganda.

Anti-skeuomorphism picked up momentum only after Apple's iOS7 update -- around the time when Tim Cook took over and Apple (and its fanboys) moved away from purpose-inspired design to selling 'flat and clean' (supposedly purpose-oriented) design.

Whether it was good or bad move for them eventually is another subject altogether.

[white-flame]

There's a reason that automobiles continue using radial gauges: They're the quickest way to convey a scalar value at a glance. It has little to do with acceleration. If you're going to have a monitoring dashboard, radial gauges make immediate sense.

(The wobble is dumb, though)

[coredog64]

They take up a lot of real estate on a display and aren't particularly easy to read unless you get up close. If you already know what thresholds are it is far better to display a number and use the color to indicate where that is within the continuum of states.

There are practical uses for steam gauges, but I would argue that monitoring complex IT systems is not one of them.

[white-flame]

Taking up lots of real estate on a display is kind of the point of high-visibility indicators.

Regarding "aren't particularly easy to read", are you talking about reading numbers on the ticks? That's not the point of those indicators; the point is to be familiar with the low/expected/high ranges of the needle for various situations and be able to see with clarity the current state of expected/unexpected range of an indicator. Which then can be further inspected if necessary to focus in and see an exact number.

[jsmthrowaway]

> If you already know what thresholds are it is far better to display a number and use the color to indicate where that is within the continuum of states.

Since this thread is already on the topic of accessibility, I feel compelled to point out that this is the single worst option when considering colorblindness unless you mean shades of one color.

[throwawayReply]

Many automobiles actually have started using numbers instead of a radial gauge. It has even been suggested it actually prompts drivers to speed less when they can see they are doing 74 in digital rather than convincing themselves the needle is resting on 70.

[throwawayIndian]

> Sorry for the rant, you're just responding to a demand. It's a demand I'd rather see met through educating better data visualisation than through prettier gauges.

If there is demand it's probably good to respond to it as it is. There is no need to fucking educate propaganda like you said about skeumorphism or no-skeuomorphism.

Besides can you give one example of any software product that is not skeuomorphic? There is none to begin with. So please stop using this bullshit cultural kool-aid to troll and exclude designs that probably don't suit your elitism.

[sctb]

Please don't comment like this here.