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by JoeAltmaier 2555 days ago
I remember those days - I liked our microwave with just a time knob and a start knob.

But it had its drawbacks. My young children couldn't set the time to heat their oatmeal. "Turn it to 1 minute". They'd twist the knob and say "Is that enough?" Without knowing enough about time they couldn't (yet) figure out to turn right or left to get to the right number.

With a digital one, they'd just poke 1,0,0 and hit start.

2 comments

Young children behavior is interesting, I remember a friend whose 3 year old boy can’t read but fully capable of using his parents phone to watch Youtube. The boy constantly use Voice Recognition instead of keyboard input in such a fluid manner. After the search shows up, the boy simply pick the cartoon he liked.

Tap and swipe is first nature to him. What fascinates me is, this boy cant figure out how to turn on the tv because he keeps tapping amd swiping the remote control. I once saw him trying to swipe on the light switch as well.

By the time I had kids, the dial interface was long gone...but if I could teach my kids to push 1,0,0, start, I'd bet I could teach them what 1:00 looked like on the dial pretty quickly.
Not really. They have to be able to understand math, not just memorize digits.