Shulou(Shulou.com)05/31 Report--

In today's digital age, we sometimes feel that the hardware that drives our devices has lagged behind the software. This month's button is to check the appearance of some buttons and switches on new devices and devices every month. It aims to understand how we interact with devices at the physical and tactile levels.

Smart home devices can be unsettling, "constantly listening to you" and a massive invasion of privacy. Paid service contractors listen to recordings of Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook services without users' knowledge. But I still use Google Home Mini, in part because the physical microphone mute switch on the back makes other smart devices uneasy.

Make you feel at ease through physical switches

The Home Mini has a physical two-state switch to determine if it is muted. If you turn it over, the microphone will be cut off at the hardware level, and you can't turn it off without turning the switch back.

Now, other smart speakers have mute buttons, just like Amazon's Echo series, but with different functions. When you press the button, the lights come on, telling you that the microphone is muted-but they lack the same physical movement as Google buttons. Amazon's mute button is integrated on top of the device, almost the same as other buttons, but for icons. There is no difference between turning off the microphone and raising and lowering the volume, for example, making the movement feel less deliberate and easy to screw up.

The behavior of Google's mute microphone interacts with its more physical intentions-when the mute switch is one-way, you know it's off, and when it's in the other direction, you know it's on. When the switch is muted, it also cleverly displays orange, so you can visually judge whether it is on or off. If for some reason, it is not enough to show its muted light emitting diode.

Light emitting diodes are still a problem

In fact, LED is a problem with almost all smart speakers. Google's effect is more subtle than Amazon's Echos (in Amazon's case, this is a more abrupt red ring). Look, I understand why they're there. They are sure that the speaker no longer listens, which is good.

But red warning lights can add a different kind of invasion to your life: a huge glowing indicator of what you did wrong or accidentally did something wrong. From the point of view of the companies that want you to use their products, this is logical, but I can't help but hope that there is a more subtle way to solve the problem, rather than pushing it in my face.

This is a problem that smart speaker companies are still working on. For example, Apple doesn't provide a mute switch on the HomePod at all; it's frustrating that you have to enter an application on the iPhone to turn off the microphone.

However, Google's solution is closer to the right answer than any other solution: the physical switching of physical problems creates a real barrier between intrusive software and personal life. Now, we only need fewer LEDs.

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