engineering

Hardware interface design

Hardware interface design is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Hardware interface design rather than just read about it. In short: Hardware interface design (HID) is a cross-disciplinary design field that shapes the physical connection between people and technology in order to create new hardware interfaces that transform purely digital processes into analog methods of interaction. It employs a combination of filmmaking tools, software prototyping, and electronics breadboarding.

Key takeaways

Hardware interface design belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Hardware interface design to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Hardware interface design from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Hardware interface design (HID) is a cross-disciplinary design field that shapes the physical connection between people and technology in order to create new hardware interfaces that transform purely digital processes into analog methods of interaction. It employs a combination of filmmaking tools, software prototyping, and electronics breadboarding. Through this parallel visualization and development, hardware interface designers are able to shape a cohesive vision alongside business and engineering that more deeply embeds design throughout every stage of the product. The development of hardware interfaces as a field continues to mature as more things connect to the internet. Hardware interface designers draw upon industrial design, interaction design and electrical engineering. Interface elements include touchscreens, knobs, buttons, sliders and switches as well as input sensors such as microphones, cameras, and accelerometers.

History In the last decade a trend had evolved in the area of human-machine-communication, taking the user experience from haptic, tactile and acoustic interfaces to a more digitally graphical approach. Important tasks that had been assigned to the industrial designers so far, had instead been moved into fields like UI and UX design and usability engineering. The creation of good user interaction was more a question of software than hardware. Things like having to push two buttons on the tape recorder to have them pop back out again and the cradle of some older telephones remain mechanical haptic relicts that have long found their digital nemesis and are waiting to disappear. However, this excessive use of GUIs in today’s world has led to a worsening impairment of the human cognitive capabilities. Visual interfaces are at the maximum of their upgradability. Even though the resolution of new screens is constantly rising, you can see a change of direction away from the descriptive intuitive design to natural interface strategies, based on learnable habits (Google’s Material Design, Apple’s iOS flat design, Microsoft’s Metro Design Language). Several of the more important commands are not shown directly but can be accessed through dragging, holding and swiping across the screen; gestures which have to be learned once but feel very natural afterwards and are easy to remember. In the area of controlling these systems, there is a need to move away from GUIs and instead find other means of interaction which use the full capabilities of all our senses. Hardware interface design solves this by taking physical forms and objects and connecting them with digital information to have the user control virtual data flow through grasping, moving and manipulating the used physical forms. If you see the classic industrial hardware interface design as an “analog” method, it finds its digital counterpart in the HID approach. Instead of translating analog methods of control into a virtual form via a GUI, one can see the TUI as an approach to do the exact opposite: transmitting purely digital processes into analog methods of interaction.

Examples Example hardware interfaces include a computer mouse, TV remote control, kitchen timer, control panel for a nuclear power plant and an aircraft cockpit.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Hardware interface design

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Hardware interface design claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Hardware interface design before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Hardware interface design ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Hardware interface design

In research: Hardware interface design appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Hardware interface design in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Hardware interface design is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Interfaces, Systems engineering, User interfaces, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Hardware interface design outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Hardware interface design in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Hardware interface design means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Hardware interface design out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hardware interface design in simple terms?

Why does Hardware interface design matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Hardware interface design?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Hardware interface design.