This relates to what I wrote in reply to the original tweet thread.
Performing arithmetic on arbitrarily complex mathematical functions is an interesting area of research but not useful to 99% of calculator users. People who want that functionality with use Wolfram Alpha/Mathematica, Matlab, some software library, or similar.
Most people using calculators are probably using them for budgeting, tax returns, DIY projects ("how much paint do I need?", etc), homework, calorie tracking, etc.
If I was building a calculator app -- especially if I had the resources of Google -- I would start with trying to get inside the mind of the average calculator user and figuring out their actual problems. E.g., perhaps most people just use standard 'napkin math', but struggle a bit with multi-step calculations.
> But for some reason the authors of calculator apps never optimize them for the number of keypresses, unlike Casio/TI/HP. It's a lost art. Even a simple operator repetition is a completely alien concept for new apps.
Yes, there's probably a lot of low-hanging fruit here.
The Android calculator story sounded like many products that came out of Google -- brilliant technical work, but some sort of weird disconnect with the needs of actual users.
(It's not like the researchers ignored users -- they did discuss UI needs in the paper. But everything was distant and theoretical -- at no point did I see any mention of the actual workflow of calculator users, the problems they solve, or the particular UI snags they struggle with.)
Performing arithmetic on arbitrarily complex mathematical functions is an interesting area of research but not useful to 99% of calculator users. People who want that functionality with use Wolfram Alpha/Mathematica, Matlab, some software library, or similar.
Most people using calculators are probably using them for budgeting, tax returns, DIY projects ("how much paint do I need?", etc), homework, calorie tracking, etc.
If I was building a calculator app -- especially if I had the resources of Google -- I would start with trying to get inside the mind of the average calculator user and figuring out their actual problems. E.g., perhaps most people just use standard 'napkin math', but struggle a bit with multi-step calculations.
> But for some reason the authors of calculator apps never optimize them for the number of keypresses, unlike Casio/TI/HP. It's a lost art. Even a simple operator repetition is a completely alien concept for new apps.
Yes, there's probably a lot of low-hanging fruit here.
The Android calculator story sounded like many products that came out of Google -- brilliant technical work, but some sort of weird disconnect with the needs of actual users.
(It's not like the researchers ignored users -- they did discuss UI needs in the paper. But everything was distant and theoretical -- at no point did I see any mention of the actual workflow of calculator users, the problems they solve, or the particular UI snags they struggle with.)