alt Hacker NewsAt least there's a good reason there - they're easier to clean. That's not much of a concern with microwave controls.
But I disagree with the idea that we don't need precise times on a microwave. The article / book disagrees with that, and the think I most regularly microwave (milk for my kids) needs 1 minute 50 seconds. 2 minutes and they'll reliably complain it's too hot.
The real problem with microwave UX is that the interfaces are often simply bad. People think the power/time dial interface is good but that's because it's difficult to mess it up (though they usually manage anyway by having them go up to 30 minutes or whatever).
It's really easy to mess up a button interface but you can also do it well. My microwave is close to doing it really well. You press a high/med/low button, then 1s/10s/1m/10m buttons to the desired time, then start. The only things they got wrong are that it requires pressing the power when 99% of the time you want high, and you could probably get a more useful distribution of time increments (I'm literally never going to use the 10m button).
But apart from that it's nicer than dials, which are often very cheap and imprecise.
Enter time on the keypad, optionally press Power and enter that, press Start. Also needs a Plus 30s button. This is the one and only correct way to implement a push button microwave. ;)
I count five presses instead of 3 to get 90 seconds, including one way that's just pressing the same button 3 times (+30s).
Seven presses?The dial microwave I use can distinguish between those two. It helps that the shorter times are given more room, so you can adjust them more precisely. 1:50 vs 2:00 will make a difference in my experience, but 7:50 vs 8:00 generally won't.
You could have a hybrid approach of course, but then I suspect the engineering tendency would be to "lock in" the time after starting the oven, so it can't "accidentally" be changed.
Looking for a photo of my microwave dial, I came across this surprisingly relevant post:
https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/90769/why-do-microwav...