Just a quick U.I. observation from the non-computer world.

My wife and I went shopping this week for a new oven/range.

In general, it seems that the more expensive the oven, the more digital gimickry it has. A fancy oven is not content to have a knob to set the oven temperature – it must have a digital display with 6-10 buttons adjacent to it, not only for temperature setting, but for all sorts of elaborate delayed cooking features and whatnot.

With a conventional ‘knob’ interface, I can, at a glance, see whether the oven is on, and if so, what temperature it’s set to. If I want to turn on the oven, it takes exactly one wrist motion to turn it on and set it to the desired temperature (say 375)

I have no idea how the digital ovens work, because at the two stores we visited, they were all unplugged and sitting on the floor. But I’ll speculate that, on initial glance, the oven will show a blinking 12:00 (because the clock will have been reset from one of the frequent storms in our area). I’ll then need to look for the ‘on’ button from among the ~6 buttons, and press it. It will then prompt me for a temperature, and I will probably need to find and press the up/down buttons 4 or 5 times to get them to the desired temperature.

Digital interfaces on non-computer devices are usually inferior.

I’m dreading the day when I have to use a digital toilet.

Here’s an excellent post from somebody at Reflexive, with links to a lot of data on the impact of download size on game sales and such.

The key graphs:

Size vs. percentage of initiated downloads that are completed

Size vs. ratio of downloads by modem users

Size vs sales and conversion rates

Slightly further down, he notes that modem users are 40% more likely to buy, per game downloaded, than broadband users, presumably because modem users don’t sample as many different games.

My conclusions:

The 2nd graph is the most informative. At very low sizes (~2-5 MB), modem users are moderately significant – 12-22% of downloads, and, if we take into account their higher purchase rates, ~15-30% of sales.

But once you go past 5MB, the graph flattens out – modem users are about 6-9% of downloads, and the incremental impact of a 10MB download vs. a 20MB download (or even 40MB) is quite modest. It’s pretty hard to deliver modern production values in the 2-5 MB range, so if you’re going to go to 10MB, it’s not so bad to go to 20…

My takeaway? For my current game, I’ve been debating using OGG for music, which allows regular songs to be compressed, rather than MIDI/XM, which is limited to rather digital sounding songs. But using OGG would put me in the 15-20MB download range. Now, though, I think that’s probably acceptable…