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vendors often assigned multiple
functions and performance options to
the same front panel button (Figure
3).
A Look Forward
Over the last decade, instrument
vendors have been striving to develop
user interfaces that offer their
customers more information faster.
Due to shrinking design cycles, many
Figure 1. Early instruments with
analog interfaces required multiple
front panel dials to configure
measurements and results had to
be transcribed manually.
Figure 3. Vacuum fluorescent displays and multi-function buttons became
increasingly common in the next stage of user interface evolution.
Figure 2. Starting in the 1960s
and continuing through the 1980s,
LED and LCD digital displays and
pushbutton controls increasingly
replaced analog dials and knobs.
engineers are under greater time-to-
market pressure than ever before, so
they need to acquire reliable data on
experimental devices and circuits as
quickly as possible. Although digital
multimeters (DMMs), for example,
have long been fixtures on every
electrical engineer’s benchtop, they
haven’t always provided the type or
depth of information users need to do
their jobs. To get the answers they
need, DMM users have had to turn
to other kinds of instruments to go
“beyond the numbers.”
At the same time, changes in user
characteristics and expectations
about ease of use have led instrument
manufacturers to create user
interfaces that incorporate many of the
same control and display innovations
that have revolutionized consumer
products like tablets, smartphones,
and cameras. The most prominent
of these innovations is the use of
advanced capacitive touchscreens
with multi-point, pan-pinch-zoom-
swipe operation, which simplifies
interacting with data. By providing
immediate visual feedback and a more
content-rich display, touchscreens
support faster learning than other
control and display approaches and
give users greater confidence in what
they’re doing. This can substantially
reduce user learning curves and
training requirements while improving
measurement integrity and testing
efficiency.
The intuitive nature of touchscreen
interfaces allows users at all levels
of testing sophistication to become
experts quickly. They also offer
the advantage of providing instant
access to context-sensitive help,
which eliminates the need to consult
a user manual to get an instrument
up and running. For those relatively
new to testing, these instruments can
speed up the measurement process
by helping users test accurately and
get results quickly, and allows them to
focus on their next breakthrough rather
than on learning how to configure
the instrument. With simplified
setups configured from the front
panel (Figure 4), such instruments
support faster time to measurement
and significant improvements in test
32 l New-Tech Magazine Europe