June 8, 2025
Confusing Controls
I recently took an American Airlines flight from New York’s JFK to San Francisco. While I’m usually quite occupied with my laptop, I caught a glimpse of what movie was playing and decided I’d like to watch for a bit.
As I went to plug my headphones in, the armrest controls presented me with this stunningly bad example of an interface:
Look at that panel for a moment. What controls the volume? The channel? Which toggle turns on the light, or calls the flight attendant?
Now imagine looking at that panel from above, in a seat that is perhaps 2 - 4” wider than your own body. All of these controls look symmetrical, similar, and the bottom two items feel roughly the same.
Here’s the panel, labeled:
The headphone jack is on the opposite side from the volume controls. The light icon is actually a button—but the flight attendant icon is just a sticker! Instead, the attendant button is right below the volume controls.
This entire control panel is a very good example of an ambiguous interface. The same paradigm is used for completely different purposes, and completely unrelated functions are not grouped.
A great example of how not to design a UI.
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