The declining effort of music interfaces

This is your brain. This is your brain on interface

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The other day, I was fiddling with the new Lynx car receiver from Sirius XM. My previous satellite radio receiver had a bunch of actual physical buttons on it, while the new device is all touch screen. That got me thinking about how interfaces have changed over the years and how they’re going to continue evolving, particularly in how we’re having to put less and less effort into listening to music.

Rather than expound on it, I made up this short graphic that I think explains it all: