Various blogs, including Dvorak Uncensored have cited an academic study suggesting that half of consumer product returns are due to usability issues. This doesn't count the people who can't use the product but keep it anyway (like me and my Timex, below).

One finding was that managers at Philips couldn't figure out how to use their own company's products.

In 1993, I purchased a Tissot digital-analog seven-function watch. It became my all-time favorite for its looks and its easy-to-use interface. Its only "button" was the crown, that rotating knob next to the "3" on most watches. To choose a function, you rotated the crown and the digital display changed accordingly. Within any function, to change a setting, you pulled the crown out and then rotated it; to advance by hours instead of minutes, you spun the crown faster. The crown also operated as a momentary switch: you pushed it in to toggle the alarm or the stopwatch on or off. Unlike other digital-analog watches, when setting local time, spinning the crown changed both the analog hands and the digital display.

A decade later, when the mechanism wore out, I could not find a Tissot that looked as good in my price range. I settled for a Timex with similar features that looked pretty good. But it was a struggle to change its settings even with the instructions in front of me, and, due to its lack of rhyme or reason, impossible without.

Last month, I discovered Tissot's new T-Touch series. Although it has three "buttons" instead of one, the buttons operate consistently. And delightfully, the crystal face of the watch is a touch screen that makes it easy to access the watch's functions.

The T-Touch comes in at least two series, business and sport. Business models show the time in five time zones with 150 named countries and cities. They provide two alarms, a perpetual calendar with automatic summer/winter switchover, a chronograph (stopwatch) and a timer. Sport models provide only a single time zone, a single alarm, and no timer, and they leave leap years and summer time adjustments to you. But they offer a thermometer, a barometer, an altimeter and a compass, with the usual caveats about body heat and frequent altimeter adjustment. The description that follows is of the sport model shown in the photo. Operation of other models is similar.

The crown of a T-Touch watch does not pull out or rotate. When you push it in for one second, it beeps and displays a symbol in the digital display. This indicates that the watch is "activated". It stays activated until you do nothing for 30 seconds. While activated, the crystal acts as a touch screen. Touch it near the rim to select the function named at that location, e.g., chrono. The hour and minute hand both point there to confirm your selection. (Logical exceptions: In compass mode, the minute and hour hands point north and south, respectively. In "meteo" [barometer] mode, the angle of the hands to 12:00 tells you whether the atmospheric pressure has been rising or falling and by how much.) Touch the center of the crystal to select the normal time display.

You use the up and down buttons to change the current setting, whether time, altitude, or magnetic declination. (Logical exception: In chrono mode, the up button starts and stops the stopwatch and the down button provides the split and reset functions.) As with my old Tissot, the analog and digital time change in tandem.

Although these watches are far from cheap--they run about $500--they are much less expensive than the upscale Tissot watches sold by jewelers. Before buying any Tissot watch, inquire about adjustment of the band; for some models, the band is custom-fit to your wrist, which may make it hard to resell.

It's good to know that there is a watch company that cares about ease of use. Tissot even cares about accessibility. On their Silen-T watch, you can read the time with your finger by running it around the rim and sensing the distinct vibrations at the current hour and minute. You can set the time by touch as well.

As manufacturers offer consumers increasingly easy-to-use watches, kitchen gadgets, and other hard goods, consumers will grow to expect corresponding advances in the ease of use of software and online services. We HCI professionals have our work cut out for us.