HMI considerations

Hello LinuxCNC Forum,I hope I categorized this topic correctly. I have been using LinuxCNC for my mini lathe for six years, and it is working great. Recently, I came into contact with commercial CNC controls (Heidenhain and Siemens) while writing my thesis at the university. Some of them have a great user experience and good ergonomics. My goal is to build my own HMI based on Gmoccapy that is easy to use and ergonomic.But now the question has arisen: what makes an HMI really good, and are touch controls really the way to go? Which functions should have their dedicated hardware button, and which ones should be accessible via softkeys? The overall size of the display is also a topic where I am not sure.I hope that your additional inputs help me to create a usable HMI.

The question need to be asked different. 
What do you, the user expect? 

I did Design gmoccapy at the beginning just for me! 
I made the mistake to publish if?

So people come and ask for more safety (why is it possible to stop the spindle while milling) and I was blamed, because my GUI caused the breakage of the tool?

So development went on and other developers jumped in and did and do a very good job. 

So, what do you miss in gmoccapy? 
Why making stuff new from scratch? 
Why don't you just jump in and improve an existing GUI? 

Norbert 
 

The UX and UI in Heidenhain is a catastrophe compared to Datron imo. I believe in touch for basically everything except stuff like start/stop/jog/feed+spindle override where you might need to take action quickly. I'm sure you can find examples of the Datron UI on youtube.

Semiotics and hierarchy is highly important in any UX/UI, so if anything I would work on that.