All Starfleet Memo: For The Last Time, We Are Not Changing The Transporter Interface

Attention, all personnel.

Starfleet Design here, hoping to retire an issue that’s taken up too much of our time already.

It’s come to our attention that one piece of our technology — really, one tiny aspect of this technology — has become the focus of too many cargo bay gripe sessions and discussion-board throwdowns. To the degree where it’s interfering with larger and more pressing space issues.

We’re talking about the interface for the transporters.

More specifically the “sliders”.

People hate the “sliders”.

A quick summary, in case you enlisted yesterday: every Starfleet console is fitted with a standard alpha-numeric touchpad, except the transporters. The transporters have this thing where you touch the bottom and then slide your hand to the top, like you’re choosing the browning level on a toaster, except you’re scattering and reassembling the atoms in someone’s body.

Not everyone loves this.

Look, Starfleet, WE GET IT. Yes, we’ve heard the argument: Isn’t transporting kind of a… binary process? Aren’t you either here or there?

Fair point.