Interestingly, almost all designers know that touch screens in cars are bad idea. They always knew it. Bit for some reason, the designers in automotive industry were the only ones who didn’t know. It’s a mystery.
Cost. They put them in to save money. It’s not a mystery at all. Plumbing wires for a bunch of analog switches is more expensive than one databus, and then there is the simplicity of turning your hardware problem into a software one.
Cost is a big thing, but also configurability. While you can assign different functionality to different buttons, it's easier to add features after the fact to a touch screen. While this can be both a blessing and a curse, I own a new model vehicle from a startup car company, and the interface has improved significantly in the past 2 years with OTA updates.
Sure but there’s a handful of things people actually want physical controls for (shockingly all of the exact same things cars from 20 years ago have physical controls for) and I think having Eg AC controls and basic music controls with hard buttons and the rest with a screen is the logical result here.
There is truth to that, but it’s also true that cars simply have way more functionality than they did 20 years ago and it’s effectively impossible to assign a button to every thing.
I'm not sure I buy this. My 2020 Civic has physical knobs and buttons for most† of the climate functions, media/radio controls, answer/hangup a call, lights, wipers, cruise control (including speed limiter and follow distance), driver's display, brake hold, eco mode, stop/start on/off, dampers, gears (though it's a manual so goes without saying), windows, mirror folding, and then a few down by my knee that I never need to touch like collision detection, traction control etc. I've edited this post four times already because I keep remembering more buttons it has.
With the regrettable exception of the couple of climate controls I detail below, the only functionality on the touch screen is stuff I shouldn't be fiddling with while in motion anyway: GPS, car settings, and anything that CarPlay displays. I know a Civic isn't a prime example of a "high tech" car, but it's a well-specced one and I'm struggling to think of much that substantially fancier cars have that would blow past a reasonable limit for physical controls.
† on/off, temp, screen blower, seat heaters, and defrosters all have physical controls. The manual fan speed and direction controls are on the touch screen. I wish they weren't, and I believe the newer 11th gen has restored these as physical knobs and buttons.
I was at a Honda dealership in late 2021 looking for a car, and I mentioned to the car salesmen how I don't like how touchscreen-dependent cars have become. Then ten minutes later he's showing me the touchscreen climate controls in a 10th gen Civic and talking about how cool they are.
I wound up getting a new 11th gen Civic since used cars were ridiculously expensive at the time, and I was very pleased to find that the touchscreen is only used for iOS/Android and some settings. The climate control knobs are imperfect though: for some reason they decided that the user should select which vents are active with an infinitely scrolling knob, so you can't utilize muscle memory, and you have to look at it while you're turning it. An improvement over the previous generation, but a step down from my dad's 1992 Civic.
Toyota has also swung back into the button direction. Only the CarPlay and a few of the backup camera controls use the touch interface (and the button I use most for the camera is a physical button). I’m sitting in my car right now waiting, and so just counted all the buttons I can reach while driving from the drivers seat and got to 95 including things like left toggle right toggle for the mirrors adjustment being two buttons, so being as liberal as possible in my definitions of a button or knob. There’s then a touch screen a little bigger than an iPad in the center console that has the Toyota infotainment stuff (which I disabled and opted out of the master data agreement so it does nothing) and CarPlay.
The thing is I intuitively know about 50 of them since I’ve been driving the vehicle about six months now.
2020 Audi A4 here: all AC controls, lights, wipers, cruise control, volume, speedometer display options etc. are phyiscal. Thank God. Of course being Audi it's a bit goofy at parts, but manageable. I cannot imagine having to touch a screen to skip a track or, God forbid, change the gear into reverse.
Of course it still has a touch screen display for all the usual carplay/android auto shenanigans.
Slightly older Audis (up through 2017-2019 depending on model) had a clickable wheel interface instead of a touchscreen. It's vastly superior, and I deliberately bought a used 2017 A4 to get it.
I don't mind having the extra functionality on the touch screen, just let me use the basic ones that already existed before touchscreens (A/C control, volume, etc.) on physical buttons.
Both of my cars from different makers have a ton of things which don't have a physical button. Configuring the colors of the lights in the interior, setting restrictions on secondary keys, changing the doorpad settings, configuring navigation quick saves, configuring auto lock on walk away, whether the car moves the seats back for easier getting in and out, how much it moves the seats for that, toggling liftgate gestures, setting the default settings for ADAS systems, configuring if the mirrors automatically tuck in or not, configuring the puddle lights, configuring charging settings, configuring stereo equalizer and other deeper settings, rear occupant alert systems, configuring how long it waits to have the lights on, defaults for auto-high beam and its sensitivity, configuring remote start options, deeper setting options for drive modes, configuring cross traffic alerting, deeper route planning, etc. Probably still a hundred more options I haven't listed here.
Do people actually use most of this stuff or is it just cruft? My guess is it is junk that almost no one ever looks at nevermind actually uses or changes with any frequency
I'm talking about important, everyday functions of a vehicle, like the radio, GPS, heating, cruise control, etc
I agree, controls drivers should be expected to use when the car is in motion should be physical and on/immediately around the steering wheel.
GPS? As in you're going to have like a whole QWERTY keyboard as physical keys or something for punching in addresses? I've got no problem with practically everything about the navigation be on a touchscreen, I shouldn't be messing with it while the car is moving. Just make it big.
Radio/stereo should have physical controls on the steering wheel. You shouldn't really be messing with the center console while driving. It's not like you should be swapping CD's or navigating folders on the USB drive or whatever. Anything past next/previous and volume is probably too much.
Cruise control should be on the steering wheel or stalks as well.
It's 2024. Thermostats have been a thing for a long time. Cars can make us comfortable without having to mess with the settings every five minutes. Every time I'm in a car that doesn't have auto climate I hate it, have to constantly futz with it to make it actually comfortable. Meanwhile even my 2000 Accord had a decent auto climate that I practically never had to touch. But whatever, put the basic AC controls and what not as physical controls. The only one I care to absolutely be physical is max defrost.
But my point is, there are a ton of controls you're possibly going to use sometimes, even if only to originally set up the car how you want it. It's asinine thinking every function of a modern car can have some physical switch and toggle to it. Loads of cars would look like the controls on the Space Shuttle if you forced every feature available to be assigned to a physical switch.
> I haven't found any pieces of the car functionality
Any functionality.
I agree though. Any critical driving function should be physical. Like the podcast ad skip button on the steering wheel, one of the most important control components in a modern car.
It doesn't require it to be a touchscreen, sure, but it practically requires it to be a screen. But I'd much rather just quickly tap a checkbox instead of press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press navigating the giant array of settings.
And then on top of that people want AA/CarPlay which is designed around touch inputs first, so you're going to have that screen be touch anyways.
None of that should really be changed by the driver when the car is in motion, and you'd have to manage the deep navigation of a bunch of button presses on a screen anyways so arguing you'd be less distracted is a moot point.
Speaking of things not supposed to be done while driving: We tested the Android car GPS thing this summer. The passenger is usually in charge of the GPS so the driver can concentrate on driving. But this darn thing says something like "touch input disabled while driving". So we still have to stop the car to do adjustments on the GPS. Very handy on the Autobahn, you can't just pull over and park... Who does things like this?
Sadly all other GPS navigators we used to use has gone downhill to the state of unusable so this is what we turned out using all vacation.
The commodore 64 had 4 large Function keys on the right. I think 10 strokes per second was normal (I was among 12-14 year olds tho) Menus were structured like
[F1] FOO
[F3] BAR
[F5] BAZ
[F7] BAL
Small enough to instantly absorb in the wetware. Depending on how frequent the choice was used one would push options further down the sub menus. Say, something like this for HN (I made a tree, they would normally be separate pages)
[F1] Index
[F3] Threads
[F5] Comments
[F7] More [F1] Ask
[F3] Show
[F5] Jobs
[F7] More [F1] Profile [F1] View
[F3] Submissions
[F5] Logout
[F3] New
[F5] Past
[F7] Submit
After you've submitted 2-3 things you just know you have to bash [F7] three times. To view jobs you hammer the bottom button then the one above. The hands will learn how to use the menus really quickly. I was often surprised that my hands knew how to take me places before really reading anything. Every time one used such menu it went slightly faster and it kept going faster. Pointing a mouse or using a touch screen is really slow. Could say it gets slower every time by comparison.
You're really going to memorize the menu layouts to adjust the different settings for the seat moving when you turn off the car and open the door? You change that setting enough you're going to get a lot of muscle memory for that setting? Really?
It seems you're not getting what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the normal seat adjustment that you probably fiddle with a bit especially if you don't have profiles and change drivers a lot. I'm talking about the feature where your seat will go further back than normal to give you more space to get in and out of the car. It's often called something like "Easy Entry/Exit". Then when you start the car it goes back to where either the seat was last or whatever profile it was set to.
On this feature (which itself can be enabled/disabled), sometimes you can choose how far back it'll move the seat automatically for you.
Its this setting that you're suggesting you're going to mess with enough to have decent muscle memory to change without looking. That you'd want as a top-level feature setting option, practically a dedicated button to change it.
The video below shows what I'm talking about. Note in a lot of cars it's just a basic toggle. Sometimes you can set how far back you want the seat to go, if you want the steering wheel to move, how far you want the steering wheel to move, etc.
> But I'd much rather just quickly tap a checkbox instead of press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press navigating the giant array of settings.
If I was making such an interface, that would be a dial or knob instead of buttons.
Ok, so click click click click click click click click click press click click click press click click. In the end I'm still having to pay attention to the screen anyways, and once again the screen is probably going to be touchscreen anyways so it's extra hardware just to have a more complicated input system than just pressing the screen, taking up space in the cabin to have this redundant control scheme. Once again just to change settings I shouldn't be changing while driving anyways like how far back the seat should go when the car is off and I open the door or if the passenger side mirror should tilt down when reversing to help aiding in parallel parking. So critical to operate that with physical controls so one can change those settings while driving!
I've had far more rotary encoders fail than I've had capacitive screens fail, so even an argument of higher reliability is pretty moot. Most damage that would break the capacitive touch is going to damage the rest of the screen anyways.
Finally, if it's so I can change those settings while wearing gloves, wow I'm going to increase the complexity of the car and take up more space so I can change the settings on the secondary keys without taking off my gloves when it's really cold outside someday. So much stuff just so I can do that thing I rarely do anyways slightly easier for a few days of the year, assuming I'm changing those settings while also getting in and out of the car a lot so I wouldn't want to take off my gloves for a minute.
Just put the settings behind a touchscreen. It's fine.
That doesn't sound like a dial/knob. You'd give it a single big twist or scroll to get the cursor around the right spot first. Same as old-fashioned radios.
So a knob that doesn't even have the feedback of knowing when you've gotten to the next selection at all, you have to actually stare at it as it goes through the different choices. That doesn't seem better to me at all. Personally, in this idea of a dial I'd like one that can actually give some haptic feedback. Or even better yet just be able to actually tap on the option instead of needing to turn a dial to move a selector on the screen to choose it.
At least with an old-fashioned radio knob you got the feedback of if you were tuning into the station by hearing it. But moving a selector on a screen?
It's like you're arguing for the MacBook Wheel, as if a knob is the most optimal way to input arbitrary choices on a computer.
Discoverability is also an issue touch screens can help with - I enjoy that in the settings app on iPhone (I believe android is the same) one can search for a setting, rather than try to guess where a given setting has been placed.
But I don't want discoverability when my windshield suddenly fogs up and I can't see anything. I want to be able to just reach out and adjust the airflow without even thinking about it when I start noticing the fog in the first place.
Last time I had something useful was in my Volvo 740. After that it has been getting worse and worse. Even physical nobs can be bad, just round and smooth, without any physical notch that snows what direction it points.
Oh, I completely agree - everything important should be accessible and intuitive - typically that does mean a well-placed physical control.
But there are so many settings on a contemporary car that it would be impractical to have a switch for all of them, and even if they were, if it's something you'd like to change once in a blue-moon being able to search for that setting is really useful.
I don't know if this makes great sense as an example, but, say you're travelling from the UK to France (or USA to Mexico?) and want to have your speedometer show km/h rather than miles/hour. That's not a setting which should have a switch, but may be something useful.
>I don't know if this makes great sense as an example, but, say you're travelling from the UK to France (or USA to Mexico?) and want to have your speedometer show km/h rather than miles/hour. That's not a setting which should have a switch, but may be something useful.
Three presses in a Mercedes on its speedometer screen.
The discussion is not about buttons for everything. Ofcourse I can't have a 737 cockpit from 1980 with buttons all over the place. Even planes get smart controls for the less used things. But the fan, the air direction and other very important and time sensitive controls HAVE to be physical in a car.
In regards to dealing with windows fogging, I prefer the system in my car that automatically detects conditions where it might fog and adjusts itself accordingly. On top of that the car has a physical max defog button close to the actual driver controls.
How is that better? Press press press press press press press press press press press press press press press cool just set one setting. Versus tap settings, flick scroll, tap to set.
One shouldn't be adjusting practically any of those things listed while driving. That makes having it as a physical control moot. And having physical buttons to navigate a selector on the screen is still a terrible thing to do when driving anyways.
My rule of thumb is if it's on the center console I shouldn't be messing with it when the car is in motion. If I'm supposed to mess with it while moving it's on the wheel or immediately around it.
And tbh between my car with a zillion buttons I shouldn't be pressing while driving and a small screen and the car where most of those functions I shouldn't mess with while driving are on the screen I prefer the screen. Far bigger screen to quickly glance at the maps when driving instead of a smaller one that's harder to see. Less space to actually see the media collection when I'm stopped and can safely navigate it.
That's not always the case, some things on the center console include skipping songs, flipping between audio sources, etc. If you need to switch to an emergency radio station from bluetooth, its drastically more complicated because there's no physical buttons anymore.
That's on the steering wheel on practically every car I've had for over 20 years of model years.
You probably shouldn't be flipping between audio sources while driving. But even then, I've had change audio source as an option on steering wheels before. Generally, you shouldn't be fiddling with the radio when the vehicle is moving, you should be driving. Keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road, not on the stereo in the center console.
FWIW, in pretty much every car I've had since a 2012 model year I've been able to press a button on the wheel and say "tune to am 1510" and it'll tune that without having to take my hands or eyes off the wheel. Far preferrable than trying to look over at the radio to find the AM button again and figure out which knob is the tuning dial and then look to see I'm tuning to the right station.
> I've been able to press a button on the wheel and say "tune to am 1510" and it'll tune that without having to take my hands or eyes
Every time I try to talk to the voice assistant its the most horrible driving experience. It hijacks everything, and definitely sets me to where I have to pull over, or just stop trying to talk to it to get anything done. It does not understand me whatsoever.
I think the added complexity is in areas where it doesn't really matter. The stuff the driver actually cares about is still the same as it was then. You can just put the rest in a bluetooth phone app. If it is more complicated than a button press, people probably shouldn't be messing with it while driving anyway.
I definitely don't want my car controls tied to a phone app. No matter what I should be able to configure my car's functions long after the company stops distributing their app. But there's no reason why we can't have a "best of both worlds" sort of deal. I have a modern Mazda with a touch screen that comes with a center control knob and has physical controls for a good chunk of the settings you'd ever want to change while driving. So I don't have to go through menus to change my air conditioning from low to high, but I also don't have to use a tiny character led display and a "push 3 times, then hold for 5 seconds then pull twice and rotate 37.8 degrees" multi function button to find and access settings outside of those physical controls. In fact, the touch screen disables touch input at speed, so the control cluster MUST be able to access any functionality without relying on the touch display. It works pretty darn well. In fact the only thing I'd argue it could do better is be more responsive and have a decent set of distinct tones for navigating the screens without sight. It's not often I want a setting in the menus while driving, but it would be a lot nicer if each menu screen had a distinct set of sounds so that by ear I could know where I am and memorize those controls if I needed to.
> long after the company stops distributing their app
There is a cool idea called open source, but I suppose something as radical as giving users ownership of software for their car isn't something companies would be willing to consider. Much better when you get to charge a subscription for heated seats.
Even if its open source, I don't want to spend my own time or depend on other people deciding to keep the software working and building on newer devices just to configure car settings. There's no reason in the world to eschew a touch screen or other control interface in a car and instead put all the control in a phone app.
I would say safety is a big one. It's a lot easier for users to justify fiddling with a touch screen interface when it's a part of the car vs on their phone screen. Sometimes you want to make unsafe things harder to do.
If fiddling with the touch screen while driving is the issue, you can solve that with software lock-outs. The Mazda's touch screen stops responding to touches at faster than 5 MPH, and if necessary you could also lock out option and setting controls entirely while the car is in motion so that even the control knob couldn't be used to fiddle while driving. Moving control out of the already on board computer and control system and onto some external device is just plain over-engineering a worse solution.
The vast majority of these settings are unavailable to even browse on my cars while the car is in motion. No need to go with putting it in a separate app. Which putting it in an app doesn't even prevent it, the driver could still just be messing with their phone anyways.
Right, it makes sense to have the long tail of your functionality on the touchscreen, unless you want your car to look like an airliner's cockpit. Which would actually be cool but it would be a pain to learn and, presumably, quite expensive.
> it makes sense to have the long tail of your functionality on the touchscreen, unless you want your car to look like an airliner's cockpit.
AFAIK, an airliner cockpit also hides the "long tail" of functionality behind multi-function screens (though AFAIK they use physical multi-function buttons and keyboards, instead of touch screens); only the essential functions have physical buttons (but there are a lot of essential functions on an airplane).
The functionality you refer to is probably the creature comforts (ie, multi zone A/C, memory settings for front seats, …). But the essentials of a car (ie, transmission, wheels, structural integrity, windshield wipers) haven’t changed for decades.
What has changed though is:
- increasing size of vehicles due to increasing insecurity of American buyers
- a large majority of class C holders largely unprepared for the size of these vehicles
- this gives manufacturers the opportunity to stuff as much tech junk into these vehicles to give these less qualified drivers more assistance
- coincidentally, all of this tech junk comes with a very high premium for manufacturers and dealerships
Fear sells in this country. 9/11 changed the game.
Many of those essentials of a car have changed a good bit in the last few decades. Hybrid drive trains have become far better and far more common. Electric vehicle drive units are far better than they were before. Transmissions these days are far more complicated and achieve much better mileage than older transmissions and allow people to select gears electronically despite otherwise being an "automatic".
Designs for structural integrity are also different. Look at a 1997 Honda Accord and how big its windows are and how skinny those pillars are. Look at a modern Accord and see how big its pillars are. Look at a crash test of a 2000s Town and Country and compare that to a modern Pacifica. Radically different.
How many settings does a typical TV have these days? You can modify all of those with a d-pad. What is happening in your car that actually needs touch?
Smart TV's effectively have touch-style interfaces as well now, where the remote is like using a mouse in free space versus the traditional D pad. The LG Freespace and Sony One Flick come to mind.
I don’t think that’s what people want either. But there is a dozen or two features so commonly used that an analog control is the obvious choice.
One of my newer cars has only one physical control and that’s for volume. I never realized it before owning this car but I change the AC much more frequently than I change my audio volume.
And, really, wouldn't a car that had controls like a plane be awesome? Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but I'd adore a set of metal physical switches just above the windscreen. Add a HUD while you're at it...
Soft keys don't require any significant wire plumbing, the keys are less than an inch from the screen. And they've been used for decades in ATMs and gas pumps: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_key
Couldn't you still run a digital bus all the way and then have some conversion to/from analog controls at the end? Keep the computer but lose the screen?
The interface is the problem, not the underlying information representation or communication.
That's a good idea, but I think at least part of the reason it's more complicated is that you have to design and fabricate a new face plate for the dashboard, and get a new set of controls every time you want to change something on it. Say you wanted to add a new button on a particular trim level only, because it has a feature that the other levels don't. You'd need to either redesign that whole part of the console for just that trim level, or else sell everyone at a lower trim level a console with an extra button that does nothing. Multiply that by N, for every tiny feature you want to sell on the higher trim levels. If you've got a digital display, of course, you can just go crazy and add all the UI elements (and features) you want.
> You'd need to either redesign that whole part of the console for just that trim level, or else sell everyone at a lower trim level a console with an extra button that does nothing.
Not necessarily. Sony has joysticks that can snap in and out of the advanced controllers. It wouldn't be hard at all to design a backing circuit board that supports this behind the trim. Switches aren't exactly delicate parts either so it's conceivable that a cheaper system could use auto shops to solder in a new switch into the board.
You could also have a simple multiplexed interface board near the head unit and the switches could use simple two wire connections back to that board. Or the head unit could just have this built into it. Or you could design and use a HID like protocol so different interface adapters with different capabilities could be plugged and unplugged from the system.
Is this worth the cost? Short term probably not but long term you might be able to make these accessories much more generic and so reusing them in newer designs might actually lead to good savings. Plus you'd spawn an active third party market for these parts.
I have a couple 15-20 year old base trim level cars and they use the exact same dashboards as their premium siblings. The unused button spots are still there they just haven’t been punched out yet
If you want the car to be fully customer configurable, you basically need a custom dashboard for every single car. You also need to think about what happens when the customer does an upgrade.
These buttons are usually located so close to each other, that one PCB can hold many of them. Then you need just one set of wires which connects the ECU to the controller on the PCB.
I would think, however, that a lot of these car companies already had assemblies for analog switches. I don't know the cost analysis, but maybe switching from analog to touchscreen and now back to analog is more expensive than if they just stuck with analog.
Also this is a safety problem. IMO, this should be regulated. In the US we kind of do - we require a physical button for the hazard lights. That's why in modern Teslas that's the only physical button.
If that is the deciding factor, you can put the buttons and knobs on a face plate mounted on top of a touch screen, with the unpowered buttons just acting as fingers. But I don't think manufacturing cost is the real issue.
In well over five decades of experience with automobiles I have never once had a physical nob wear out. In my own vehicle, or those of anyone I've encountered.
I'm not saying it never happens, but it would be an exceptional outlier circumstance.
My old head unit was all buttons and slipped into the dashboard in one piece with one plug too. In the custom stereo world having a touch screen interface always carried a premium over good old buttons. I’m not sure why that should change. Screens are much larger and full color on touch screen cars too compared to basic lcd alphanumeric screens.
This is it. I don't know why so many people think touch controls are a misguided attempt to be better. They are a definite attempt to be cheaper, that's all. This is why most electronics made in China these days have touch buttons. They are cheaper and they are almost always worse.
You make the software button once and it's there for the many millions of cars. You have to actually manufacture and stick in the many millions of buttons otherwise. Besides the actual action was going to be software on the bus anyways. Your window switch hasn't been directly connected to a motor in decades. It's sending a "window down" message to the bus that goes to the window actuator unit that then drives the motor. You're still paying someone to make it computerized anyways, you were going to pay a team of designers to draw it up and make the plans for the physical switch as well.
The screen was going to be there anyways due to backup camera requirements and because consumers want AA/Carplay.
Evidence suggests that their engineering teams are either not that big or not that good given how garbage most vehicle UI/software is, and it's a price you pay (mostly) once per touchscreen software design, which will span several models, where as the component + install cost needs to be paid for every vehicle in perpetuity.
If you haven't been there, you cannot imagine how bad most car manufacturer's software departments are. They are big, expensive, and crawling with bad practices. Management usually doesn't have a clue about software, so there's a lot of maneuvering with goals being anything but producing good software quickly and cheaply.
It's a little deeper than this, software for each module is typically provided by a tier 1 or tier 2 supplier according to a spec provided by the OEM. Sometimes the tier 1 or tier 2 supplier is also subbing out the software or stuck with some system on chip that sucks.
So for a made-up example, GM wants to build a smart dash in the latest SUV, maybe Bosch or Continental has one with a SoC inside and their own software hell. OEM works with supplier to integrate, bugfix, skin, and customize. But they don't write it from scratch.
AFAIK, car manufacturers want to bring more software in house as a core competency, which is probably good because the "Tier 1"s are generally even worse at software than them and have worse aligned incentives.
The fact that software is bad is not evidence that it was built by a small team or had a low budget. A depressing amount of high-budget, large-team software is awful.
This is absolutely true, but if you scratch the surface of teams like that what you'll usually find is terrible management more interested in shuffling paperwork and CYA than in quality and excellence.
When I worked at Toyota (well, NUMMI) in the '90s, the engineers from Toyota Japan that told me: "I'd kill my mother to save $1 on each car produced." Yes, at Toyota's scale, $1/car is a lot of money.
This makes the incorrect assumption that the infotainment system would be removed, reducing the cost of the engineering.
Adding a virtual button in an infotainment system is much cheaper than a physical button. Especially since the most cost effective routing of those physical buttons would be to the infotainment system that is going to be there regardless.
Remember that someone needs to manufacture those buttons, install them in the factory, stock them for replacement and keep them around several countries in the world in warehouses for when they break.
Now replace all that with a single screen and suddenly costs savings everywhere \o/
Can you find any annual report from a car manufacturer that shows parts sales contributing significantly to profit?
Yes, dealerships make money from servicing and parts: "the service and parts department, which accounts for the other 49.6% of the dealership's gross profits".
But a car manufacturer doesn't capture that, so a manufacturer has no financial incentive to increase profits for dealerships.
That isn’t really true when you factor in the cost of engineering new parts/systems compared to just doing it like you’ve always done.
I know a guy who worked at GM and apparently they got bit by the “digital transformation” bug and decided that the army of iPhone app developers and ex Silicon Valley folks was what they needed to stay relevant. Hence the omnipresent touch screen.
In addition to what others are saying, US law requires new cars to have back up cameras and the related screen. So everything else immediately becomes "so we add it to the screen we already have to have, or add a new physical control?"
On another note, I do like my (getting older) Mazda's screen. It has touch, but I honestly forget it does because the control knob is so much better for use while driving. Nice and tactile. Additionally all of the important controls have physical buttons. Only major problem I have with it is that if it can't connect to Bluetooth (which is stupidly often), it decides to switch back to radio, blasting that at me. Then I have to sit there going through multiple menus to get Bluetooth reconnected.
One of the deciding factors for me going for a Mazda (currently being shipped!) over other brands is because they still use a real gearbox (and not a CVT), and because their media system controls are physical buttons and not a touch screen. I hate taking my eyes off the road and the Mazda seemed like the safest option to reduce that as much as possible.
I'm new to cars - I haven't passed my test yet. I also live in the UK, where manuals are the norm (and that's what I'm learning on). What is it that you dislike about CVTs? When you say a real gearbox, is it manual or automatic?
Not the person you're replying to, but I know what they're talking about.
CVTs work by a "belt" riding on "cones". These cones can slide in and out and change the size of each side, meaning they can change their gear ratio dynamically. This is great in many ways: the vehicle can always get exactly the gearing it wants for a given situation and there's no shift lag or shudder or whatever. Just nice, smooth, continuous adjustment of the gear ratio.
However, that belt riding on the cones depends on a good bit of friction to work. Friction means wear and tear. For a car level CVT, they make it out of a lot of little metal wedges on a metal band instead of what you'd normally think of a belt. However, it'll still constantly wear out leaving lots of tiny metal shavings. Owners are typically pretty bad about actually maintaining their cars, so transmission fluids and belt replacements often go long or skipped entirely leading to early deaths for these transmissions. Plus, you typically can't put as much power through them without risking damage.
They probably mean a real transmission as in one with actual interlocking gears whether that be automatic or manual.
I've been relatively convinced that it was a cost savings measure. Both in cost of components and, probably more importantly, cost in labor of install, since touchscreens are cheaper on both regards. Everyone knew it was worse, but it saved money, and, at least for a while, it could be marketed as "premium".
The designers are not the ones who decided on that. It’s cost reduction, feature flexibility (you can decide later what exactly to provide in the software), and the marketing semblance of a cool modern interface.
I'm sure the designers in the automotive industry knew. The move to touch screens just reeks of management and marketing interference: chasing trends and shiny technology as well as prioritizing cost savings/uniformity/flexibility/etc over the final product experience.
The flip side: every time I run into a car that has a screen-based UI and doesn't support touch controls, it is absolutely miserable. There is such a thing as too many tactile controls.
I vividly remember a discussion with designer colleague in the early 2010s that used to work at BMW. They convinced me that touch buttons in car were awful.
I always like the centre console round knob in BMW, Audi and Mercedes. Clicky wheel type of haptic feedback and some buttons around it. They worked intuitively for me and you could pair them with a touch screen.
I think a big issue with having a touch screen AND physical buttons is that it requires a lot more coordination between the teams to make it work well.
Yes - people also would prefer to buy car with fancy big screen to buying car with lot of old school buttons. Because of fashion. After while, when big screen is not that fancy anymore, design can return to be functional again ... using physical controls.
I know I’m going against general internet sentiment here, but having used a touch screen in a car (Tesla) for a couple years, going back to driving a more standard vehicle with 50+ inputs spread all over the car is not pleasant.
They probably know, but don't have the ultimate say in the matter. As others have said, having one screen as opposed to a variety of buttons and knobs that need to be wired is likely cheaper (even more when you don't really invest in proper software development).
I am not sure about the cost reasoning. The cars were equipped with all the buttons and knobs before the touchscreens. Then they started adding touchscreens - and it was the screens that were expensive, not the buttons that were already there.
But they went too far and moved everything to the screens. It's fine for big portion of the controls, but it's a big no-no for the controls you need to use while driving. And that's just a few buttons, to be honest.
Anyway, a decent design process would figure out. Seems like inner politics won instead.
> and it was the screens that were expensive, not the buttons that were already there.
The combination of a screen AND buttons is still more expensive than just a screen. If you are introducing a new component that is going to otherwise raise the cost of production, you will be looking for ways to reduce cost or, maybe more aptly, offset the cost of the new component.
With touch screens, you are presented with a unique option where the thing you introduce can be used to move all sorts of functionality to that would otherwise need its own hardware.
You also need to keep in mind that the physical buttons on older cars didn't need to be tied into a computer system as much as modern buttons.
Once upon a time I used Android Auto and things were good. Most controls were in the corners, you see, which allowed me to perform a couple of changes without looking at the touchscreen.
One day, a GUI designer decided to put a horizontal bar going through the top of the display just to display a very tiny clock on the top right corner.
The top left corner I used to bring up the menu and quickly select options no longer worked reliably as it was under that horizontal strip.
I stopped using Android Auto after a couple of months.
This was one of the first lessons I learned about good UX design and was the canonical example when discussing what Mac OS classic did right and Windows did wrong.
I think it was Norman Nielson thing or one of those old school gurus.
How are people allowed to work on UIs without learning the core syllabus? The basics of their trade? I grew up on this stuff and I'm not even a UX specialist or a UI designer.
Or are they getting overridden by bad product managers and other shitty stakeholders?
Right? When I worked in the office I kept a copy of Apple's Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines on my desk. It's amazing how "solved" a ton of that kind of stuff was, 30+ years ago. If you design software / UI and don't know the history of HCI and its top players, well…
Slightly tangentially, just now reading the first section of the guidelines concerning metaphors, it's interesting, and an illustration of how far computers have taken over our lives, that now that a lot of the traditional UI metaphors are likely far better known for their software purpose than their original real world meaning
This is why I may never upgrade to a vehicle newer than ~2010. I've dealt with too many consumer electronics that auto-update in ways that make them useless to me, and I'm not willing to make a car-sized purchase in the vague hope that this consumer electronic device will be the exception and will keep working for 10+ years (assuming I maintain it) in the same way as it did when I bought it.
I develop and rely on muscle memory when driving, and I'm not going to invest in muscle memory that can be changed out from under me on the whims of some product manager somewhere.
As a synthesizer enthusiast, I'm excited to read about this. A well-designed button layout on a synth sparks my creativity. Tweaking knobs on a touchscreen doesn’t work for me because I constantly have to check the screen to make sure my fingers are on the right control.
the obvious consequence of electric vehicles is live configurable filters and patches for performance tuning. I want an ADSR for my accelerator in different modes. give me an EQ for acceleration and braking, along with a feedback cycle for cruising, and the era of performance personalization will be huge.
I would buy a tesla instantly if you gave me a eurorack dashboard insert!
eurorack module designers have moved hardware interface design to where they can create intuitive design languages as well.
Similarly, I find mixing on a tablet slower than mixing on a console with tactile controls - because you can do things like change multiple things by different degrees at once (you don't have to look at both controls to ensure your fingers are tracking) and adjust a control while looking at the stafe.
A poorly designed synth doesn't generally cause a car accident though, far less of a legislative impetus to stop softwaring everything in synth-land =)
Its so great when you know where the buttons are located, that you can touch them in the darkness without them suddenly selecting anything. When you need to make sure "is this the second one from the left?", then apply some force to actually change its value.
Touchscreens in cars should have been illegal to begin with it. How can it be that operating a cellphone is not allowed but operating a “tablet” is a necessity?
(The segment is excellent, and whilst in many ways a historical document also strongly informs the recent past, immediate present, and I strongly suspect the future.)
This is an amazing archive of interviews. The audio quality is astounding — you would think these were podcasts from this week. I enjoyed the 1959 discussion with Arthur C. Clarke as well:
https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/arthur-charles-clarke-...
It really is. To quote an earlier comment of mine, the interview archive is immense and diverse. It spans 45 years, from 1952--1997, ran 1 hour each weekday, and the interview guests range from the highly famous to street and school interviews. I've hit on a few gems in particular.
The AWS back-end could be browsed or downloaded directly via AWS tools a ways back, and was about 600 GB last I'd checked. You'll have to sort out your own directory of content, however. Much of what's in there still isn't included in the official directory, again, at last check, though that includes numerous fragments and partial-tape interviews.
It’s naive to think that cost cutting is leading to lost sales. People may in fact buy the inferior car because it’s more affordable and then end up driving something dangerous.
I'm not playing Call of Duty mobile or watching YouTube on the screen on my head unit. I'm not scrolling TikTik or having a text message conversation on a head unit screen. If you think it's the same thing, you haven't actually driven a car with a screen before.
Because you're not thinking and blindly hating. Maybe try to learn and change how you use a car dash instead of trying to use a Tesla (or similar) like a car from 2005..
Teslas are best selling cars for many reasons and touchscreen dash is one of the most important ones.
Gear change: drive/park/reverse. Always using when stopped.
Music: has physical control to change + voice
Volume: same
Side mirrors folks: same + auto
Climate: profile + voice
The only thing that I found I need to fiddle with touchscreen (one physical button -> one touch button) while driving is rear fog light. It's neither auto nor supported by voice.
It's an easy software fix; not sure why they didn't add it yet. The software even recognizes the command and says not available yet.
I am really hoping this and similar projects take off and find mass success -- and tactile controls become more widely deployed across all devices for human-input.
Touchscreens are perfectly fine on phones, tablets etc. But for something like a car it takes a special kind of idiot to implement a touch only way of controlling things like heating/ac, volume, etc.
Even for certain audio controls it makes no sense. My (fairly old now) Toyota's touch screen is needed for switch between radio and usb (no carplay/android auto), even thats annoying to use.
A coworker told me a story where they drove a Tesla to Tahoe Lake and it started snowing. The Tesla sensors did not pick up the snow so the windshield wipers never came on. After nearly crashing the car because they couldn’t see, they pulled over and it took them a long time to find out how to turn on the wipers through the touch UI.
I rented a model 3 from hertz a while back. First time in a model 3, and I couldn't figure out how to lock the car. I finally figured out how to lock it on the touchscreen, but then I would open the door and get out and it would unlock again.
I finally figured out two ways to lock the car, but it took a bunch of web searches to get it.
On one hand I've always been irritated by car reviewers complaining that a car has 'weird' controls, failing to take into account that most of us aren't driving a new car every week and will just adjust to what we use.
On the other hand, some cars are destined for fleets, and all may need to be operated by a stranger in an emergency. There should be a common configuration for features related to safety and velocity.
At the risk of sounding snarkier than I actually intend, this is great example of why so much Tesla criticism online should be ignored or at least taken with a huge grain of salt.
I could criticize your coworker for driving a vehicle off into nature and dangerous weather conditions without taking a few moments to learn how to operate its most basic functions. But I don’t need to, because all I really need to point out is that they could’ve just clicked the button on the turn stalk to turn on the wipers. No touchscreen needed.
In all seriousness, though, they need to be a more careful driver. Driving a vehicle without knowing how to drive it is the fault of the driver and puts other people in danger.
1. Operating a heavy, dangerous piece of machinery in the field without learning how to operate it first is most certainly the operator’s fault. That’s careless, irresponsible, and endangers others. If they had hurt or killed someone, they would’ve been prosecuted and would possibly be in jail right now.
2. Taking a few moments to learn to click a button in a car you bought is far from unreasonable, especially when everyone knows going in that a Tesla is not a completely standardized vehicle. The risk posed by this change is orders of magnitude less than the risk imposed by swapping the brake and accelerator pedals, so that is far from a fair or reasonable comparison.
3. You may not appreciate the benefits of the changes that Tesla made, as these things are ultimately subjective, but those changes contributed to the Model Y becoming the best selling vehicle on the planet.
Now, if your coworker had rented a car and unexpectedly received a Tesla, I could sympathize more. A car rental company should not rent out non-standard vehicles unexpectedly. However, it’s always the responsibility of the driver to learn to operate the vehicle first before getting on the road and endangering others.
> Operating a heavy, dangerous piece of machinery in the field without learning how to operate it first is most certainly the operator’s fault. That’s careless, irresponsible, and endangers others. If they had hurt or killed someone, they would’ve been prosecuted and would possibly be in jail right now.
I think I've got a driver's license that allows me to drive from Toyotas to VW, from Dodges to BYD without having to read the manual for basic usage.
And yes, I usually do read the manual even on rented cars, but not because I need to figure out how to operate the turn signals or windshield wipers.
If Tesla wants do things their way, we should do like an aviation and require type certification as we do for pilots to be able to operate more complex planes. Let'see how Tesla's marketing would like this.
You shouldn't have to read the documentation for basic usage of a vehicle. Basic things like turning signals, lights, windshield wipers, locking and unlocking, windows work basically the same in most vehicles.
You are with a friend, and they are not feeling well, with most cars you can just take the wheel and drive as long as needed without having to look at the manual to figure out how to operate basic safety features.
I don't hate Elon, neither I hate Tesla, but I don't fucking want an "opinionated" car. Those changes bring no benefit other than saving a few minutes of assembly time and a few parts on the Bill of Materials, and all those benefits are for Tesla, not for me as a customer or a driver.
Rather than suggest customers and drivers, and their friends think reading a manual for basic operation should be done as you suggest, I propose it's more likely that one of the following is true:
* The owners silently put up with inconveniences. I don't know why the majority of people browse the web without adblockers but if they can put up with that, they can put up with bad car UX
* Sunk cost fallacy
* Fanboys, which very much will put in more effort to make something work than your average person would
> 1. Operating a heavy, dangerous piece of machinery in the field without learning how to operate it first is most certainly the operator’s fault. That’s careless, irresponsible, and endangers others. If they had hurt or killed someone, they would’ve been prosecuted and would possibly be in jail right now.
Yet I can switch between very different cars and "it just works" and I dont' have to go through the darn manual each time... weird inni't?
> 3. You may not appreciate the benefits of the changes that Tesla made, as these things are ultimately subjective, but those changes contributed to the Model Y becoming the best selling vehicle on the planet.
Have you considered that Tesla mayb got to that point because it was 1) very efficient and 2) Musk has a cult-like following (something akin Apple users making pointless decissions) even DESPITE dumb solution like tablet stuck in the middle of the dashboard or stupid changes like this one?
Funny, because teslas (even without stalks) have physical buttons for the wipers (either on the wheel, or the left stalk push button).
Even outside of that, one of the most basic things any driver in a new car should do is familiarize themselves with standard controls (wipers, defrost, backup camera, turn signals, etc) before shifting into drive.
Sounds like your friends were danger to themselves and others on the road.
Works well enough though ... you wouldn't have to press it that often if auto-wipers just worked. Unfortunately, that may be the worst Tesla feature right now since their autowipers love activating for no reason on a dry day, or over-activating in rain.
On my commute to work, I often run into a very sudden traffic slow-down. It's general practice round here to slow down carefully, checking rear mirrors and to put your hazard lights on as you're doing so. My hazards on my ID3 are not a proper button (it is a 'touchbutton'). It is awful, I can't find it by feel, but I want to keep my eyes on the road in these kind of situations.
The indicators/turn signals are the most egregious omissions in a Tesla for me. Evidently no-one who made that decision has ever driven in the UK. I cross 8 roundabouts on my quick 20 minute commute into the office, good luck trying to find the right touch target to signal your exit when your steering wheel is at a quarter or half lock.
I actually want a few physical buttons on my phone and tablet.
Physical buttons to answer and disconnect a phone call, to mute the speaker (whenever ads popup on Spotify or YouTube say), to disable camera and microphone when you absolutely don't want to risk it (attending an office meeting while sitting on the toilet), etc. Without any dependency on screen being clean and registering touch properly or OS not being laggy at the wrong time.
Touchscreens on phones are even the best option, if only that there just isn't another viable option.
You could even say the purpose of smartphones is "what kind of computing experience can we create with a touchscreen?"
This is an important difference over cars, where you don't buy the car for the joy of its computing behavior. You buy the car for transportation and any computing distraction from this could prevent the sale entirely.
Just in time. Yesterday I had to use a touchscreen-based card reader for the first time to pay for something. What a jarring interaction. Impossible to use muscle memory, so I actually had to think what my PIN was and had to look at the screen the whole time, being stressed about pressing just a bit too much to the left or the right so that the wrong digit would be entered. I very much prefer classic card terminals, thank you very much.
I was in the Philippines last week. Not only do they have touchscreen card POS devices, they also randomise the order of the numbers. Turns out I know my PIN by the position of the numbers moreso than the numbers themselves.
Did it display an ad before displaying the keyboard? Because I encountered terminals which have physical keyboard but also display an ad on the screen. No physical keyboard? A perfect captive audience.
Luckily not. It was at a restaurant, and I hope that a waiter handing you a device to enter your PIN but first having to watch an ad is never going to be a thing.
It's a thing. Some large chain restaurants have a tablet at the table for ordering, with games on it, and continuous ads. It's the same one used to pay.
One thing that would really get me to consider buying a Tesla is to add a few high quality _assignable_ knobs and controls that I could configure to control radio volume, heat, or whatever function I'd like. (within reason)
Oh and real indicator stalks, that would be nice too.
People with older teslas don't want to get the new ones.
They did away with all the stalks. The car guesses which direction you want to drive. Turn signals are buttons on the (rotating) steering wheel (or yoke).
The worst is that the touchscreen has very tiny targets. There's nowhere to rest your hands, you have to stab at them from the driver's seat (in a moving car) sigh.
Enhance Auto has intriguing products that may be right up your alley[0]. That being said, they're obviously aftermarket and not OEM. Last I heard they were working on aftermarket stalks, but I'm not sure where they're at on that project.
> The S3XY Knob comes with a Gen2 Commander, which adds unique automation to your Tesla, such as automatically restarting your Autopilot after a lane change and turning off the wipers during AP drives. [emphasis added]
At what point should a company that builds products like that be liable for the damages they encourage?
For that matter, reckless endangerment and involuntary manslaughter are crimes in many jurisdictions.
Yes I do prefer analog controls. Dials for heat. Open close flaps for vents. On off switches.
Tangentially: the Tesla single giant glass console is in dire need of a UX designer to take the clutter out and make it far more usable. It’s here I wish that Apple had bought Tesla many many years ago: CarPlay as they have it now where it takes over the whole screen would have been amazing.
> Yes I do prefer analog controls. Dials for heat. Open close flaps for vents. On off switches.
Dials and switches can be fully digital (e.g., dials can be free-spinning, without locks at each end of a setting). So preferring dials and switches seems reasonable. But flaps for vents are very difficult to automate. Returning to manual flaps in cars would mean losing modern cars' ability to associate and restore HVAC vent preferences with driver profiles. It would mean returning to the time when it was actually necessary to adjust the HVAC vents every time you swapped drivers. While setting vent preferences on the screen may take a second or two longer than manually setting them, thanks to the setting being associated with my driver profile, it's a set-once-and-forget-forever setting. The net time and annoyance savings is large.
Surely climate controls change far more based on the weather at the current moment than on the preference of the individual drivers? My wife and I have polar opposite preferences for cabin temperature and airflow, but even if the car remembered our preferred settings we would both be changing them frequently anyway.
I would much rather retain the ability to quickly change temp or re-orient a blower without taking my eyes off the road than for the car to remember that I like it cool and breezy and she likes it like a furnace.
Thanks for explaining something I've never understood. I still think it is silly, tho - it makes sense only if each driver always wants vents pointing at the same place. my preferences change by season, by day, by hour, so needing to go through a screen is a time-loss and annoyance generator, not vice-versa.
For me there's no set-and-forget-forever setting. Depending on the weather, how I'm dressed, how many other people in the car, whether there's a smelly diesel truck ahead, etc., that's a setting I need to change all the time.
I guess everyone is different, but what you described absolutely doesn't resonate with me. I never have adjusted my HVAC vents after their initial configuration. Winter, summer, whatever. I always want the air to flow the same way.
Same. That's the beauty of automatic thermostats. They target the temperature you specify automatically. So you specify your favorite temperature once and never interact with them again.
> But flaps for vents are very difficult to automate.
Why? If I'm correctly understanding what you're saying here:
> While setting vent preferences on the screen may take a second or two longer than manually setting them, thanks to the setting being associated with my driver profile, it's a set-once-and-forget-forever setting.
it sounds like vent position is already computer-controlled. Do I misunderstand?
So, take the "move the vent up, down, left, right, more open, more shut" controls that you indicate exist on the touchscreen and wire them up to sensibly-positioned freewheeling/non-stop/whatever wheels that have lights embedded in them to indicate the actual position of the controlled aspect of the vent. [EDIT: For bonus points, you could use force-feedback motors in the wheels to indicate when you've hit the edge of travel for the controlled vent aspect. (Assuming that Sony doesn't hold a PS5-era bad patent on force-feedback tech.)]
It seems like total lunacy to me that car manufacturers are putting essential functions (like controlling the HVAC) behind a touch screen.
With my old car, I could keep CarPay navigation on the large touchscreen while I could simultaneously turn on the seat heater and adjust the temperature by blindly hitting the physical controls. In my new car, I literally have to press the screen to bring up the HVAC UI which then overrides CarPlay (and thus hides my navigation). This is completely insane to me.
Finally, also note that an LCD screen is not needed at all in the driver's console. Analog indicators for speed, rpms and simple lights are just fine. What I would really really like to have on all vehicles is an error LCD screen that describes with full and clear details any type of malfunction. We're still stuck with error codes but hey we give owners all these fancy and unnecessary digital toys and when a problem araises we need to plug a scanner to decode what's going on with our vehicles.
I actually don't mind the driver's display being a screen, because it has no controls and I don't have to interact with it besides looking at it. The most important things it displays (speed and revs) are mimicking dials anyway, but it's nice to be able to see things that most lower-cost manufacturers would never bother making a dial or numeric display for (primarily economy and remaining range, for me).
It’s a tricky problem because if you drive with a separate set of tires in winter/summer or anytime you rotate your tires the mapping from the TPMS to each tire would have be updated.
I don’t know enough about it to know if or how any manufacturers solve that—maybe it’s something that you can manually reset when rotating tires? My car is a 2016 so I’m in the same boat and stuck with a blanket “low pressure” warning.
My 2012 car could report individual tire pressures for each tire. After a few minutes of driving, it would know which tire was witch even after rotating them.
It's not too difficult for the car to know which TPMS chirp relates to which tire.
Do any modern cars have OBD readers integrated into the infotainment system?
It seems like a no brainer to show the error code w/ a description. Though that might decrease the number of dealer visits compared to a non-descriptive check engine light.
Tesla vehicles display error descriptions prominently whenever an error code is presented, and detailed error diagnostics are available for anyone to browse in the service mode menu on the touchscreen. (Service mode is publicly accessible but does require looking up online how to open it.)
> home appliances like stoves and washing machines are returning to knobs
It can't come a bit too soon. My oven has buttons that aren't actually raised from their surroundings, and presses are registered via some sort of presumably fancy processing that I guess sounded slick when it was being pitched, but in practice means that it's very, very difficult to be confident that a button press will do anything, especially when fingers are greasy from cooking.
Oh, and sometimes whatever processor it's using gets frozen up, so I have to turn it off and back on again. But, since it's hardwired, this involves toggling a fuse. I'm sure that there are many ways that this is a better oven than the one in the many-decades-old apartment where I used to live, but I never had to re-boot that oven.
> presumably fancy processing that I guess sounded slick
I'm pretty sure that capacitive touch sensing is just cheaper than physical interfaces, it's more to do with corner cutting than being slick. All you need to create a capsense "button" is some traces on a PCB, they're essentially free if you're making a PCB anyway.
> I'm pretty sure that capacitive touch sensing is just cheaper than physical interfaces, it's more to do with corner cutting than being slick. All you need to create a capsense "button" is some traces on a PCB, they're essentially free if you're making a PCB anyway.
I love how my stove’s capacitive buttons sometimes don’t register when I’m using one hand to stir with a conductive spatula while trying to turn down the temp with the other until I let go of the spatula.
Dishwasher, same thing. Half the time it won't register a press when I need it to turn on. Yet the cat can start a cycle when he decides he wants to have a climb.
The Sony WH-1000XM5 (newest version) headphones have both touch and voice controls, but they can be frustrating to use. The touch controls are meant to be easy, but they’re often too sensitive or don’t respond well. For instance, a small accidental swipe can pause or skip a song, which interrupts my music. The voice feature, "Speak-to-Chat," stops the music if it hears you talking or even singing along, which can be annoying. I usually turn off these controls because they’re more hassle than help—it’s actually easier to adjust the volume on my iPhone when I’m on a run. These controls are 10x worse than the much older versions that had volume and pause buttons on the headphones.
* Sony's naming scheme sucks. I will never remember the product names and the name difference between the headphones and earbuds
* the WM earbuds also have a bonus feature where there really isnt any way to turn them off other than to put them in the case, so they go through battery-destroying 80-100% charge cycles and last like 1-2 years before the batteries are at half capacity.
> These controls are 10x worse than the much older versions that had volume and pause buttons on the headphones.
I have the WH-1000XM2s and they do not have volume or pause buttons. Double tap to pause, slide up and down for volume. I can't comment on them compared to yours, but the touch element works extremely well on them.
I'll be the contrarian and say I prefer touchscreens. To get some system into a touchscreen you need to digitize the whole system which allows you to control it through automation which creates a more versatile system. The system could be digitized and then have a physical control to change the state, but then it's not necessary at that point.
I'm pretty pro touchscreen to a point. Any driving critical control should be physical. Lights, turn signals, horn, steering wheel controls, etc. Physical controls with physical feedback. Everything the driver should mess with should be either on the wheel or immediately around it and should be physical.
Other than that, I really don't care. When I'm punching in the address on the navigation system, give me a massive screen. When I'm stopped and trying to look up something in my media collection, give me a massive touchscreen. When I'm trying to quickly glance at the map, make it a giant screen so I can see it all quickly. Or better yet a HUD or have it on the instrument cluster.
Also, when it comes to cars, and probably other devices/vehicles in the future, they are increasingly operating themselves. You can buy FSD for Tesla and drive for hours in mixed highway and city streets without having to intervene. When you do intervene you can take control for 15 seconds and then give back control to the system. At that point, why put in buttons to optimize the experience for human drivers? This is true for other cars as well, but to a lesser extent, but the direction is clear.
It doesn't though, and it never has, and I'm doubting it ever will. FSD is flawed from the conceptual stage. Roads are complex, constantly changing, and difficult to navigate. Other types of transportation, like rail or air, are trivial to automate in comparison. And then at a hardware level, Tesla also messed up. Pretty much any idiot could've told Tesla that a camera-only system won't work, but here we are.
FSD is a very small step above adaptive cruise control. It's more of a novelty than anything. I certainly wouldn't trust using it, and I don't really care what numbers say either. Tesla doesn't really play fair, being deceptive is a core part of their business. It's no surprise then that FSD auto shuts off right before accidents. We actually have no idea how safe it is, and I'm not going to be listening to what the guy selling them has to say.
There's a interesting middle ground, programmable button that is also a rotary button that gives feedback, the KeWheel by KEBA. I'm sure that are similar solutions from other manufacturers.
You probably meant other industry but this is a terrible mindset for cars for example. Touchscreens are so terrible premium manufacturers ignored them for a long time since its obvious downgrade in comfort and safety, yet people kept buying teslas despite this, even bragging how cool some cheap ipad is.
Touch on a stove makes any stove I know gastritic. A drip of water and it turns on power mode by itself and melts lids. A bit of oil and it randomly turns on itself. A piece of wet cloth and it does the same. Sometimes even nothing at all triggers it.
Let it be known that (good) designers are fully aware of how bad touchscreens are, with regards to UX and many other things.
It's just that touchscreens have been the least bad option, when you really need/want (always arguable, of course) to iterate a lot on the software, that is inside an expensive and not cheaply/easily modifiable piece of hardware.
The elephant in the room is that a touchscreen wants all your attention, especially visual attention, while physical buttons let you operate them while keeping your eyes on the road.
As a gamer, for me there is no more crystalized example of "Everything doesn't need to be touchscreen-based!" than comparing the excellent Gameboy Advance Game, "WarioWare Inc" to its touch-based sequel on the Nintendo DS, "WarioWare: Touched". Some of the same minigames that were previously driven by d-pad and buttons were now entirely driven by the touchscreen and stylus, and were much worse off for it.
Given that WarioWare: Touched! was released in 2005, it's a little depressing that it took the rest of the tech industry almost 20 years to learn from that mistake.
I really question what causes companies to ignore consumer opinion.
It was obvious people wanted tactile controls.
All they had to do was read comments, do user studies, ask for feedback... any sort of interaction with consumers at all.
Its easy to say it was for profit. But surely they cant be that bad at the math of frustrating their audience versus saving pennies.
I've similarly seen car companies doubling down on obviously hated design decisions for 10 years when it could be fixed with a refresh in 3. As if they have pride and spite rather than wanting to make money.
I have a feeling the core issue is companies do not have any interest in oversight of their designers and their designers are unhinged.
Profit is an easy answer but sometimes easy is correct. Companies are prone to view consumer opinion negatively if they know they don't have a choice. Look at Apple, for example--the removal of the headphone jack, the constant reduction in ports, etc.
Profit just seems like TOO easy of an answer.
Apple's an exception in some ways. They absolutely will do things out of spite. They hate admitting they're wrong and take as long as possible to fix UX flaws as a result.
And sometimes the bad UX is a result of some misguided mission. Instead of cost cutting, it's just as plausible to me apple removed things because they have a fetish for minimalism and miniaturization.
They've been back. One of the main reasons I went with the car I ended up buying was because it had buttons. And it's fast. And it has carplay. And I don't have to press the (A) button every time I turn on the car to disable the engine off at red light thing.
Not the person you're asking, but I find it adds a delay to setting off and frequently feels 'wrong' because it cuts the engine for a very short time.
(I don't often drive at rush hour, so often I might just stop at a light for literally 1 or 2 seconds whilst it notices I'm there and then switches over to green, or maybe I've timed it almost right to slow down gradually to the lights and only have to stop for a short time at the end.)
I don't know anything but I have been wondering if it might actually be worse for emissions and engine wear for the auto to cut off only for 1 or 2 seconds each time.
I can see the appeal in traffic with longer waits though?
I envy that you only stop at lights for 1-2 seconds. Where I live, you'll find not only heavy traffic but also red lights that are several minutes long.
The automatic stop-start system found in newer cars isn’t especially hard on the starter. These systems have reinforced bearings, faster engagement mechanisms, direct fuel injection or integrated starter generators, which start the engine without relying on a starter motor at all.
I seem to be in the minority. I love the whole screen approach in my model 3. I can customize the bottom shortcuts how I like, the screen adapts to the context and things don’t feel more than 1 tap away. I’d take that over plasticy looking car buttons for the most part.
I’m into classic European cars and am horrified by the people replacing high end vintage german head units that integrate with the rest of the car, e.g. speed sensitive volume for shitty alibaba touch screens.
Douglas Adams was satirizing touch interfaces and technological progress 45 years ago:
> A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive—you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.
To the point where if the touchscreen happens to be loose, and have it's own battery I could lose my license for touching it (unless maybe it is cradled).
these idiots does not understand that in the car your hand is moving up and down because road is uneven. Touch screen sucks in car if the car is moving
Google Maps has a pair of buttons for you to confirm or deny that a hazard like a stopped vehicle is still there. But they're right next to each other. Two buttons that do the opposite from each other, irreversibly, and they're millimetres apart. Pressed while you're navigating a hazard.
>Plotnick is [...] the leading expert on buttons and how people interact with them.
Something must be wrong with me. This sentence would sound so lame to the average person and yet it sounds fascinating to me. I wish I had the title of "the leading expert on buttons."
I really LOVE how the WHOLE article is about BUTTONS BUTTONS BUTTONS. It really clears any doubt about her expertise. It's not an exaggeration. It's an actual leading expert on buttons!
>The blind community had to fight for years to make touchscreens more accessible. It’s always been funny to me that we call them touchscreens. We think about them as a touch modality, but a touchscreen prioritizes the visual.
Really interesting observation. In order to press virtual buttons, you have to look at the screen to figure out whether the button is (unless it's a full-width button at the bottom). Physical buttons generally don't require this in order to be pushed. They may still require this if the action the button performs depends on a state that is indicated by a screen, e.g. a menu where you have directional buttons to change the selected item.
This vid talks about how the MD-80 has different types of switches for different functions. Not sure if intentional, but the ability to know if you have the wrong switch by feel seems like a great benefit.
I dislike touch screen; physical keyboards and controls are better, in my opinion. So, it is good that they are doing these things, in cars and in other devices.
There is the consideration of what buttons to have. I think that for many kind of devices, numeric keypads will be useful. This can include the time and power of microwaves, frequency of radios, telephone numbers, date/time to schedule something, numbered menu items, etc. Stuff such as CD and DVD players and VCRs might also have controls such as play, pause, stop, rewind, fast-forward, record, previous-track, next-track, etc. Anything with audio will also have high volume, low volume, and mute (use a dial might be used to control volume instead, on some devices).
Additionally, a remote control should not be required. The controls should be directly on the device itself, although remote controls (e.g. with IR) might also be available.
I'm below 40 and have problems with touchscreens just because I work a lot with my hands and they are constantly dry. Also touchscreens on a car are a very bad idea
with buttons, you can close your eyes and navigate the "map" of the device. I know that the top button of my tv remote is the power and the cross in the middle is for navigating the directional of the on screen display of the tv. I can find the middle button of the remote and 2 middle buttons down from the cross is the play/pause button.
You can't do this with a touch screen. There is no indication of surface or depth of feedback. True that you can have a "bump" feedback, but that is for basically ever "button" on the touchscreen so they all feel the same.
There is nothing to distinguish one button "area" from the other on a touchscreen. Now this isn't a big deal if you can look at the control, but what about blind people, trying to navigate in the dark or even worst... while driving???
Touchscreens have their place but they don't need to replace everything.
For me the idea of any kind of interface in vehicles should tend toward audio anyway. Anything that takes your attention away from the road, wether it's tactile or touchscreen is a potential distraction.
Voice control seems the obvious solution but there are probably better ideas, especially as someone who's accent confuses all but the best recognition, or well trained, software. I end up talking in an "American" accent to my car ... but then I do enjoy pretending I'm Michael Knight.
My first reaction after buying my Garmin watch was to disable the touchscreen since it already has buttons. For tracking different sports, the touchscreen adds a potential risk of accidental touches, which could affect measurements and performance. Plus, I'm not certain, but it may consume more battery. I chose this watch for its impressive battery life (including solar charging), so minimizing unnecessary battery use is important to me.
On the other hand, I find it unnatural to have physical buttons on a tablet. My brain takes a moment to adjust to the fact that the volume up and volume down buttons on the iPad reverse their behavior based on the device’s orientation. I would also prefer if fingerprint detection on the iPad were integrated into the display, as seen in some Samsung phones.
Buttons with a screen you have to look at are no better than a touchscreen. For cars, everything important should be do-able without looking. At least until Waymo's technology filters down to most cars.
I think touchscreens could be fine, even in cars if they limited inputs to broad swipes. As for visuals it should rely on simple colors to encode functionality and provide feedback during operation.
The problem is feature creep where they want user to have so many functions that they have no choice but to use buttons and detailed graphics.
I think if the smallest buttons they used occupied at least quarter of the screen and if screen would have corners that you can physically grab onto when you are pressing they could be mostly fine-ish.
UX designers that design console experiences for visually impaired people would be the best people to create UI for cars. Although still not perfect.
My wife refuses to drive it, she much prefers the modern luxuries in cars, but there is something so satisfying about FEELING the interaction with a control.
I dread the day my '97 4runner rusts just too much to ignore. They don't hold up to NJ well. I can afford anything and I hate everything current. Considering paying new trd pro price for whatever lovingly maintained 3rd gen I can find from the south or midwest. People have them, but they also love them and keep them. And a manual trans with 4wd is just even rarer. Maybe it will be worth actually buying just any version with a good frame and paying to have everything transplanted over. I can't stand automatic.
Or maybe go the other direction and hope that new Scout isn't just a fantasy. Even with the physical controls and generator, I hate that it will surely be fully computer operated and all by software I can't access or control at all. It will surely be nice physical controls and a pile of annoying wrong behaviors you can't fix.
> if we look at the 1800s, people were sending messages via telegraph about what the future would look like if we all had this dashboard of buttons at our command where we could communicate with anyone and shop for anything.
I've read a bunch of history of computers and related technology, and I've never seen that. Where can I find it? (I don't doubt it; I want to read it!)
It shouldn't surprise me: The telegraph made immediate, cost-effective wide-area communication possible, and of course people then weren't idiots (or we're not so smart) - some of them imagined future development and applications.
There’s a pre/trans fallacy at work in here. We are not returning to the buttons we had before, we are recreating the role of physical buttons in a world where the long tail of controls has somewhere to go. And I’m all for it.
Title sounds like a dream, but I don't really see it happening yet.
I honestly think you have to be retarded to put a touchscreen into a car. But they don't seem to be making less of those
Especially in cars, especially in simple controls, touch screens are great for low screen real estate but cars are one of the dumbest places for them since there is so much real estate and so little need for a screen
I can appreciate the safety rationale. I hate what this does to automobile interiors / controls, and suspect that the distraction / confusion factor may very well outweigh any possible life/injury savings due to the cameras in the first place. The alternative of incorporating the BUC display into the rear-view mirror, perhaps in addition to obstacle warnings, might be an alternative.
Absent that, a fold-down ceiling-mounted display would be my next preference. Anything to avoid having a persistent screen on the dash.
Tesla, for all the flack it gets for removing buttons, "almost" has enough buttons.
It's fine to bury options / settings that you don't touch often, or ever, under a menu.
When driving, the steering wheel controls to change the audio / autopilot speed are "good enough."
What's missing?
I should be able to adjust the wiper speed with a dial on the stalk. (The automatic wipers are lousy, and if there was a dial on the stalk, I really wouldn't care.)
I should be able to adjust the heated seat with a dial, and maybe adjust the climate control temperature with a dial.
Well I'm glad. I remember when ipods had no power button. I distinctly remember saying, "This is not good. Soon there won't be any buttons. Thanks Steve Jobs." Boy was I right. The best phone ever was the G1 with the little roller ball and slide out keyboard. So tactile is back. Now if we could just get back the removable battery and expandable memory.
This is why I bought a 4Runner instead of a Tesla. Being able to grab, push, twist, and press buttons makes me feel one with my car. Relying on a screen feels one step removed. I want those buttons to click and clack!
I've got a new car. I got the giant touchscreen because the model with the advanced safety features only came with the touchscreen. However, thanks to all the buttons on the steering wheel (which are the same on all models), I have to touch the screen approximately zero times while driving. It might as well just be a display.
That said, I am appreciative of people coming to their senses over this. Maybe not every car maker thought this out as much.
However, the problem is that touch is not optimized to perfection
For example, I want to have the function of quickly opening an application by swiping up with four fingers on my iPhone.
There is no killer optimization solution like bettertouchtool on iPhone
Electro-mechanical relays were the emerging (and novel) standard at the time, if not direct physical linkages.
I once had the opportunity to tour a US railroad switch tower, likely dating to the 1930s if not before. As with much other industrial architecture, something most people may not realise is the extent to which the form of the structure is dictated by not only human requirements (elevated position to have an overview of the yard) but the technical mechanism itself.
The upper portion of the tower is dominated not only by the observation windows, but by a vast number of physical rods which control individual sets of points (track switches). The levers don't move the rails directly, but they do directly move the electro-mechanical activators in the tower base, from which rods or cables (I believe it's rods, I'm not positive however) make a continuous physical connection to each controlled set of points. That is, there is not a separate actuator at the points themselves.
(More modern switching systems, or even other older ones, may well have this. The tower I observed most certainly did not.)
I've also had an interest for some years in how the artefacts of control influence the language of control. We speak of the reins or levers of power in most European languages, reflecting older sources or projections of power; modern terms seem to have been slower to be adopted though some ("dynamo" and "engine") are extant. I've long suspected that the Chinese, with a millennia-long history of hydrologic civil engineering projects might have a language of power which borrows from water control structures (dams, gates, levees, bridges, etc.). Some time afterward I realised that Latin certainly does, and retains at least one descriptor in pontifex maximus, that is, "bridge builder in chief*, first applied to Rome's emperors, now its Pope. And I've very recently learnt that Vietnamese language and culture have many words with shared roots in water, including the word for "mother".
They aren't mutually exclusive. Sometimes it's easier to pinch to zoom/rotate, other times it's easier to adjust volume with a physical knob/buttons without looking. It's either marketing 'something different' or cost cutting that leads to these exaggerated non-optimal fads.
My 2017 Mazda 6 is in almost perfect condition except for one problem: the touch screen has an issue with "phantom taps". Every time I stop the car, it either tries changing the radio station, making phone calls, etc, it's terrible
Somewhat tangential to the topic but the picture at the top there, of the center console, how is the lettering applied? Is that a silk screening process of some kind that I can duplicate?
Asking because I want to duplicate the look of an OEM vehicle setup for a personal project.
These stupid touchscreen controls are one of the main things that convinced me modern designers simply don't both testing and using the products they produce. If you take a touchscreen stove top and use it for more than about 5 minutes, you quickly find yourself wishing for the knobs back.
I also welcome the return of physical media (incl. videogames); manually pushing in the cart/cartridge is a form of tactile control. That and a wired controller so I don't need to manage batteries and bluetooth when my nephews want to play videogames.
I need to dry my hands before clicking "no longer exercising" on my Apple Watch after swimming. It adds my steps through the beach to the towel as the distance swum but allows using the physical crown/button to eject water...
I kind of wonder if touchscreens and apps are a way of firing customers. Get compliant customers that won't complain and will rent autopilot or buy range upgrades their cars already had the hardware for.
I think it's mostly cost-cutting, but also a prompt for both designers and customers to expect less interaction. It fits in with the push for automation.
For cost cutting it might be going according to plan: Tesla is making a good profit on their cars.
The success of their automation efforts remains to be seen.
Depends if you’re looking at supply or demand side. I’ve been hesitating to look at a new stove because I’m terrified that I’ll find a bunch of capacitive touch buttons rather than proper knobs.
I think the difference with appliances, though, is that they’re rarely a matter of life and death, as compared to something like operating climate controls in a car at highway speeds.
it is about time to stop the cognitive decline through feedback loops introduced on swipe devices. but also e.g. automotive is a place where this stuff does not really help unless you get (finger) location based mechanical feedback :D
True, but consider that "print" is just as easy to memorize its purpose as a squiggle.
I've lived in foreign countries, and traveled in countries where I don't speak the language at all. It doesn't take much to figure out what the words for "entry", "exit", "toilet", etc., mean.
And besides, English is the most international language in the world. Even if one doesn't know what "print" means, it's easy enough to look it up online or in a pocket dictionary. Keep in mind that there's no way to look up an icon.
This makes me happy for the future, but also kind of mad for the past and present. I've been loudly and strongly against touchscreen buttons since the very beginning because they were so clearly inferior in most ways. Of course there are some benefits like the ability to dynamically change the interface (which is a big deal), but for things like car radio, HVAC controls, refrigerator settings, basically anything that isn't a smartphone, they are clearly bad. I endured many, many years of people in tech (especially Apple fans) telling me that I was just stuck in the old way and resisting change, and largely dismissed my arguments rather than admit that maybe the "courageous" approach might actually be wrong.
And of course, once Apple did it, everyone else started copying and jumping on the same design.
Regardless though, I'm really glad to hear that this is really happening. Ideally I hope that it causes some introspection and less confidence when "improving" designs in our industry, but given that's a human problem rather than a tech or company problem, I'm not expecting it.
Next up, I hope people start realizing that "smart" appliances are also a regression :-D
That concludes this episode of "old man yells at cloud." Thanks for listening.
Consider looking at Mazda. They all seem to retain physical controls in addition to (optional) touch controls. Probably other brands out there too though.
Export all of that to a separate device which can be updated and/or replaced with time.
A friend was considering various auto options in the mid-aughts and described to me their realisation that the "navigation package" (a US$1500 option) would be an obsolete-on-delivery system that would only get worse with time. Its functionality has been provided by a series of ever-improving smartphones and tablets, not to mention published paper maps and highway atlases, which have excellent resolution, response, high- and low-light readability, and are utterly immune to networking glitches or WiFi deserts.
Music and/or podcasts can be delivered from your tablet or smartphone. Over local FM broadcast if no other options exist (and that's far less glitchy and frustrating than Bluetooth IME).
Touchscreens certainly have their place, for example in general purpose devices such as smartphones, but the idiotic cost-saving movement of putting them anywhere and everywhere as replacements of traditional, well-designed interfaces such as those in vehicles is absurd.
In a car they’re a distraction from driving. You have to look at the iPad stuck to the dash and not on the road - where the driver’s focus must be.
With knobs and buttons, you can feel for them whilst still having your vision in the road.
This must make it safer to drive.
As a MX5 (ND) driver, even having a knob to scroll around the screen is a poor design choice. Touch would have been better (you can hack that) whilst driving but, frankly, this kind of car shouldn’t have a screen at all. It’s a driving car, not a home entertainment system.
While we're at it, let's come up with a tactile way to connect wireless things. I'm so tired of hunting down all of my devices and disabling Bluetooth just so that when I turn on my headphones they connect to the appropriate device.
I'd love to just touch the two things together and hear a beep to know they're paired.
That's actually how my headphones (sony 1000xm3 I think they are) can be paired, there's an nfc chip on one of the sides which if you tap your phone to will turn on bluetooth, turn on the headphones, connect, and the headphones will beep and say bluetooth connected. It's the most seamless wireless connection I've had with bluetooth
More seriously, there are tradeoffs either way. Physical knobs give great feedback, require less cognitive load, and remain fixed. The latter is also where touch screens shine - the UI can evolve over time.
In some settings touch screens are superior to physical buttons and in other scenarios it is the reverse.
> The latter is also where touch screens shine - the UI can evolve over time.
This is not necessarily a benefit. Such interfaces often break muscle memory when they change, often with no choice to the user. At least manufacturers can't come in when you have physical controls and suddenly replace your control panel without consent because they have a "better" one.
Quite honestly, as long as the UX is _actually_ improving, I'm completely fine with having to adapt. I don't want to live in a world where things stay the same just because it's comfortable.
Having said that, at least 50% of the time that people change the experience, it makes it worst. So I agree that for companies that don't know how to design interfaces, this is maybe a benefit.
UI can evolve over time -- for appliances that need it. Almost none of them need it, and always always the "UI enhancements" are stuff nobody asked for, like 24/7 telemetry to servers that are gods know where.
No thanks.
Another commenter beat me to it but I'll just join him to reinforce their point: UI changes also break muscle which is something extremely important to have in a car and in your home appliances. People just don't enjoy relearning their own machines when they expect the job to be done with minimal cognitive overhead.
Cooks love the sense of pride and accomplishment they feel when they unlock new modes and temperatures, and they really go nuts over learning about exciting new products and services by the appliance’s partners in a way that is uniquely targeted to them /s
I think some people would like that. The first would have to be an opt-in option, of course. I wouldn't like the latter, but most of the world isn't on HN and accept ads everywhere. An ad for the right bottle of wine to accompany the meal, etc., might be appreciated.
I think that the problem comes with what the article mentions in the first paragraph—there are some places where UI might evolve with time, but my kitchen appliances, my washing machine, and much of my car are not places where I expect new UI paradigms, or want them if somebody dreams one up. Sure, the pendulum will eventually swing back again the other way to too much skeumorphism, but for now I'm going to push reflexively for physical buttons first, and ask questions later.
Can you point to a single instance where the UI scheme for _an appliance_ was evolved over time in a way consumers like? I understand what you're saying is theoretically possible I just can't think of any instance in which it happened
TVs evolved from knobs on the device to buttons on a remote (or touchscreen).
Washing machines evolved from finicky one way turn relay knobs to tactile bidirectional digital knobs with buttons for options (like extra rinses, prewash, temperature, etc)
VCRs used to be so unusable they'd blink 12:00 because no one knew how to set the time. BluRay players and PVRs put everything on screen accessible via remote or mobile app.
Smart door locks make it very easy to lock/unlock a door via phone or watch vs futzing with keys that can be easily lost possibly requiring a new lock. Much better for guests or families.
Old dial or even digital thermostats were nearly impossible to properly schedule, modern digital thermostats use phones or websites, much easier (and also visualizes all your HVAC stats!)
Smart lights let you group lights together independent of power wiring, change colors, etc
Japanese in-seat toilet bidets with dashboards or remote are masterful compared to traditional bidets with faucets.
Single lever faucets vs separate dial faucets for hot/cold water
But those are all hardware changes right? besides the smart lock? Of course changing the hardware fundamentally will require a different UI but i meant for the same device
They're UI changes? Like I'm not entirely sure what you're arguing, any modern UI always involves some mix of hardware (physical controls and maybe a touchscreen) and software. My point is that the design space in the UI does evolve for the better in many cases.
A Nest thermostat for example which is a mix of screen, physical button and dial, is way more usable and feature rich than old school digital thermostats with buttons and monochrome LED displays.
>The latter is also where touch screens shine - the UI can evolve over time.
I think that also serves as a perverse incentive: no need to make it as perfect as possible the first time, you can always fix it later! Tech debt, coming to the controls of your moving 1~2 tons of metal, f yeah!
Touchscreens are a viable alternative to buttons only if the system can react to touches within at most 500ms. We have enough evidence now to conclude that only Apple and Google engineers are capable of such an undertaking. Everyone else should stick to physical buttons.
For context I did development with a Teensy board and the library I was using for physical buttons claims to have 20 nanoseconds latency using the CPU interrupts.
My Treo with a physical keyboard was the last mobile device I had that typing wasn't a chore with. Touch screen primacy has turned mobile devices from content creation to content consumption devices.
If physical keys were the way to go in smartphones, we’d all still be using BlackBerrys. If it’s a dumbphone you want, there’s plenty of models available with physical keys.
> Plotnick, an associate professor of Cinema and Media Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, is the leading expert on buttons and how people interact with them.
The second-best button expert is currently infuriated at missing out on their time to shine, presumably.
(I’m fascinated by what their metric is, here. Like, most-cited or something? She has, indeed, written a good few papers about buttons. Or just the one that everyone in the field says is the top button authority?)
Yes please. I am currently driving a pre-touchscreen car and I hope I can just skip that era entirely.
Touchscreens are a menace. The most dangerous moments I have in my car are when I'm trying to skip the ads in my podcasts. Which got way worse since google removed default media buttons from maps. I bet that decision has an actual body count.
I remember Volkswagen execs saying this a few years ago and promising to revert touch controls in cars in next gen. Guess what, it's still shitty touch controls in the recent EVs.
On an especially hot day, my ex's Civic touchscreen failed to boot, blocking her from using her AC, using her cameras or having full visibilty (the windows are so minuscule, it's like being in a submarine), being able to make or receive calls hands-free, or controlling her radio.
The firmware being outdated wouldn't be more of an issue than with any other head unit if they weren't internet connectable on top of being so integrated. I'm afraid someone has hard coded some service SSID to autoconnect to, and once the signing keys are cracked, that's all someone would have to do to push a compromised update.
I've made it a point never to own a vehicle that can accept OTA updates or that has always-on connectivity.
I find touchscreens in cars inconvenient and confusing. They increase my anxiety and add to the sensory load during driving. How did car manufacturers get away with equipping cars with devices that make you take your eyes off the road while using a phone while driving is banned is a mystery to me.
another factor is status. initially touchscreens were an exclusive option. Nowadays they are common and found on less expensive cars. only elite luxury cars stand out with copious tactile controls.
People will always pursue status indicators like a peacock's tail.
You joke but there actually may be merit to it. Of course, you'd still need a GUI on top but you technically could put a full command-line interface with limited commands and actually sell it as a differentiating feature at this point.
For a time there were automatic transmission cars with push buttons. I think it was a 1950s/60s Great Idea. If I remember you had to reach around the steering wheel to access them.
