There are too many screens, time to go back to gauges

https://jalopnik.com/there-are-too-many-screens-time-to-go-back-to-gauges-1840810588

by t23 • 7 years ago

67 66 7 years ago

Physical gauges? Meh, don't really care that much. Just as long as the data on the screen is clear and where it is expected to be. Physical buttons with physical feedback so they can be adjusted by feel while keeping eyes on the road? Those are important. Maybe they can be replaced with a voice interface at some point but I'd like to see a few more sigmas of reliability before relying on voice recognition to turn on the windshield wipers.

giancarlostoro• 7 years ago

Precisely. Touch screens are not ideal for drivers only passengers. Let the driver use buttons and let the passenger use the touch screen without restriction. I cant even pull up GPS coords on a 2020 car without having my wife pull over. Meanwhile I can pull out my phone and search anything. The benefit of the maps being on there is that she can see the map clearer. Except its useless once you drive. Sometimes driving plans change whilst driving.

mszcz• 7 years ago

Yeah, the decision to go with touchscreens in an environment where you cannot turn your eyes away and focus on something is boneheaded IMO. The AC in my car is controlled by dials which also have a button in the middle. I can control this while driving in the middle of the night and will never have to turn my eyes away. The reason for that is that I can use touch to find the right dialm align my fingers by touch alone and just turn it. Now try doing something "by touch" or "from memory" on a touch screen. Suddenly, your glove compartment opens :P

Anyhow, IMO, the orgy of the screens in the car is probably a stupid, misguided way to try and sell more cars, and will go the same way of the 3D TV and curved TV.

Crosseye_Jack• 7 years ago

Maybe they can be replaced with a voice interface at some point but I'd like to see a few more sigmas of reliability before relying on voice recognition to turn on the windshield wipers.

There are people who are unable to speak but are perfectly able to drive. Replacing controls instead of them being an additional form of control of the existing controls can have the effect of removing people’s ability to drive simply because of an infliction they are unable to control.

Heck what happens the day you get a bad throat, lose your voice and you are unable to drive yourself to the local pharmacy because your unable to control your windscreen wipers.

hinkley• 7 years ago

In a similar vein, I was always a little bummed that Ambient Devices or some competitor never got more traction in the market, and never got much cheaper.

I thought they’d gone out of business but they are still alive and kicking. Unfortunately most of their devices no longer look much like gauges. Most look like clocks.

lqet2• 7 years ago

Screens are also less likely to break than mechanically moving gauges

What? If you buy a 30 year old car, the gauges are most likely still intact, and original. If you have an older house, things like the water gauges (or even regular clock gauges) are also decades old. I want to see the screen that will work for > 20 years in a constantly moving and vibrating environment, under massive temperature changes, without any additional care or repairs or replacement.

Take passenger information displays in public transit. Not until a few years ago, it was still common that the head signs in trains, buses or subways where mechanical. It was often just a paper roll [0] that was adjusted to display the correct destination, or even just a plate that was changed by the conductor [1]. Things like car numbers or seat reservations were displayed by simple paper signs. Fast-forward to the 90ies, where at least in Europe, they began to replace these things by LCDs. After a few years, it was normal to see trains with broken head signs, broken car numbers, and broken reservation systems [2]. Fast-forward to today, where it is now en vogue to use full-fledged displays everywhere. The result (at least in the towns I use public transportation) are regularly broken displays [3] [4] [5] that even when they work, often offer no advantage over LCD or LED or even mechanical display from a passenger perspective. They just look more modern. Add to this that the display software is mostly some variant of Windows with a poorly built and designed web application running on it.

Think of all the people, all the knowledge, all the hours, all the resources and all the energy required to build and run a full-fledged high-resolution display, an operating system, the web application and a central server in the vehicle running those displays - all to replace a simple roll of paper with a less reliable solution! As computer scientists and software developers, this is what pays us - but as soon as the rest of the society realizes what is going on, I fear that there will a massive backlash.

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/2009-08-...

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Wupper-E...

[2] https://soscheescho.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/wirre-anze...

[3] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/06/33/aa/0633aa8ad996cfeb7936...

[4] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/33/a0/b7/33a0b7ac6e5563f48f66...

[5] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DkI_ZEbXsAEcknf.jpg:large

Fnoord• 7 years ago

I want to see the screen that will work for > 20 years in a constantly moving and vibrating environment, under massive temperature changes, without any additional care or repairs.

Bingo. The screen becomes less readable (and if a touch screen, difficult and/or dangerous to use) the longer it ages, the more chance it gets physical damage. Then there's the batteries which go bad, yet the devices are glued. And then there's the backlight. My Kobo reader does not use/need much backlight, it doesn't use/need much battery (esp w/o networking), and the screen can endure a lot. So perhaps e-readers are partly exempt from this. Airpods, for example, are not because of the battery alone. Smartwatches: screen (often touch as well)/battery/backlight. Monitors: backlight/screen. On top of that, some of these devices also require software updates. These devices are sold to be replaced in a few years; not to last. If they were part of a service contract (like a boiler) they wouldn't happen.

After a few years, it was normal to see trains with broken head signs, broken car numbers, and broken reservation systems.

True, seen this ample amount of time when I traveled with ICE Amsterdam - Berlin. I do have to admit I like it when I see the TeamViewer error in the EBS busses. All these otherwise show is useless, distracting commercials anyway.

The result (at least in the towns I use public transportation) are regularly broken displays that even when they work, offer no advantage over LCD or LED or even mechanical display from a passenger perspective. They just look more modern.

Indeed, never mind the backlight dying, or the broken (stuck, dead, ...) pixels, or physical damage on the screen (due to vandals, accidents, ...).

novok2• 7 years ago

I would imagine that LED backlit LCD screens are some of the longest lasting computer parts in the world. Gauges are physical devices and can go bad too.

sandworm101• 7 years ago

At our cafeteria they have installed a big screen to display the meal choices of the day. There is the little popup saying that windows needs updates, another saying that the antivirus software cannot connect to the internet, and some other blinking junk in the corner. That is, when it isn;t kicking into screensaver mode or is just BSOD. So under that 1000$+ LCD arrangement is now a whiteboard with a marker on a string.

closeparen• 7 years ago

I get what you're saying, but incompetent execution can ruin any approach.

tialaramex• 7 years ago

I'm sure it was also possible to buy poor quality versions of older mechanical signs. Perhaps newer technology made it a little easier for suppliers to hoodwink incautious purchasing managers, but that's all.

Britain's railways have mostly orange LED platform signage. The LEDs have good lifetime and each sign has enough local intelligence that a failure in one doesn't knock them all out, but they also don't run Windows, because that's neither necessary nor sufficient.

You can even buy replicas (either desktop sized or full size if you're really train crazy) which pull data from the national railway system over the Internet unlike a real one but function the same. So e.g. configure one to show you platform 2 from your local railway station and you'll know at a glance if the train home is running normally before leaving work.

Early full colour displays suffer bad burn-in, but the orange LEDs don't have a burn in problem and many have been in service for decades.

Yes it is technically possible for one LED or even the entire sign to fail, and at the smallest stations there may not be any other signs for the affected trains but that's not different than any alternative, the fault will be reported and a fitter will be out to fix or replace the sign.

I simply don't believe that previously all the signage which exists today was duplicated but mechanically or with hand-written signs. Instead my guess is that mostly you just didn't know. On a London bus for example, before they had screens telling you where you are, which bus this is and what the next stop is, there was nothing. This is fine if it's "your" bus and you know the route, but it made buses very intimidating for visitors. Today iBus has screens and spoken announcements, "2 to Marylebone" says your bus, and the display spells out Marylebone in case you don't understand the pronunciation. Later on another bus "Lavington Street for Tate Modern" says the screen. You have no idea where "Lavington Street" is but the bus knows this is where to get off for the Tate Modern art gallery, and now you know too.

lqet2• 7 years ago

Instead my guess is that mostly you just didn't know. On a London bus for example, before they had screens telling you where you are, which bus this is and what the next stop is, there was nothing

For the most part, this was solved by the driver or the bus / train / subway / tram conductor [0] shouting the stops out or announcing them via microphone. If you use trains in Switzerland, you will notice that some conductors will still announce the next stop when they enter a car to check the tickets. As in "Next stop Zurich main station, tickets please".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_conductor

deogeo• 7 years ago

but as soon as the rest of the society realizes what is going on, I fear that there will a massive backlash.

This backlash cannot come soon enough.

manicdee4• 7 years ago

Do you understand the infrastructure required to support “simple paper signs”? They’d have to spend days reprinting signs when something as simple as the timing for one stop on a bus route changed. Also the simple paper signs couldn’t tell people which stop is the next one: you’d have to follow along on your route map and hope you didn’t miss something.

Overall the new systems which can tell people which bus is coming and how long it’s likely to be are great, because they help remove the worry about whether the bus I am about to catch is the bus I actually want.

Google Transit beats any paper maps and signs system hands down and requires far less capital investment.

rhacker3• 7 years ago

My RAM truck does have a tiny digital display that has a ton of functionality and I can read the tire pressure on all 6 tires. A lot of the standard stuff also has a secondary mechanical analog display too, because I purchased this truck in 2016. Of course, forget about tire pressure on those analog displays, that would be crazy complicated to have. The other thing, is the RAM display is not connected to the internet, so I don't have to worry about the menu changing locations or button order changing. What I got when I purchased will stay the same. That's comfortable.

How do I feel about EVERYTHING moving to a large LCD panel that could play Netflix if I really wanted? I think as long as manufacturers guarantee the interface won't change in very substantial ways since the purchase of the car, I would be OK with it. I would imagine that if the speed limit and engine temperature sudden swapped position, people would get into deadly car accidents very quickly. I know it's not that simple, but you have to realize we're talking about not just you, but 5-7 billion people that may have digital displays to worry about when they are driving. When you scale those UX mistakes, people will die.

So if updates and digital screens are on the way for all cars, I would recommend some basic rules for manufacturers to follow. (Of which I don't know what would be good but it should exist)

asaph• 7 years ago

How do I feel about EVERYTHING moving to a large LCD panel that could play Netflix if I really wanted?

The Tesla Model 3 is already like this, including the Netflix part.

So if updates and digital screens are on the way for all cars

Tesla has been doing over the air software updates and had digital screens for years.

rhacker3• 7 years ago

These are definitely the more rhetorical parts of my post...?

manicdee4• 7 years ago

What if oil pressure and engine temperature didn’t matter anymore? The only number of concern is the speed, and that’s displayed in prime position and never moves.

rhacker3• 7 years ago

That's definitely a fair assessment. I am not exactly regretting buying a diesel truck with 6 tires. I WISH it were electric.

The problem is, there is not a single manufacturer of EV that can tow either my current or previous RV. The previous RV was a fifth wheel that was 18000 pounds. That's higher than both Rivian and Cybertruck specs.

My Current RV is a truck camper (A HUGE ONE) that requires a 5000 pound payload capacity. That is also not in the cybertruck or rivian specs.

Ford's only migrating the F150 (I think?) which is far below my requirements too.

On top of all that, none of them are going Dually yet.

So it's fair to say, at this point in time, that's still at least 10 years off before ALL payloads and tow capacities reach diesel equivalents.

This whole thing is just an aside - all of the parameters currently displayed in in my truck could be replaced with digital LCD displays, even if it's not an EV. I'm only arguing for standards here.

GhettoMaestro• 7 years ago

I don’t mind the displays being screens as long as certain things have mechanical buttons. Eg: The AC/Max AC. Don’t make people go through touchscreen menus that take a minute just to boot. When it’s 100F outside and you need max ac, that minute is a LONG minute.

ajsharp• 7 years ago

Related: Mazda is removing screen from future vehicles due to the clear safety issues. https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur...

kart232• 7 years ago

* touchscreen. All US cars still need a screen because of the government required backup camera.

ghaff• 7 years ago

Is that really true? Some backup camera systems used to display as part of the rearview mirror. (I don't know if the size and nature of the display meets the current requirements though and, in practice, I imagine all but the lowest end vehicles do use a screen for at least some entertainment functions. Big volume knobs are probably mostly a lost cause.)

brandonmenc• 7 years ago

The Mazda puck control is awesome. Hands-down the best car UI.

I drive a Mazda and didn't even realize the screen was touchable because there is absolutely no reason to not use the puck.

(If you've never seen it, the puck is an all-in-one scroll wheel, button, and directional joystick - on the center console exactly where your arm naturally rests, no reaching necessary.)

montjoy• 7 years ago

100% agree. This is one of the main reasons why I chose a Mazda over the Honda/Toyota equivalents.

artemonster• 7 years ago

On the note: does anyone know about some actual studies that measured information registering speed on gauges VS written numbers? I'm still kind of puzzled about it and cannot reliably say, when reading a number is faster than evaluating a gauge.

Mountain_Skies3• 7 years ago

Not sure about screens versus gauges since a screen can mock the appearance of a physical gauge but I do recall a lecture during a UI/UX class I took long ago that about analog gauges being easier and quicker to understand than seven segment displays. Something about the brain needing to interpret the actual number for the seven segment display versus quickly understanding the approximate speed from the needle on the gauge.

detaro• 7 years ago

Gauges especially are great to see the rate of change.

wkearney99• 7 years ago

Gauges give you a nominal position. A point where the needle rests during normal activity. You can quickly scan the needles and only have to care if their position is out of place. Likewise scale, you don't have to calculate if it's beyond the reasonably expected level, you can simply see where it falls on the dial. With digits you have to examine each of them with specific knowledge of what those numbers mean. That takes valuable attention away from the more immediate tasks at hand.

blakesterz• 7 years ago

My boss showed me the screen on his new 2019 vehicle. He had been complaining about it for weeks, and all I could think was "OK boomer, how bad could it be". Well it was beyond terrible. The number of clicks (I guess touches is the proper term) was crazy. To do ANYTHING it was like 5 menus deep. All I could think is the people that designed this thing HATE their users. I still drive a 2010 that's mostly gauges. Not looking forward to the upgrade.

thrower123• 7 years ago

Yeah, it's just not safe. My wife has a 2019 Ford, and turning the defrost on is 3-5 touches, depending on where the UI is when you start from. On my 2010, I punch one big physical button.

Mountain_Skies3• 7 years ago

Going in the other direction, there's a pretty good YouTube channel called amstudio that shows how to hook up physical gauges to your computer for use in racing simulators. IIRC, they've even taken out entire instrument panels from cars and interfaced them to the simulator.

smokey_the_bear• 7 years ago

I’d never driven a car where the gauges bothered me, so I didn’t worry about it when buying a 2019 minivan to replace my 2006 Prius. I hate the screen. The clock isn’t always displayed! And it displays in multiple places! I just don’t use the radio because it’s too many taps to be safe while driving.

war1025• 7 years ago

Slightly related, I just finally was forced to upgrade from a 2010-era brick phone to a smart phone (they were turning the 2g towers off).

With my old phone, I could pretty safely check an incoming call or text without taking my eyes off the road for more than a second or so.

With me new phone, I can't even manage to unlock my phone without feeling like I'm going to kill someone.

I guess it makes sense that the rise of all the anti-cellphone laws coincided with the rise of smartphones. They are absolutely hostile to anything but undivided attention.

PyroLagus• 7 years ago

You shouldn't check calls or texts while driving regardless of the type of phone, and on a smartphone you can at least have it announce who is calling or who sent the text (and even read the text for you.) You can also tell the phone to accept the call and put it on speaker (although that's technically also unsafe, but so is having a conversation with another person in the car while driving.)

mmphosis• 7 years ago

I'm a minimalist. Speed, distance, fuel, 6 volt plug-in.

http://www.oldbug.com/lightfoot41.jpg

Smoosh• 7 years ago

If we're being serious about the UX, this loses marks as the knobs are not clearly labelled.

jdsully• 7 years ago

I'm a big fan of an uncluttered instrument cluster, preferably with analogue gauges but I've seen some digital versions that are fine. The real problem seems to be the screens suffer the same fate as all software, adding gimmicks and superfluous information just because it's easy.

With a physical instrument cluster each gauge costs real money which enforces discipline on the design.

allovernow3• 7 years ago

Tangent: I can't help but feel like we're automating away the driving experience - although most people probably never appreciated it.

There's a magical zenlike state of flow that feels like a seamless merging of man and machine, and personally I think it's much easier to cultivate with analog features which force you to think carefully about control, and it is important that a driver is occasionally allowed to exceed the limits of control. That means standard transmission, no traction control, and arguably even ABS could be done away with. This goes for information display as well - it's hard to describe the qualia that comes from glancing at a purpose built, mechanical indicator, that you know will always be in the same place. These things together combine to give a car a soul. I'm no Luddite but I have no desire to drive what amounts to a high tech robot.

Where's the joy in pressing the gas and having a car simply drive itself? Sure, for the vast majority, a car is a tool for transport from A to B. But I think many of these people are missing out on a unique experience.

lazyasciiart• 7 years ago

Sounds like an experience better had on a closed course than a public street.

mojuba3• 7 years ago

I can't agree more and very strange your comment is downvoted.

Right now the EV market I think is open to electric cars for people like us: physical gauges, just the bare minimum for driving (I'd include ABS for safety and cruise control for some minimal comfort), slick interior with a subtle vintage touch maybe. No autopilot, no Netflix for you. Oh and physical keys.

I'm constatnly thinking about this, but unfortunately starting a car company seems to be almost as difficult as going to Mars. But who knows, maybe some day.

ColanR2• 7 years ago

starting a car company seems to be almost as difficult as going to Mars

And yet think of all the economic benefit that would come with starting that new company. I don't know what you're thinking of as the difficulties , but my mind immediately went to the intense regulation involved. Too bad it isn't easier.

allovernow3• 7 years ago

I agree with what you're saying, but on a purely personal note, I just couldn't see myself enjoying an electric car - even knowing that a Tesla absolutely destroys anything I've ever driven performance wise (until the motors overheat or the batteries die).

Few things in life compare to manually inserting a key, commanding the starter, hearing and feeling the (preferably V>=8) roar to life, and listening to the purrs and growls and roars of the steel steed that becomes an extension of yourself as you glide across pavement or dirt at inhuman speeds.

Not everyone appreciates it - and that's totally OK! But a part of me will die the day they inevitably ban manually driven cars and/or internal combustion engines. ICE vehicles really do have characteristics that subjectively make them feel like living, fire breathing pets. Robots are cool and technically marvelous, but there will always be something irreplaceably special about a 2000-4000 pound device that has a soul.

beamatronic• 7 years ago

I’d also like to see a minimal, raw, stripped down EV, which still has a good range.

taeric3• 7 years ago

Meh, you have romanticised it beyond what many of us feel. And are almost certainly making up how "in touch" you are. (Not to mention that you can't lay claim to a lot of Luddite philosophy, but then dodge it at the end with a denial.)

I don't want to preclude someone doing this. But it is a luxury. And not worth it for most of us.

And I say this as someone that likes my chain geared bike. Subjectively, I love the thing. Objectively, an ebike is almost certainly better in every way.

close04• 7 years ago

And are almost certainly making up how "in touch" you are

I think it's a bit over the top to tell people how they feel about something. I for one agree with OP. I actually enjoy driving. Maybe as much or more than some people enjoy listening to good music, write good code, or reading a good book. No point in belittling the experience just because you'd rather watch the movie.

This being said I understand why there is this disconnect between driver and car. Not only are many people not that much into the activity of driving beyond its practical purpose (and they'd surely choose to delegate as much of it as possible if given the choice, for convenience), safety plays a very important role. The driver starts being the weak link and this delegation perhaps shouldn't be optional. Convenience, efficiency, or "feel" may be entirely your business but safety also concerns all those around you.

manicdee4• 7 years ago

What you are describing is race driving.

What you are complaining about is being restrained from being a danger to the public.

Great read for the letters to the editor page of a car enthusiast magazine that specialises in draping hot chicks over shiny bonnets and pretending that road hypnosis is as desirable a state as zen flow. But back here in the real world where driving happens on crowded roads with other people shuttling themselves and their families to work and school, not such a great read. Your attention should be on the road ahead and the cars around you, not where the gear shift needs to be for a clean gear change, or how much throttle you can apply before fish-tailing into the soccer team in the next lane.

Bring on the cars where I don’t even need to touch any controls, mostly because that means the hoons and idiots won’t be touching any controls either.

danielnixon• 7 years ago

Nicholas Carr, 2015:

In suggesting that driving is no more than a boring, productivity-sapping waste of time, the Valley guys are mistaking a personal bias for a universal truth. And they’re blinding themselves to the social and cultural challenges they’re going to face as they try to convince people to be passengers rather than drivers. Even if all the technical hurdles to achieving perfect vehicular automation are overcome — and despite rosy predictions, that remains a sizable if — the developers and promoters of autonomous cars are going to discover that the psychology of driving is far more complicated than they assume and far different from the psychology of being a passenger. Back in the 1970s, the public rebelled, en masse, when the federal government, for seemingly solid safety and fuel-economy reasons, imposed a national 55-mile-per-hour speed limit. The limit was repealed. If you think that everyone’s going to happily hand the steering wheel over to a robot, you’re probably delusional.

There’s something bigger going on here, and I confess that I’m still a little fuzzy about it. Silicon Valley seems to have a good deal of trouble appreciating, or even understanding, what I’ll term informal experience. It’s only when driving is formalized — removed from everyday life, transferred to a specialized facility, performed under a strict set of rules, and understood as a self-contained recreational event — that it can be conceived of as being pleasurable. When it’s not a recreational routine, when it’s performed out in the world, as part of everyday life, then driving, in the Valley view, can only be understood within the context of another formalized realm of experience: that of productive busyness. Every experience has to be cleanly defined, has to be categorized. There’s a place and a time for recreation, and there’s a place and a time for productivity.

This discomfort with the informal, with experience that is psychologically unbounded, that flits between and beyond categories, can be felt in a lot of the Valley’s consumer goods and services. Many personal apps and gadgets have the effect, or at least the intended effect, of formalizing informal activities. Once you strap on a Fitbit, you transform what might have been a pleasant walk in the park into a program of physical therapy. A passing observation that once might have earned a few fleeting smiles or shrugs before disappearing into the ether is now, thanks to the distribution systems of Facebook and Twitter, encapsulated as a product and subjected to formal measurement; every remark gets its own Nielsen rating.

What’s the source of this crabbed view of experience? I’m not sure. It may be an expression of a certain personality type. It may be a sign of the market’s continuing colonization of the quotidian. I’d guess it also has something to do with the rigorously formal qualities of programming itself. The universality of the digital computer ends — comes to a crashing halt, in fact — where informality begins.

http://www.roughtype.com/?p=5813

axiom92• 7 years ago

There's an entire book making essentially the same point: https://www.amazon.com/Best-Interface-No-brilliant-technolog...

xwowsersx• 7 years ago

There really are too many screens. I was driving a BMW SUV recently and switching the multimedia input to my phone and then connecting Bluetooth etc required going through so my screens. It'd be one thing if the navigation mechanism were easy/intuitive, but it's not. At the same time, there's so much functionality that cars now have and it's only increasing so I'm not sure how gauges can really help. It feels like what's needed is a built in iPad almost which at least has simple touch navigation.

gumby• 7 years ago

Indeed, gauges are so much better than digit-based displays, just as dial watch faces can be usefully read at a glance. When your attention is supposed to be on the road, knowing your speed is close to the posted limit is more useful than parsing your precise speed.

Gibbon12• 7 years ago

Comment I read decades ago was analog gauges impart meaning that digital ones don't. The context was analog fuel gauges for aircraft. 120 gals of fuel in a P51 means you have around two hours for flight time left. 120 gallons in B17 means you have half an hour.

lokedhs• 7 years ago

I saw some video of the inside of the crew console for the SpaceX capsule. It's all touch screens as far as I can tell.

That seems to me to be incredibly stupid. I'm sure it'll be very easy to access those controls when it's shaking violently and (heavens forbid) the entire capsule gets smoke-filled in an emergency.

I'm sure they've thought about these things, so I'm curious as to what I've missed.

There are too many screens, time to go back to gauges

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