Physical buttons outperform touchscreens in new cars, test finds

https://www.vibilagare.se/nyheter/physical-buttons-outperform-touchscreens-new-cars-test-finds

by eriksdh • 4 years ago

1614 953 4 years ago

tapper• 4 years ago

Here is a side affect of having touch screens in new cars. As a blind person when my wife is driving I have to be very careful when changing the radio or music playing on Spotify as not to fuck things up or put her off driving. All so I cant change the AC in my half of the car. All so using my phone to play music is so laggy over blue tooth I cant use my screen reader to make things better. I all so have a friend who was born with one hand. He has to pull over if he wants to make changes to his radio or AC. In a car with nobs his stump can make most things work with out mutch of a struggle.

Jamie9912• 4 years ago

Wow who would've thought?

zinekeller• 4 years ago

It seems that most marketers and automotive interior designers live in another universe. I really, really want to ask them if they really thought that this is appropriate and why.

_0w8t• 4 years ago

As was stated in another comments, it reduces the production cost. Screen is needed for navigation, so why not use it for other stuff?

netsharc• 4 years ago

Probably there is/was the "ooh shiny" factor of making everything be screens, and "ooh shiny!" sells/sold cars better than "ooh, functional!" which is also "ooh, looks outdated" in the mind of buyers of the last decade or so.

But after a while living with the stupid UX, the buyers would probably rather have the functional than the shiny.

Joker_vD3• 4 years ago

"Now the screen is the button? Or is the screen not the button? I don't know! Maybe we'll all find out by the time when we're compacted like tuna fish in a can!"

alliao2• 4 years ago

Tesla did it to reduce cost pure and simple

squarefoot• 4 years ago

Probably also to appear more modern. The problem with that approach is that, besides well known touch screens usability issues, it takes only one bump in the wrong spot to screw all the interface, so it's cheaper only until something goes wrong. They seem to know this though, as Space-X ships have all important functions replicated on real physical interfaces.

manholio• 4 years ago

SpaceX did it on the Dragon too. Hard to imagine an environment that is more mission critical and less cost sensitive than a space ship under severe engine vibration or tumbling out of control though space.

sebzim4500• 4 years ago

I think that's different though. Spacecraft have orders of magnitude more features that need to be controlled than cars do. Just look at how busy the space shuttle cockpit was.

alliao2• 4 years ago

though they hardly have much agency to deal with non-existent traffic, so distraction isn't a big deal...

mantas• 4 years ago

Also, a glowing touchscreen is a distaction at night. Compared to physical button that just sits there.

someweirdperson4• 4 years ago

Hard to read in direct sunlight, too. (Partially-)Reflective displays with perfect dailight readability exist (used in aircraft), but they would likely not satisfy the cheaper-than-buttons requirement.

But cars without roofs are getting out of fashion anyway. Next step after no steering-wheel will be no windows.

bsagdiyev4• 4 years ago

This frustrates me to no end in our family car. Even if I "turn it off", which turns off the radio, the screen still shows a clock over a globe and still glows. There is no escaping it.

someweirdperson4• 4 years ago

I don't want buttons. I want switches.

More generally: I want to be able to feel the state something is in. Whether it is push/pull, turn, or flip doesn't matter, but it has to physically maintain the state I put it in.

An exception to this of course are functions that are used temporarily, like the horn, and the wipers swipe-once. And if direction indicators turn off automatically, the input device has to change its state accordingly.

pretext-1• 4 years ago

You should become an airplane pilot.

SideburnsOfDoom• 4 years ago

It is no co-incidence that the book "The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error'" By Sidney Dekker contains case studies mostly drawn from aircraft incidents. They're less numerous than car crashes, but more impactful and better understood.

someweirdperson4• 4 years ago

I am (PPL).

tapland• 4 years ago

Switches that show state are invaluable.

I’m a flight sim nerd and it’s immediately clear when you have to keep track of more states than your are used to how much attention is needed and how much is freed up if you can reach over and feel the state of the switch.

I would love that for many functions in a car. And a knob with some bump or whatever at the ac temp setting, so I can adjust its position based on feel alone as well.

On a modern keyboard the caps-lock key would probably benefit from one too =)

I think switches that can set themselves to current state (flip back) are a bit pricey but can be had from $12 or so (iirc).

theshetty• 4 years ago

I completely agree with this. I never understood how this became the new normal and mostly acceptable in the new generation vehicles (especially the EVs) in the name of progressive/futuristic design.

I hope the automobile manufacturers take a note of this, and bring back some of it that’s worked for decades. I believe few German manufacturers like the Mercedes-Benz to have a sense of this, hope they don’t get along with this trend too.

hbossy• 4 years ago

It's just cheaper to design and certificate one part and put it on multiple models than making dedicated analog controls for every new design. Touchscreens are just cost cutting measure. I wonder how many people died fiddling with car radios so one pencil pusher could get a bonus for skimming $10 off manufacturing cost.

kipchak2• 4 years ago

Unfortunately if the EQS is an indication Mercedes may have also lost the plot.

orangepurple• 4 years ago

Fortunately you can buy a street legal production car like this for over 25 years: The McLaren F1 GTR

Lio2• 4 years ago

When you say I can buy a McLaren F1... :D

Joking about the price aside I always loved that the original design goals for the F1 included that if someone found one in a barn in 50 years time they should be able to repair it.

I think that leads to quality, simple, tactile controls.

naravara2• 4 years ago

If a function can be controlled from more than one place (such as power windows or locks that can also be controlled from the driver’s seat or key fob, or anything controllable by software via central control panel) then you can’t really have a manual, state-full control for any of it since it can go out of sync with the state of the function.

The exception would be to put a tiny motor on each control to keep it synced up, but the cost to reliability (not to mention just money) would be unacceptably high.

someweirdperson4• 4 years ago

As substitute for physical state inputs I could accept separate inputs for different states (this excludes off/on toggle buttons, but could be satisfied e.g. by separate off and on buttons) and a state indicator in a visible location, preferably close to the input.

Power windows are close to fulfilling this (up/down separated, and it might be argued that the state is sufficiently obvious, though questionable for the rear windows). A central lock controlled through a common lock/unlock button does not satisfy this.

s_somayaji• 4 years ago

I agree with your view. Looks like history will repeat. We will be back to with all buttons someday!

pbhjpbhj• 4 years ago

My car has a quiet indicator tick, it's so frustrating not being able to hear if the indicator is on. Particularly because they (Vauxhall/Opel) butchered the indicator stem switch meaning it doesn't click, which would be fine, except it returns to middle, which would be fine, except the dashboard indicator lights are hidden by the steering wheel, which would be fine ... if the indicator tick wasn't too quite.

Honestly it makes driving a real chore and is a huge safety problem; just that one little anti-feature ruins driving.

mixedbit• 4 years ago

Couple of more such tests and modern car designers will maybe finally read the Design of Everyday Things. In this 1988 book the interface of cars was praised, but then the companies of course had to improve it.

jam3sn• 4 years ago

I miss the buttons and dials from my old car. Muscle memory meant I could just turn on air con, change the fan speed, zone, volume etc with taking eyes off the road. Having to do this with the touch screen is bit of a pain in my new(er) car.

qwerty456127• 4 years ago

Touchscreens just seemed cool as they were a cool fresh futuristic tech and I were a kid. Now as I'm more rational and touchscreens are ubiquitous, it seems obvious to me analog controls are almost always better. The only exception is when the number of controls you need to fit really is too much so you better switch pages.

throwaway625637• 4 years ago

If they didn't do the test with people already quite familiar with the car's interface, I don't consider the results all that valid:

Most cars, most of the time, are driven by people who are very used to their particular interface. I couldn't find mention of this in the article, but it's necessary to state.

Furthermore, increased automation in many of these cars means you don't have to do many of the listed sequences as often, or at all:

"Lower the instrument lighting to the lowest level and turn off the center display." Why would I ever do such a thing when this is fully automated already?

eriksdh• 4 years ago

Yes, the test was devised with people who had learned how the system and the screen work.

throw_a_grenade• 4 years ago

FTFA:

One important aspect of this test is that the drivers had time to get to know the cars and their infotainment systems before the test started.

h2odragon2• 4 years ago

My wife drove a 2002 Honda Insight for 2 years. She never did understand the "window override" switch on the dashboard that disables the power windows in the doors. She taped plastic over one side for a week the first time she hit that button and the windows stopped working. She took it to the mechanic a couple times "the windows stopped working again" because the switch on the dash was easy to frob by accident.

Why was that switch there in the first place? Being familiar with the car didn't help her remember it existed, even when she encountered the "windows wont move" problem repeatedly. Assuming you want a "stop the windows working" switch, why put it up in the corner of the dashboard and in a form where it's easy to hit accidentally and hard to tell that it's not in the right position?

The problem is deeper than screens and older than "legally required backup cameras;" the ergonomics of the car interior became secondary to "but marketing says people want feature $X" checklists.

DiggyJohnson2• 4 years ago

Genuinely curious, how does she hit a button on the dashboard by accident? To me, the dashboard is behind the steering wheel and shielded from accidental presses.

jen205• 4 years ago

The switch typically disables the passenger and rear windows, and is there is that the driver can stop kids or pets controlling the windows. It’s been next to the window controls in every car I’ve ever driven that had electric windows.

To verify that a mountain was indeed being made out of a molehill, I checked the manual [1] for the 2002 Insight: page 78 explains this is the case in a single sentence.

[1] https://techinfo.honda.com/rjanisis/pubs/OM/AH/AIN0202OM/enu...

upsidesinclude• 4 years ago

It would be great I'd we could sideline the automotive interior designers for just one truck and put some tractor or boat designers in their place.

Tractors and boats have amazing layouts that accommodate your engagement in operating. Cars are full of gimmicks and showroom fluff

bborud• 4 years ago

I bet it would end up looking better as well. High quality switches and buttons feel really luxurious.

If you look at Gordon Murray's latest car, the t50, he spent a lot of time sourcing buttons and switches for the car because he cares deeply about their tactile feel. There is also not a single touch display in the car. Because he passionately hates them.

If you are into sports cars you kind of want to cry when you look at how badly some of the dashboards tend to age. Some of them look like embarrassing student projects where a 1990s web designer has crammed all manner of animated gifs with a horribly infantile palette onto the dashboard.

Kon-Peki2• 4 years ago

High quality switches and buttons feel really luxurious.

That's part of why I have an Audi.

It's a 2021 model with a touchscreen. But it also has high-quality buttons and knobs for each of the tests in the article mentioned and would thus pass with a very low distance measured.

There are some weird issues, however. The audio buttons control the current audio source but don't fall back if the current audio source disappears. Like if you are playing music through your passenger's phone via CarPlay. If you drop them off at their house and keep going, the physical audio controls do nothing at all until you select a new audio source on the touchscreen.

vwcx3• 4 years ago

I'd love to see similar testing conducted on "consumer" avionics boxes used in general aviation. Garmin has moved many of their units from fully-tactile buttons and knobs to touchscreens. This puts the onus on the pilot to fully master the system before entering a situation where you can't simply swipe/scroll your way to success. But using a touch screen in turbulence is nearly impossible; Garmin engineered a physical lip edge around the unit to hang onto to assist the pilot in stabilizing their finger.

There's a reason professional cockpits still largely eschew touchscreens when 250+ lives are at stake in the back.

berkut• 4 years ago

I'd personally agree with this, but at the same time, I think aircraft like the F-35 have moved to touch displays instead of 4th gen MFDs (but works with gloves?), and didn't some of the SpaceX stuff have touchscreens. There must be some logic driving it in the defence/space industry...

rbanffy2• 4 years ago

but works with gloves?

I bet Lockheed Martin sells a $50K glove that works with the F-35 touchscreens.

It's not that bad, however. In a car you need to be constantly aware of the road ahead of you. On a plane, you are not required to have your hands on the controls while on autopilot and you can pay attention to the screens, as well as operate them - there won't be any wildlife crossing ahead of you, not any red lights forcing you to brake.

And if the plane sees a threat it will warn you well before your human senses can so you can pay full attention to it (and the helmet-mounted displays). I assume the F-35 also has stick-mounted controls to operate in the helmet display.

zppln3• 4 years ago

Touchscreens are potentially very useful in a fighter (maps, general SA, designation etc), but not for everything and not in every situation. But just because you get a touchscreen doesn't mean you have to forfeit frame buttons with onscreen labels, HOTAS etc.

PaulHoule• 4 years ago

Military pilots like the F-35 except for the touchscreen.

BeefWellington3• 4 years ago

Which should kind of be a sign that for any important high-stakes task you should be using physical switches.

I predict in 10 years car manufacturers will bring back physical controls for some things (if not all).

One advantage physical controls have is that I can operate them sightless once I learn the layout. Most touchscreens I've seen in cars don't really have that feature because of the design of the system behind it (whole screens shift so returning to navigation isn't often simple, for example).

brk5• 4 years ago

Same general trend on marine MFDs (basically the equivalent thing for boats). Models with knobs and buttons are the "premium" version, the default is typically just a giant touchscreen, which is not always great when you have wet hands.

The flat screens look good, and work great in calm situations, but in heavy seas and/or rain, they can be challenging at times. In my case the manufacturer (Raymarine) offers a wired remote control, so I have a knobs-n-buttons controller that is easy to reach and offers more direct control when needed.

Dalewyn2• 4 years ago

There is one practical argument that can be made against mechanical switches and buttons, and that is they will eventually fail from long-term use.

I've heard from friends in the aviation industry that pilots take extra care to put as little stress on switches and buttons as possible during normal use to prolong their service live.

The uninitiated might think why bother when a switch or button is dirt cheap, like several cents per unit cheap. And they would be right, the best kind of right. But when a switch/button does inevitably fail and needs to be replaced, the cost can easily come out to at least several hundred bucks between the labor, reinspections, and recertifications among other red tape that help ensure safety.

So if (if!) touchscreen interfaces are more durable and last longer, that is one fair argument in favor of them over mechanical switches and buttons.

BeefWellington3• 4 years ago

There is one practical argument that can be made against mechanical switches and buttons, and that is they will eventually fail from long-term use.

Before a touch interface fails from long-term use? I highly doubt it. Plus, a switch is a very easy component to replace. Touch screens can be but aren't always.

I think service life arguments are just poor effort. We well understand the appropriate average service life of a variety of switches. We don't understand the same for touchscreens, especially modern ones, as they haven't been around as long.

donatj2• 4 years ago

In my twenty years of driving I have had a single manual control fail in a vehicle and it cost less than $50 to get it fixed. I can’t imagine fixing anything on these modern cars being less than several hundred.

omegant2• 4 years ago

My experience after flying 737, MD80, A320, A330 and A340 is that nobody takes special care with cockpit buttons. They are work tools and treated as such.

The main ones (autopilot and flight controls), rarely fail if at all. The only ones failing from time to time are small switches for radio channel volume or cockpit light adjustments and system buttons at the overhead panel that are easy to replace by maintenance.

Touchscreens are not a good option for main controls due to poor visibility(dirt from fingers and sun reflections), hidden submenus, turbulence making hard to press the correct button…

The A350 and 787 are using trackball controlls for submenus and the onboard computers, not a touchscreen.

briandear3• 4 years ago

The only people taking special care are the ones that pay for the maintenance.

SomeHacker44• 4 years ago

It is for this reason that I have almost no Garmin avionics. I use Avidyne IFD GPS navigators which can do almost everything without using the touch screen. Even then I find the knobs are too easily turned to use very accurately in turbulence. To use them or the physical buttons in turbulence it is necessary to brace part of your hand or some fingers on the bezel, which is fine.

WalterBright4• 4 years ago

You can't use a touchscreen either when the cockpit fills with smoke.

briandear3• 4 years ago

Critical checklist items for a smoke filled cockpit have zero to do with avionics. And those items are practiced so much that any pilot should be able to handle smoke in cockpit with their eyes literally closed.

Groxx2• 4 years ago

using a touch screen in turbulence is nearly impossible

This is one of the biggest reasons I dislike touch screens in cars, yeah. Tons of roads are more than turbulent enough to make it hard to hit buttons. Not having a physical edge / clicking / etc to tell you where you are and when you've done a thing means you have to use your eyes, which means disabling what is by far your biggest safety tool while driving.

jacknews7• 4 years ago

IMHO touchscreens in cars are the beginning (or perhaps a continuation) of the crapification and tiktok-ization of this entire product category.

I remember once driving, I think a Renault Megane, which had all the controls (stereo, climate, etc) replicated as buttons on (behind) the steering wheel. A slight learning curve, but completely seamless driver-car integration once learned. Someone had obviously thought carefully about how this should work, instead of just slapping in a touchscreen and a bunch of menus.

galangalalgol• 4 years ago

Yes! I want a car interface designed by whoever is responsible for vim.

kh_hk3• 4 years ago

It's all fun until someone else tries to quit your car.

toxik3• 4 years ago

So only professional drivers can turn off their cars? :-)

Timon3• 4 years ago

When I read your comment, I immediately thought of a car which you exit by removing the floor plating, after which the car lifts itself up, so you can comfortably step away from the underside. Can't wait to see my grandma try that!

nonrandomstring3• 4 years ago

It's called ergonomics [1].

The "crapification" you describe is the creep away from the scientific principles that once underpinned this field. Before UX we had HCI (Human Computer Interaction) which was in turn a development of CE (Cognitive Ergonomics) and other "human factors" sciences.

These sciences were rooted in very rigorous but time consuming tests, observation, psychology and physiology.

from TFA: "Designers want a "clean" interior with minimal switchgear"

This is where the wheels fall off the wagon. Should "what designers want" be high amongst the priorities for safety critical products?

[1] https://iea.cc/what-is-ergonomics/

robbie-c• 4 years ago

Yes, if designers are component at all of these things:

tests, observation, psychology and physiology

Is that not their job?

vanderZwan4• 4 years ago

from TFA: "Designers want a "clean" interior with minimal switchgear"

Speaking as someone with an Interaction Design (IxD) degree: no we fucking don't. Tactile buttons being superior has been known for ages. For example, Bret Victor wrote "A Brief Rant On The Future Of Interaction Design" in 2011, so over a decade ago[0]. Not that anyone with the power to change things listened, because these decisions aren't made by the designers.

This is mostly a consequence of people higher up trying to save costs by using touchscreens, which is cheaper to buy and cheaper to develop for. HCI and IxD have always had this issue that we're asked to fix things up after everything else has already been decided. Basically, we're mistaken for graphic designers who decide on what the final product will look like. So we're given a touchscreen to develop an interface for, not a blank-slate car interior (or whatever) for which we get to decide the button layout.

At the risk of pulling a "no true Scotsman", this is a consequence of cost-cutting first and foremost. Don't blame the people who actually have a background HCI or Interaction Design. We all knew this was coming, and we hated it. If we're told to make do with the touchscreens we are given, with the alternatives of actual physical buttons being ignored before we even get to make decisions, then don't blame us for the lack of those buttons.

[0] http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...

Unbeliever69• 4 years ago

I have a bachelor's and master's in Industrial Design. When I first entered the software industry after grad school in 2000 a master's was the floor for work in UI Design or Information Architecture (Ux wasn't a job title at this time). Many of the people I worked with in these early days were CogPsy PhDs. Design was slow and methodical. This seemed to hold true for the next decade or so. As design as a competitive advantage (or necessity) started to take hold more and more people flocked to Ux. Many in the field today are self-taught, attended bootcamps, or pivoted away from graphic design (thanks Dribble) to Ux. Did we lose something when many Ux practitioners no longer have roots in HCI, library sciences, human-computer interaction, industrial design, human factors? I'm not going to judge. Myself, I transitioned from Ux to programming.

zppln3• 4 years ago

Sounds like the car equivalent of HOTAS.

jmclnx• 4 years ago

This started years ago, my example is the transformation of the Jeep CJ into the wrangler. CJ were fairly cheap, worked fine and came with no frills (I won't talk about rust). The wrangler is an overglorified SUV. When that happened, I went to regular automobiles, which are now getting harder to find these days.

repler• 4 years ago

I can understand where you're coming from, but compared to the vehicles I own now my 98 TJ seems "no frills".

The soft top folded down pretty nicely. The rear seat could also fold down, as did the windshield. The half doors were still removable, and there were still only 2 of them.

It was a manual transmission but had A/C. The heater had two settings: "lava" and "off" :D

thiht• 4 years ago

Wtf does it have to do with TikTok?

jacknews7• 4 years ago

You'll see.

Now, you control your car, though with increasing friction.

motoboi2• 4 years ago

Just someone getting older and repeating the ancient mantra of "things are getting worse! because children are not educated the way they used to be".

astura• 4 years ago

It's the current Boogeyman.

doliveira• 4 years ago

It's more of an alias for the zeitgeist.

driverdan2• 4 years ago

Absolutely nothing. The problem existed before TikTok.

LtWorf3• 4 years ago

My car radio is completely unusable. I had it for 2 years and never figured out how to tell it to just play everything on the usb. Instead it groups by artist or genre and only plays that.

Eventually the usb port just stopped working so I use VLC on the phone and stream to the car via bluetooth.

Cthulhu_6• 4 years ago

This has been an issue for car radios playing digital media ever since it became available though.

mannykannot• 4 years ago

Bluetooth in cars is often itself a shitshow, however. You are lucky it does not replicate all the anti-usability features of the USB interface.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32162131

Sohcahtoa82• 4 years ago

I wish I knew what the designers/engineers were thinking when they created the ability to play music from a USB drive. It feels like their target audience is not the type of person that would put music on a USB drive for the car.

I just want it to recognize that I sort my music into folders and show the folder hierarchy. Instead, in my last car, it would flatten the entire structure and then sort by filename. To top off the shitshow, it would also only show up to 99 files, and scrolling through the list was painful. Each tap on the scroll button would only move one line, not one page, so if I wanted to play the 80th song, I'd have to tap to scroll 80 times.

m463• 4 years ago

so you have a tesla too?

seriously though, the USB audio player is a dumpster fire. They completely redid it with the last update -- and it got worse, not better.

some random examples off the top of my head: - switch to another input source and you lose your audiobook position - sorting is completely utterly broken - audiobook has no skip-back-a-little function - soooo many bugs

The only nice things I could say is that it mounts linux filesystems plus it plays FLAC and Apple lossless directly.

WalterBright4• 4 years ago

I learned that when the touchscreen starts flickering, it means the alternator has shorted out and you've got only a few miles before the car goes dead.

WalterBright4• 4 years ago

A voltmeter would tell me the same thing, but modern cars seem to have replaced them with a touch screen.

JasserInicide• 4 years ago

This is what happens when Ivy League MBAs run every industry

jacknews7• 4 years ago

Really, these people are poison to engineering culture, and once that deteriorates, the company soon follows. Look at Palm, HP, Intel, I'm sure there are numerous others.

conductr• 4 years ago

crapification and tiktok-ization

I think Apple's design choices provide a better analogy but the point is still taken and I tend to agree. They want cars to be disposable technology that consumers are continuously upgrading (like their phone)

jacknews7• 4 years ago

One change is that a car ceases to be an 'object' (to show off), or a 'tool' (to get you to work), and becomes an 'experience'; of course, controlled by corporations.

Overtonwindow• 4 years ago

I really dislike touch buttons in car, for some reason looking at that screen is a distraction that feeling for a button is not. Even worse, though, are physical buttons that digitally change. I drove a Landrover like that and it was very, very frustrating.

kh_hk3• 4 years ago

Happy if cars ditched the navigation screen altogether. Having an external GPS is not such a bad thing. Something you can remove, replace or upgrade.

mhdhn• 4 years ago

I hardly know anyone who uses an internal GPS provided by the car. Everyone uses their phone, either through CarPlay or just putting the physical phone up somewhere, somehow. Every car manufacturers' GPS's I've seen or heard of have terrible UX compared to phone apps such as Google Maps, Waze, or Apple Maps.

2rsf2• 4 years ago

Polestar, and probably new cars from the sister Volvo,have a really good Android Auto based (not the screen cast Android Automotive) navigation screen using Google Maps for navigation. On electric cars it uses information from the car to build better routes, estimate battery usage and suggest charging stations.

konschubert2• 4 years ago

I want CarPlay/Android Auto.

Tade0• 4 years ago

I'm so happy to have physical buttons on the steering wheel because the touchscreen, powered by some obviously ancient chip(feels 2009-ish), is mostly useless, aside from maybe showing the map.

That being said I don't actually use any features during driving, except for adjusting climate control and compulsively checking fuel economy.

I'm curious what features people miss now that physical controls are mostly gone.

Pasorrijer3• 4 years ago

Adjusting climate control, since that is now in the touchscreen, although thankfully some manufacturers are back tracking on that one.

Adjusting the radio station is the other big one.

prvit3• 4 years ago

New cars have decent hardware. New S-class infotainment runs on a 6 core Nvidia Xavier SoC with a Volta GPU and 16GB of RAM.

7341298372613• 4 years ago

Touch screens are just their 60+ year old fossils deciding "that's hip, that's what kids want!" and probably their testing audiences responding more positively to images of flashy touch screens and shiny lights.

Driving a car with touch screens (new BMW or Mercedes) has left me very unimpressed. My 2016 VW Golf has actual buttons, switches, and knobs to twist and turn and press and flip.

Car reviewers, too, often say it's a shame that car manufacturers are switching to touch screen nonsense. It's such a shameful trend if you think about it. The BMW series of pre-2022 had buttons in the dashboard, but the upcoming new series will do away with those entirely.

Touch screens even find their way onto steering wheels and doors.

Of course, it's easy to understand why:

1. It's cheaper to produce; 2. It looks more expensive, so the price goes up; 3. Testing audiences respond positively to shiny lights; 4. Fossils decided that this is what the young people want.

Honestly, I hope European legislation makes it illegal at some point. For the sake of safety. With touch screens, even the most simple task requires you to take your eyes off the road in front of you; with regular buttons you could do many task just with touch.

What was even more surprising, to me, is that Mercedes had this amazing nice center console unit to control things with your arm in a rested position. They removed that piece of brilliance!

So, now you need to do everything with an outstretched arm in a moving vehicle to operate tiny buttons on a flat touch screen.

Oh, and the touch screen can only barely hit 60 frames per second and often feels much slower. They're even saving costs on GPU power in their fancy luxury cars.

marvinvz• 4 years ago

It's mainly about cost and a bit about "but Tesla!".

konschubert2• 4 years ago

Touch screens are just their 60+ year old fossils deciding "that's hip, that's what kids want!" and probably their testing audiences responding more positively to images of flashy touch screens and shiny lights.

It's mostly a cost saving measure.

Physical buttons are expensive. I you eliminate them, the car gets cheaper to make.

That's all.

It's a sign of low quality and I expect that in 5 to 10 years, consumers will start to realise this.

Joker_vD3• 4 years ago

Surely the buttons don't cost that much compared to, y'know, the rest of the vehicle?

m000• 4 years ago

It's a sign of low quality and I expect that in 5 to 10 years, consumers will start to realise this.

Consumers is the key word here. Manufacturers already know that buttons have the "disadvantage" that they break independently. They are also easier to fix with a generic replacement part. Which means that you won't have to scrap your car because it suddenly became unusable.

Force manufacturers to provide replacement parts for 25 years after original purchase, and see them flocking back to the basics. But that prob. won't happen in EU (because it's against the interests of Germany) or USA (because "communism"). So I guess we're depending on the common sense of Japanese and Korean manufacturers?

vladvasiliu• 4 years ago

It's a sign of low quality and I expect that in 5 to 10 years, consumers will start to realise this.

I'm not so hopeful. The same can be said about household appliances. Yet more and more random things figure they should have touchscreens, or at the very least touch buttons. And this trend has lasted for far more than 10 years.

kgwgk3• 4 years ago

The impressive thing about the touchscreens in BMWs is that you don’t need to touch them at all. [I’ve not seen the new models though. I’m sure they are not better than the ones being replaced.]

https://www.carbuyer.co.uk/tips-and-advice/170098/bmw-idrive...

amelius• 4 years ago

You still have to browse through menus.

flakeoil• 4 years ago

Isn't that a drawback. Even easier to press the wrong button. Must be terrible when driving on a bumpy road and your hand is jumping around.

Sakos• 4 years ago

Why would that be a good thing? That sounds awful

edit: Nevermind.

The main part of the BMW iDrive system is a control wheel, which can turn clockwise and anticlockwise like a volume dial. It can also be pushed forwards, backwards and to each side as if it were a joystick, and the centre acts as a button that can be pressed to confirm a choice or select an option. As mentioned above, later versions have adopted touchscreen technology, gesture control and voice commands, so there are multiple ways to operate a newer iDrive system in addition to the rotary control.

It's a physical user interface with buttons and a joystick. Which is basically what everybody here wants.

moss22• 4 years ago

5. The manufacturer can change functionality and user interface with a simple software update.

If Toyota half-way through shipping their latest car realize it's better to have two knobs on the dashboard, they can very easily add one if the dashboard is just one big touch screen.

ajmurmann• 4 years ago

In some way that's even worse though. Everything should stay put. When driving a car, all this stuff is a secondary activity. I need to be able to develop muscle memory to ideally perform these finds blind while giving my main attention to the road. Buttons help doing this without looking. I might be able to do navigate a touch screen quickly if everything is in the same place all the time. Moving things around is just another opportunity to force more attention to the secondary activity

vincnetas• 4 years ago

What this "we can change it later" option creates is designs that are not very well thought out. When you have physical buttons you must be double sure that this is the best layout that you can come up. You need to commit and double (triple) check with multiple people. Allocate resources for manufacturing/tooling. But you are forced to think about it really really hard.

With touch screen and OTA updates, you can skip the hard part and leave it for future you to improve if needed. But as we all know, when it's already sold there is no motivation to spend money to improve. So touch UI stays half baked. And only gets improved with future models.

wikfwikf• 4 years ago

I think the trend towards touchscreens has to do with the halo effect of the iphone. The fully touchscreen phone was much more modern-feeling, and also better and easier to use than previous phones with buttons.

The irony is of course that the decision to have very few buttons (not one, not zero, but very few) with almost all input via the screen was made very carefully by Apple with very specific justification based on understanding of how phones were used and could be used. This is clear from Jobs' iphone keynote.

If Steve Jobs, Jony Ives etc were redesigning car interfaces it's far from obvious that they would have made similar decisions.

hulitu4• 4 years ago

Physical buttons: 1. Are expensive 2. Need space on the PCB 3. Need ICT 4. Need special soldering sometimes 5. need a dedicated interrupt interface on the microcontroller ( that's why are more responsive) 6. Need software both at "kernel" (BSW) level and at userspace (application) level. A touchscreen "button" needs only a callback to a routine and a lot of patience from the user.

StevenWaterman• 4 years ago

There is one benefit - you can update the UI of a car with a touchscreen but not one with buttons. Tesla's first touchscreen [1] now looks slightly dated, but they're able to just update the entire fleet.

No doubt it'll get to the point where you can't update it any more - either due to hardware incompatibility, lack of processing power, or some new technology being added. But it has meant that a 2013 Model S looks more modern today than it would have otherwise.

Equally, tech tends to look dated much faster than physical buttons do. It's too early to really say which has more long-lasting appeal.

[1] https://youtu.be/TZ0HsN-tblo?t=124

dncornholio• 4 years ago

I've never been in my car and thought the buttons could use an update.. It's hardly something that you should trade safety for.

grishka2• 4 years ago

Updatability is not a good thing. I want my UIs to never change without a good reason, and there can't be a good reason to change car controls.

HidyBush2• 4 years ago

you can update the UI of a car with a touchscreen but not one with buttons

A car is a dependable tool. Changing the UI during a car's lifetime is dangerous and unprofessional. I'd say the same is true for smartphones and computers but I guess the majority of people think of them as simple "cool entertainment devices"

Silhouette4• 4 years ago

There is one benefit - you can update the UI of a car with a touchscreen but not one with buttons.

This is a bug, not a feature.

If I'm driving then I'm driving. I want any non-driving controls to be as simple, consistent and reliable as possible. I don't want any non-essential controls at all. I don't want anything I might want to use while driving that requires me to take my eyes off the road at all. I couldn't care less what some flashy touchscreen UI looks like because I should never have to look at it.

The physical controls on the dash of every vehicle I drive regularly still work as well and feel as comfortable to use as they ever did. In some cases those vehicles are over a decade old. I'll take that over the modern touchscreen junk any day.

kylecordes3• 4 years ago

It's interesting to see a parade of people object to the updatability.

Sure, on a minute-to-minute timescale, anyone must obviously agree.

But over the long term of owning a car, it is an immensely valuable feature. My 2018 car still feels quite new and fresh - much less reason to replace it than if it were falling behind.

mizzack• 4 years ago

Just waiting for the day some enterprising MBA decides it's a good idea to add ads.

mrtksn7• 4 years ago

The cars with a lot of buttons simply look outdated and people feel bad on choosing a car with a small screen.

The whole marketing is built on it, you get a small screen and lots of buttons if you get the basic version of the car and you get giant touchscreen if you buy the premium package.

If your new car has a large touchscreen your friends who own 5+ y.o. car compliment your choice and express jealousy(at the time of purchase, most people don't have real world experience with touch screens on cars and touch screens are in these cutting edge electronics that are expensive, so they must be good). If your new car has a small screen you need to explain why this was the logical choice and how much you saved.

It's even the same with the iPhone 13 mini. That device is amazing, you can use it with one hand and fits in every pocket and the screen is actually larger than the first large screen iPhone(the iPhone 6) but people will try to understand why you bought that one. Are you poor? Why would you buy a tiny phone?

It's very strange, the word on the street is that the larger the screen the better. If your $30K product instantly becomes much easier to sell when you replace buttons with touchscreens without increasing the costs wouldn't you do that? I guess you need to have a niche, snobby traditionalist brand to be able to reject that demand from the consumers.

Silhouette4• 4 years ago

If your new car has a large touchscreen your friends who own 5+ y.o. car compliment your choice and express jealousy

Does this ever happen? I've never heard anyone express jealousy regarding not having a big enough touchscreen in their car. I've heard several owners of modern cars with touchscreens bemoan how complicated and slow to use they are. In my experience literally no-one who actually buys and drives cars thinks they are a good idea and many people - including myself - are deterred from buying a new model specifically because of the technology.

workingon• 4 years ago

maybe stop hanging out with narcissistic rich people, no one i talk to would ever make comments like that

duncan-donuts• 4 years ago

Heh funny you mentioned the iPhone 13 mini. I just got a new phone and picked the iPhone mini. It’s by far my favorite phone since the iPhone 5. It’s also one of the cheapest new iPhones you can get. Like buttons on a dashboard the iPhone 13 mini is far and away a better product (for me).

ryanbrunner4• 4 years ago

I wonder if there's a way to make physical controls feel more premium via materials / design. In other consumer goods, there's definitely a market for physical design that feels more well-engineered with things like using metal and thoughtful trim. It's not surprising that people find black plastic buttons not particularly premium looking.

RHSeeger• 4 years ago

you need to explain why

You really don't, and the fact that people consider it a given that you do says some very bad things about society. You should be buying the things that work the best for _you_, not the ones that will impress your friends.

badpun2• 4 years ago

people will try to understand why you bought that one. Are you poor? Why would you buy a tiny phone?

I mean, fsck them. If I had people in my life who though like that (I don't), I'd get rid of them. If they're family and cannot be simply cut off, I'd minimise the contact.

jbverschoor• 4 years ago

Sure, my laptop looks outdated with a keyboard. But compared to touch screen I'm more productive, faster, make less mistake, can wear gloves, don't have to look, can use it in sunlight, and it was never unresponsive.

croes2• 4 years ago

So instead of the whiteness and type of your business card it's now the size of your touchscreen.

croes2• 4 years ago

If you need to showboat you are not rich

emiliobumachar2• 4 years ago

5. Backup cameras. They're legally required in some jurisdictions (so I heard), and genuinely contribute to safety, but they require a screen. Once the screen is there, there's both less space for buttons and a virtual hook for features.

badwolf• 4 years ago

in addition, my Volvo does a "360" view, which is pretty darn useful for parking.

benj1112• 4 years ago

You can just use the screen for infotainment and satnav though.

I already have a screen showing what radio station is playing, and one on the dash telling me where to go. If a screen is required for a backup camera, just combine it. If I'm reversing I probably don't need the satnav anyway, whereas if I'm reversing or using satnav I probably do need other functions which just means you need an even bigger screen so you can fit everything on.

kylecordes3• 4 years ago

I have been surprised to learn that regulations only require that the backup camera turn on when you go into reverse; not that it stay on while you are in reverse. Some cars let you navigate away from the backup view even while moving backward.

There is so much opportunity for better regulation, without making more numerous regulations.

rohansingh• 4 years ago

I've seen the backup camera integrated into the rearview mirror in some vehicles. That doesn't have either of those drawbacks.

ModernMech2• 4 years ago

These days the instrument cluster is being displayed with an lcd. It could be used for the backup camera and wouldn’t be practical to be a touchscreen.

woliveirajr• 4 years ago

You shouldn't use your smartphone while driving because you might cause an accident while you are looking away from the road and not using both hands to hold the sterring wheel.

But that's ok with touchscreens.

ryanbrunner4• 4 years ago

To be fair, while I agree that touchscreens are far worse for distraction than physical controls, they're far, far better than a smartphone. Phones are designed to hold your attention, have small text sizes and interface elements, require actually holding the phone vs just using the touchscreen, and a lot of distracted driving comes from wildly inappropriate activities like texting vs advancing to the next song on Spotify or something.

april_222• 4 years ago

I even think the only way to drive new Teslas in reverse is by swiping a button on the touchscreen. That's such a huge security risk.

throwawaylinux2• 4 years ago

Touch screens are just their 60+ year old fossils deciding "that's hip, that's what kids want!"

Do you have any evidence for this? Seems pretty outlandish to me.

1. It's cheaper to produce; 2. It looks more expensive, so the price goes up; 3. Testing audiences respond positively to shiny lights; 4. Fossils decided that this is what the young people want.

What does 4 even mean? If we took 1-3 as fact, then should businesses have disregarded them and instead made something more expensive to produce that looked cheaper and sold for less because people don't respond so positively?

kottapar• 4 years ago

What was even more surprising, to me, is that Mercedes had this amazing nice center console unit to control things with your arm in a rested position. They removed that piece of brilliance!

Mazda also has this beautiful dial-joystick which we can operate in a rested position. It is so intuitive that I stopped using the touchscreen console itself. On the other hand even when we operate using a dial and buttons we take our eyes for an instant to look at the screen to check the changes. Now imagine looking away at a touchscreen just to see what operation to perform etc. This is a major distraction.

spcebar• 4 years ago

BMW at one point had (and may still have) a dial joystick, but I found it really unintuitive. Maybe it was poor software design, but it was never clear to me when I needed to turn the dial vs move the stick to navigate menus. Did you find it easier to use the control in the Mazda? Was the UX better?

ModernMech2• 4 years ago

Mazda has actually been going in the opposite direction by removing their touchscreens; 2016 Mazdas came with touchscreens, but the newest models go without. Personally, owning a 2016 Mazda I never actually used the touch screen once, due to as you note, the great dial interface.

ptsneves2• 4 years ago

I have a 2021 BMW and I really like the alternatives on button and touch screen it offers.

I barely use the touchscreen and when not needed I outright turn it off. This is quite easy because BMW has 8 buttons that can be mapped to any function in the touchscreen including turning off the main screen.

Another thing I enjoy is the gesture detector. It sometimes has false positives when I gesticulate a lot but it works when I actually intend it to. It is very satisfying to mute the radio or change an annoying music with a hand gesture. If they would keep trying to integrate and perfect it I think it would be the right direction for innovation.

Touchscreens are fine when parked or for the passenger. Anything else they are useless and often have too much distracting info, so they are turned off.

WXLCKNO• 4 years ago

I ordered a new 3 series (2023) which does away with those buttons and a few others. I would have preferred having at least the temperature controls as physical buttons but other than that they do have the navigation knob/joystick which is well positioned to control the system. It feels like a reasonable compromise.

fortran77• 4 years ago

I think it's in poor taste that you refer to older people as "fossils"

slothtrop• 4 years ago

I would have gone for antiques.

fluidcruft3• 4 years ago

I can see voice control being useful and far cheaper (modulo the issue of how to deal with jackass passengers, but that's pretty easily dealt with using a push-to-talk button on the steering wheel).

In a previous discussion someone mentioned that part of this trend toward screens in cars is that new cars are now required to have rear-view camera. So once you are required to have the screen, it's really almost nothing to waltz over to touch screens. Of note: the "winning" car is so old it doesn't have rear-view cameras.

DrBazza2• 4 years ago

What was even more surprising, to me, is that Mercedes had this amazing nice center console unit to control things with your arm in a rested position. They removed that piece of brilliance!

My MB is a UX disaster.

Have a guess how many controls there are in the car for navigating the (non-touch!) screen?

1? Nope. 2? Nope. 3? Yes 3. A touch surface in the centre console, a spinning wheel in the centre console (which is also a joystick), and finally a little joystick thing on the steering wheel.

Volume controllers? 2.

And don't get me started on how dangerously absurd it is trying to switch between MB's own system and Apple Carplay/Google Auto whilst driving.

neilv• 4 years ago

Touch screens are just their 60+ year old fossils deciding "that's hip, that's what kids want!"

Is there evidence it was 60+ year-olds who decided to lean on touchscreens for cars?

If that's just an assumption, isn't an equally likely ageist guess that it was pushed by people who came up through the ranks in the era of "UX"? (Since I'd expect that old-school, pre-UX human factors engineers, who grew up on research coming from aircraft cockpit optimization, safety, and UI in service of the user... would research the heck out of a new technology option like this.)

TaupeRanger• 4 years ago

The parent comment could not have gotten it more wrong. It was not "60+ year old fossils" that made this decision. It was "30-40 year old disrupter hipsters" that told the older people in charge what looks immediately appealing to the average person (and not just young people, who can't afford to buy new cars).

greyhair3• 4 years ago

My brother works in automotive engineering, it isn't 60+ driving this trend. It is the design team, which skews young, and the marketing team, which also skews young.

Tesla does not skew 60+ anywhere in the company, and they introduced these oversized screen based displays years ago.

So on you four bullets above:

1) True 2) I don't know, perhaps? 3) Maybe a quick 'image' audience, but are they doing usability testing? 4) Completely false.

The big weight is on point #1, for two reasons.

1) Those displays may seem expensive, until you actually price out the panels they are using. Then go and see what those physical buttons cost. They are not cheap. And there are a lot of them. And both technologies have micro processors behind them, so using physical knobs and buttons doesn't save money there.

2) Using modal displays to cover multiple controls saves dashboard real estate, and eases design constraints. Designers love it.

One of the things I hate the most, is that I want a mostly dark interior when I drive at night, and now I'll be stuck staring at an illuminated display that I hate using in any case.

paganel• 4 years ago

One of the things I hate the most, is that I want a mostly dark interior when I drive at night,

Another of the many reasons to decry the death os Saab as a car company.

Later edit: Added link to YT video demonstrating Saab's night mode [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgh2zbifn7E

thesuitonym2• 4 years ago

but are they doing usability testing?

You know they're not. If they were, nobody would ever replace a knob with a touchscreen.

sli• 4 years ago

Those displays may seem expensive, until you actually price out the panels they are using.

Doesn't stop Toyota for wanting a solid $1000 to replace the display in my 2014 Corolla. Someone's pocketing a lot of money.

BurningFrog• 4 years ago

Using modal displays to cover multiple controls saves dashboard real estate, and eases design constraints

This makes a ton of sense for displaying state.

For manipulating state I need tactile physical controls.

This is how computers work, and for good reason. I have a big screen to show state, and keyboard + mouse to manipulate it.

HPsquared3• 4 years ago

Night driving is especially annoying if there is a lot of backlight bleed through the display. Perhaps OLED displays would make this better, but of course... more expensive.

7341298372613• 4 years ago

Thanks for clarifying that. I stand corrected.

It all makes sense from just the financial point of view. So that means it isn't going away any time soon, unless there's a huge backlash from consumers.

Perhaps the best thing we can hope for is 1 car manufacturer deciding: "Buttons first, touch screen(s) second."

Let consumers decide with their wallets. Though, I wouldn't be surprised that many consumers go for an inferior product just because it looks cool. Because that, unfortunately, is how humans work.

stinos• 4 years ago

With touch screens, even the most simple task requires you to take your eyes off the road in front of you; with regular buttons you could do many task just with touch.

Sort of related, I have the exact same issue with portable music players while walking or cycling. Most of the time the only task I need to do is play/pause or forward/backward track.

For a player with buttons it takes a small amount of attempts and after that you've learned the position of the buttons by heart and can control the device even while it's in your pocket, without needing to see it. Usually aided by some tactile feedback. Fast, convenient, and somewhat safer since we're talking traffic situations.

With a touchscreen-only player that is much harder, sometimes impossible (depending on which screen you're in the controls might not be in the same place or not be there at all).

Sad thing is, this was already the case like a decade ago, leaving me wondering if designers have any pride in their UX, simply don't know they're doing it wrong, willingly just focus on other things apart from usability, etc. In any case: driving a heavy vehicle at high speeds should be the last case where simple things like switching a radio station actually requires you to take your eyes of the road. That's just insane.

nicbou2• 4 years ago

They sell dedicated controls you can clip onto your clothes. You could give that a try.

rad_gruchalski5• 4 years ago

Decent not-so-expensive headphones come with buttons for those functions.

bena• 4 years ago

Maybe I'm weird. I don't use the center console that much. For music, I'm either streaming or shuffling what's on my phone. And then I have the screen showing maps. If I want to put in a destination, it's usually done before I even get out of park.

My steering wheel has volume controls and the environmental controls are still button based.

jstummbillig• 4 years ago

You are missing the actual real value. It's flexibility. A modern car is software and gets updates. With a touchscreen you are least constraint by your previous assumptions and can change direction any way you like.

hulitu4• 4 years ago

You are missing the actual real value. It's flexibility. A modern car is software and gets updates.

The updates are only for bug fixing.Maybe this will change with SaaS but today i never heard of any Car company which does this. And no, i don't consider Tesla a car company.

chestervonwinch2• 4 years ago

I believe you could have made your point without the "fossil" insults.

tommyderami• 4 years ago

I think points 1-3 are valid and certainly contribute to the decision, but many manufacturers believe that the future of the interface is a mixture of voice control (environmental, cabin lighting, navigation etc) and manipulation of steering wheel controls with HUD feedback (infotainment and everything else). Failure to embrace voice interfaces and demanding a button for everything is making 'fossils' out of 20-100 year olds. Source: I work at one of the big German car manufacturers and have mostly drank the 'use voice, don't look off the road' koolaid.

dogleash2• 4 years ago

Touch screens are just their 60+ year old fossils

Please don’t play this game where a bad design decision was finally recognized as bad design and a scapegoat is found rather than admitting the “experts” who did it have no clothes.

UX branding itself “UX” rather than any of the half dozen other names we used to use was a clear statement of “It will be different this time, I promise.” It wasn’t. The design trends we got were different, but bad interaction design is still bad interaction design.

StevePerkins• 4 years ago

I'm not sure how you juggle the cognitive dissonance of cramming "Testing audiences respond positively" and "Fossils decided that this is what people want" into the same explanation.

I do agree with the premise that physical buttons and knobs are generally far superior to touchscreen UI's, at least for the common core basic things.

However, I don't agree that it's about the boomers, or the capitalists, or any other Internet strawman forcing something onto the masses against its wishes. I think it REALLY IS a matter of test audiences and "casuals" having tastes that differ from power users and other people that think deeply about a thing. You see this in many different domains.

ceejayoz• 4 years ago

I’m driving a rental MG on vacation right now and today I managed to hit a button that made the speedometer on the digital gauge screen go away. It’s just… gone.

Hoping it comes back after being turned off overnight, or I’ll have to find a manual online somewhere.

wreath• 4 years ago

Check the glove box first. Manual should be there ;)

climb_stealth2• 4 years ago

I know of at least two recent BMWs that were sold without handbook and instead it needs to be read on the touch screen in the car. It's terrible. Welcome to the future.

misja111• 4 years ago

The whole thing with touchscreens in cars reminds me of the touch bar in MacBooks. It's a nice looking gimmick if all you want is to show off but not suited for serious use.

brushfoot6• 4 years ago

I think it's a moot point.

One of the features of modern cars is conversational UIs (CUIs) that enable a truly hands-off approach from controls altogether, both touchscreen and analog.

I hardly use my car's touchscreen except for discoverability, and definitely not while driving. Speaking to the car is easier and more efficient:

- "I'm cold"

- "Turn on the windshield wipers"

- "Navigate to work"

CUIs have evolved to the point where controls are generally a hindrance to consumers and manufacturers both. Why include expensive, breakable analog controls when you can give the driver a better user experience hands off.

lkramer• 4 years ago

Not everybody wants to talk to their devices? I think they are fine to have, but there always need to be a fallback to a manual hands on input.

willhackett4• 4 years ago

I agree with this. Voice control fitted to cars is pretty terrible still. It interrupts playback, takes a long time to resolve an input and takes even longer to repeat it back to you before doing it. Siri makes this a little bit better, but she's not been given access to the AC APIs of my car.

Buttons are the way. Or those cool switches from fighter jets... I'd like to see those in a car.

brushfoot6• 4 years ago

Alternatives are important for accessibility, but I don't agree that they need to be available to all drivers at all times. The idea of going back to panels of analog controls that I have to reach for and memorize the positions of just isn't appealing. They break, the paint fades, they chip. CUIs are easier and safer in general.

hengheng• 4 years ago

How do you know what you can say? Do you keep a separate vocabulary, like you would when you talk to a pet?

brushfoot6• 4 years ago

Start with telling it what you want in natural language. Conversational AI is good at understanding variations like "I want, " "I need," "please," etc. The touchscreen can help you discover what features the car supports, and those should have CUI commands that are easy to intuit, which you can then use while driving.

skywhopper2• 4 years ago

Sorry, but this sounds like a nightmare to me even if it worked well, but the actual quality and robustness of CUIs is nowhere near what you imply. In any case, there’s about 0% chance any car computer is going to do the right thing if I say “I’m cold”. And in no world is saying “turn on the windshield wipers” a better user experience than turning a knob within easy reach, especially if you are listening to anything or if you have other people in the car.

brushfoot6• 4 years ago

the actual quality and robustness of CUIs is nowhere near what you imply

I don't agree - I've been very happy with my car's CUI. I can't see going back to analog controls or touchscreen. There just aren't that many commands that I need to execute while driving, and the CUI understands them all.

indymike2• 4 years ago

Until it doesn't work, then voice is the worst.

worewood• 4 years ago

Turn on the windshield wipers

"Can't open the trunk with the car in movement."

Clicking a button is orders of magnitude faster than casting a spell. Voice controls fail more often than analog controls break. You do not want a delay to turn on your wipers when you are at 60mph and hit a sudden localized rainstorm.

brushfoot6• 4 years ago

Clicking a button is orders of magnitude faster than casting a spell.

It depends on how many buttons there are and how familiar the driver is with them. I like not having to remember/look for the positions of analog buttons on the dash.

Voice controls fail more often than analog controls break.

I haven't had a voice control failure, but any system can be designed with varying degrees of reliability. CUIs have a lot to offer in the way of safety and convenience.

yourusername• 4 years ago

My car has full touchscreens and can't understand even the most basic voice commands. Ask it to navigate to the town of Drachten (NL) and it's likely to route you to some village in Serbia or just say "i don't understand". It's utterly useless.

nottorp• 4 years ago

Let's see:

- you never drive with your windows open?

- you never drive with passengers that you talk to?

- you never listen to music in the car?

benj1112• 4 years ago

"turn of windshield wipers" What speed? I know intermittent. I don't know what the fast speed is called, I call it crazy wipers, I suspect the manufacturer's don't call it that. And that's just a 3 speed wiper, some have more speeds.

"I'm cold" well if you say 'goodnight' to Alexa, she says goodnight and carries on with the music which isn't what I want. I can imagine "I'm cold" being the same, and even if the car does get the hint what do they set the temp to?

"Navigate to work" I know where my work is, I mostly want to navigate to places I don't know, and are therefore not in the memory. So it's "car navigate to some street, city X" "Would you like 1 some street, 2 some street, 2a some street...."

Or "Do you mean some street or sum street or summ street?"

And that's assuming they know the pronunciation, the locals of Slaithwaite can't agree on the pronunciation. And theres many places pronounced weirdly.

piceas2• 4 years ago

Mine triggers when I say my kid's name with different vowels and number of syllables. I had to turn it off.

If I have to press a button to make it work I might as well press the button that does what I want.

It seems like a good idea for adjusting the climate control but I apparently didn't pay enough and it replies something along the lines of "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

So far it hasn't offered a monthly subscription to enable that feature.

vardump• 4 years ago

I'm shocked no one mentions voice control. Isn't that superior to both touchscreens and physical knobs?

zppln3• 4 years ago

No. Pressing a button will give you the functionality you want 100% of the time. A voice command won't.

arethuza2• 4 years ago

Maybe its because I'm a Scot and apparently have an accent, but I'd say that voice control is by far the worst means of controlling anything.

umanwizard• 4 years ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8

makosdv• 4 years ago

I'm not sure they would work well if you're listening to loud music or something. Personally, I don't think I'd ever buy a car that uses voice control as its primary interface; I greatly prefer physical buttons.

2rsf2• 4 years ago

It actually does work on my Polestar even when music is played, it pause the music while listening. Polestar uses Google voice recognition which is great, but still I hate using it except for rare cases at it is slow and prone to misunderstandings. It is ok-ish for listening to incoming messages though.

skywhopper2• 4 years ago

Good lord, no. Voice control is the worst possible UI, because it’s just as easy to flub or mumble or be misunderstood as it is to aim wrong on a touchscreen. It’s far more vague than actual buttons, knobs, and touch screen controls. How to even describe what you want is a challenge, or even knowing what’s possible. Plus if you are listening to anything or have other people in the car, it’s incredibly disruptive, not to mention the risk the car will misinterpret something actually being said.

JustMarco• 4 years ago

Agreed, I use scroll wheels on my steer for volume and next/previous song. Voice control for temperature & navigation and if an text comes in do a quick reply.

Honestly I barely feel the need to use the touch screen in my car while driving, and if so I always make sure autopilot/high way assistant is turned on as extra safety.

willhackett4• 4 years ago

This touchscreenification needs to stop.

Familiarity is my personal favourite part of driving. Knowing the road, how much input you need to apply to a turn, knowing where the buttons for things are, just being able to feel for a control and know its purpose. All while my eyes are on the road.

You lose this with a screen.

JackFr• 4 years ago

This exactly.

Simply put, with physical controls you can operate them without looking. That is impossible with a touch screen.

art3m• 4 years ago

Buttons in old Range Rover (L322) was designed to use in winter gloves. Imagine how good they are.

NDizzle• 4 years ago

Same situation with even modern land cruisers, with the exception of the hvac system in the top end models. A common modification is to order the base model modules from Australia and get rid of all the touch screen components.

adhesive_wombat3• 4 years ago

Same for Volvos back in the day.

And the new generation are all using touchscreens which need you you take eyes off the road to find the fan settings (return to home screen, touch near the bottom centre, then find the wedge-shaped fan speed widget and adjust that). Temperature needs to pop up another pane and set that by clicking the temperature number and then manipulating a bar chart thing. None of this except the "return to home" button is tactile in any way.

Before: turn the dial. Done. Temperature is the one next to it.

Adjusting the sound balance is downright dangerous (pull down the Android-esque menu and click though levels in the UI). Old car: press the tactile centre of the volume wheel until it says balance, then use the wheel.

throwaway0a5e2• 4 years ago

The ford truck products were like this in the 80s and 90s. The "all push button" radio of that era was spec'd out the way it was because of that goal.

Poppys• 4 years ago

I think this is more a problem of standarisation and if car companies got together and pitched in a bit of research to find out what worked well with users they could all get an interface (or a set of standards) that worked well for most users.

JonathanBeuys4• 4 years ago

Only as long as people still drive.

If we had to dial every number we want to call manually, physical buttons on phones would outperform touchscreens too. But nobody does that anymore. And it is nicer to select the name of a friend on a touchscreen than to type it with physical keys.

Same goes for cars. Humans spending their time keeping the car in lane, stopping at red lights, starting when the light turns green, doing turns etc will phase out more and more over the next 10, 20 years.

The interaction we still want to have with a car is probably nicer on a touchscreen. Especially when you are not dabbling with a steering wheel anymore.

Stuff like seeing the route on a map, selecting waypoints etc. We would not want physical keys for that when we are at home at our computer, right? I think dedicated keys are just legacy from the "I'm busy with the steering wheel and need to do other stuff blindly" area.

Much of it will probably also move to voice control.

brk5• 4 years ago

While I think your estimates for self-driving cars are aggressive, we have also had these touchscreens in cars for about a decade already.

IF we get to more autonomous driving, sure add in the touchscreens, but until then I think we may have started that trend about a generation too soon.

JonathanBeuys4• 4 years ago

Any quantifiable arguments that 10-20 years is aggressive?

Google started development 13 years ago and now already has fully autonomous taxis on the road in a 4 cities. If they double the number of cities every year, in 10 years they will be in over 4000 cities.

Tesla started around the same time. Looking at videos of tesla in self driving mode, my feeling is that without human interaction, it would crash maybe once every 50 hours of driving. Double that every year and in 10 years it will crash once every 50000 hours. A human driver, driving 1 hour a day, would need 136 years of crash free driving to achieve that. But the average driver has 4 accidents in their lifetime. So we are already in superhuman territory by then.

adhesive_wombat3• 4 years ago

And it is nicer to select the name of a friend on a touchscreen than to type it with physical keys.

It really isn't for me, it's much easier with the T9-style 3 letters per key on a physical keypad and then up/down on the steering wheel.

Some cars have a click wheel that lets you set letters one at a time, which also works well.

What doesn't work well at all is typing with one hand on a centre console touchscreen.

vel0city16• 4 years ago

I never thought I'd see some argue for the MacBook Wheel.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA

WickyNilliams2• 4 years ago

Voice control is not an improvement imo. An anecdote...

I wanted to make a call to my partner recently, whilst driving. I have an old car, with all physical controls. But my phone was in front of me with maps running. I said "OK Google.." and waited for it chime that it registered. "Call [my partner's name]", I commanded it. It responded that the name was unrecognised - even though it repeated the name back to me, so it wasn't a case of mishearing. I repeated this at least 5 times, getting increasingly frustrated.

Then eventually it started calling. Joy! But I notice it doesn't say my partners name on the screen, just a phone number. "OK", I think to myself, "perhaps this is some quirk of voice dialing, it doesn't show the name" (I don't know my partners number by heart so I could not recognise it).

It rang through to voicemail, and whilst the name given by the voicemail recording was correct it was definitely not my partner's voice. It turns out my phone had just dialled a random mobile number from the Internet that matched that name. It may have been a business, or a personal number, I'm not sure. Either way, I would never want this behavior!

I guess the point is that voice commands have terrible error handling and recovery modes. Give me physical controls any day. Even if they're slower, at least they are accurate, discoverable, and do not make guesses about intention

jcranmer2• 4 years ago

Perhaps when driving is no longer the main focus of the driver in the car, a touchscreen interface might make sense. Except that is not the case for any car on sale right now in any state of being (save for being parked and motionless). Yet there is still much eagerness to move everything to touchscreens right now...

bayindirh• 4 years ago

Blind operation of a car is a very important notion and existing research is pushed aside to cram screens into cars to make them hip and cool.

I have a 2002 Ford Focus, and I can use everything while still looking to the road. This is very important for my and everyone else's safety. Every other newer car I have driven needs much more attention to do simple tasks, and I'm traveling 80km/h at that point. This is dangerous.

I have read that Ford had a vehicle simulator to test cognitive loads of their consoles and dashboards during driving, but can't find the article now. Hope they're still using that, because new screens are a clear step back with no tactility.

michaelmior• 4 years ago

At least 10 years ago, there was talk of touch screens that could modify their surface to expose physical buttons. It's still not the same as physical controls, but it seems like it would be an improvement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv7OLP41nlM

dotancohen2• 4 years ago

That would be an improvement if one could actually rest their fingers on the tactical buttons without depressing them.

bjoli• 4 years ago

Is anyone surprised? On my current car I can do literally everything without looking. Everyone around me said I would get used to a touch screen quickly, but having driven a car with touch controls as much as I drive my personal car for about half a year I still cant even change the temperature or turn the butt warmer on.

gambiting2• 4 years ago

I have several friends who owned multiple Volkswagen products, and they all swear they won't buy them any more after trying the latest generation cars with their idiotic controls. It's literally a cancer on cars, that some idiotic marketing types are pushing because it looks "more modern". I just hope that the market pushes back on it hard enough that they are forced to revert some of those insane decisions.

synu• 4 years ago

Are they different than Audi? I bought a new S5 last year and a big part of the choice was that, while there is a touchscreen, all the basic important controls have duplicates on the steering wheel or center console. I never have to touch it while in motion.

pornel• 4 years ago

VW went for the worst of both worlds, and created physical buttons that don't respond to physical press, but are capacitative instead.

So you just don't know if it's receiving your inputs, there's no tactile feedback, and it's too easy to activate things by accident. Especially faux-buttons on the steering wheel activate if you just rest your hand on them.

piceas2• 4 years ago

I think vw messed up because in my opinion the buttons on their steering wheels are usually terrible.

In my experience I have more false touches on the capacitive versions but it balances out reasonably well by being able to swipe. Swiping is better than buttons or a scroll wheel for me.

H1Supreme• 4 years ago

There was a massive backlash towards the new (MK8) GTI because of this. I'm somewhat okay with the infotainment being all touch. But, the capacitive touch controls on the steering just goes over the line. I can't imagine a single person who prefers this.

magic_hamster• 4 years ago

H2O tastes like water, researchers conclude in new test.

donkeyd• 4 years ago

This is true for many things, but mostly the ones you use often while driving. Windscreen wipers, temperature, volume, yes. Much of that, however, can be done on the steering wheel already.

What annoys me is that many manufacturers are still adding as many buttons as possible as some form of luxury. Seat memory buttons in the door that you only use once per drive max, can easily be added to a screen (or smart, through key recognition). This adds a much larger number of options too. There are other options like this too that would be much better suited for screens than buttons.

I wish that, in stead of picking 'buttons or screens' as the options for cars, manufacturers will start looking at the best choice for specific functionality in stead of continuing how they are right now.

andrewla4• 4 years ago

Agree strongly. For things like vehicle status or configuration, the touchscreens are far superior to the old method of strange things like holding down the "unlock" button on the driver door for ten seconds and then pressing lock twice to enable flashing headlights when remote locking the car, or messing with the fuse panel for the same purposes.

Configuration settings like "always try bluetooth first for audio and just wait for it to connect instead of falling back to FM radio" are too subtle to be done by switches, and seat adjustments seem like another easy one where better UI would make a big difference.

At the same time, I think if it could be done securely [1] then having an app-based configuration would be much better; like configuring a consumer router or similar. You just use an app or a browser on your phone to make all the necessary static settings for your car, and the car then needs very little interactive UI.

[1] Although most likely it cannot be done securely. Cars are too mission-critical to move very far down the security/usability tradeoff curve.

titzer5• 4 years ago

I have nothing against an interface with menus, but nothing can beat physical buttons for input, IMHO. Put 4 pushbuttons down each side of a screen, have a set of hierarchical menu options that I can memorize, and that's the best of both worlds. Those buttons near the screen are fine to have overloaded functionality.

For critical things like all the normal vehicle functions, they should have dedicated controls that aren't overloaded.

Oh, and a big damn volume knob that shuts off the radio/entertainment system.

jen205• 4 years ago

Seat adjusters need to be available from the OUTSIDE, not from the screen… otherwise a tall person cannot physically get into the far to adjust the seat after a short person has been driving, unless they remember to reset it.

tzs2• 4 years ago

That's easy to fix. Just add a camera that looks at the person who is trying to get in, estimate their height and perhaps other things like their body shape and arm lengths from the image, and automatically adjust the seat. On the luxury models also add a weight sensor on the floor in front of the driver, and as they step in estimate their weight and adjust seat firmness.

I am of course joking, but sadly I would not be surprised if at least one manufacturer actually tried something like that if they decided to fix the problem of the previous driver not resetting the seat.

lttlrck• 4 years ago

Seats controls need to be accessible from outside the car, before it is started.

Key recognition is great, unless you took the wrong key, or swap drivers...

wistlo2• 4 years ago

My seat control is a physical button—a giant bar that allows me to slide the seat in less than a second. Or in the newer model, giant bar for horizontal and giant lever for vertical.

My in-laws' Jaguar has preprogrammed settings on the door, that take about 5 seconds to settle.

I chuckle every time I swap cars with my wife and savor the four seconds saved.

nebulous1• 4 years ago

Toughts on touch screens aside, I think they needed to include more than one button-only car if they wanted to title the article like that. Mostly they were just testing different touch screen cars against each other.

cbovis2• 4 years ago

Given some manufacturers are experimenting with subscription models on car features (see Mercedes with heated seats) I don't hold much hope the touch screen only controls will be disappearing any time soon.

Much simpler to remove something from a digital UI in a way that the consumer knows what's happened than it is to disable a physical button and leave the customer wondering why it no longer works.

soxocx• 4 years ago

Isn't it BMW with heated seats subs? Or are both doing it?

cbovis2• 4 years ago

Yeh that's my bad, I was getting them mixed up.

FeistySkink• 4 years ago

I love cars with physical controls like the amazing (IMHO) central console jog dial that naturally rests under your right hand (in left-side drive models) in some Audis that lack a touch screen. That and the option to physically hide the screen (it slides down) and enable a fully tactile driving. Coupled with Android Auto (which is great when it works, but pain when doesn't) is all I need from a car aux function control. Contrary, I can't deal with the likes of the latest Golfs (the ones with a nipple for a shifter) where even setting the seat heating is hidden away behind some menus, and the dashboard has views that have no driving information at all.

motoboi2• 4 years ago

yeah, you just need now a physical panel that morphs into several panels based on context, so users can interact with a media player, maps, settings.

Oh, and OTA updates to the buttons too, please.

jmyeet• 4 years ago

The problem with touch screens is that they're lazy design.

If you have to design an interface with physical buttons you need to fully design that interface because you can't easily or cheaply update it after you ship it. This is expensive. This is in addition to physical buttons themselves being expensive.

With a touch screen a UI change is just a software update. The net effect of this is you can be lazy about UI/UX development because hey you can always fix it later.

For cars in particular, physical buttons allow some use without looking at the display. Touch screens do not.

Phones went touch screen because of their limited size, so much so that on iPhones we even lost the home button (which I still miss). Actually the home button is a perfect example because the swipe up gesture is strictly worse. Example: which direction is "up"? It depends on orientation. Also some apps are only in, say, landscape orientation so "up" is actually "right" from the user's perspective.

Driving with a giant iPad is generally suboptimal.

heywire• 4 years ago

My wife’s car is a Hyundai Tucson, which is a touchscreen. Mine is a Mazda CX-5, which is a touchscreen, but one which is disabled when the car is in motion. Instead, the primary mode of input is a set of buttons and a wheel. I much prefer the buttons and wheel. I feel like I can safely navigate both the native and CarPlay UI with the wheel while my eyes remain on the road. In my wife’s car, I’m extending my arm and trying to counter movement from bumps in the road, while trying to tap small touch targets. That said, my wife isn’t a fan of the buttons and wheel in my car, so it might be more of a case of what we’re used to. But even then, if it is easy to get used to a mode of input that keeps your eyes on the road, I feel like that is a good thing.

mattgreenrocks• 4 years ago

The button/wheel combo in my CX-5 is fantastic. You can develop actual muscle memory for the most important tasks: switching to/from currently playing song, and switching to navigation guidance.

This mostly comes down to the fact that Mazda has buttons for those right alongside the wheel.

DoingIsLearning• 4 years ago

Task time is just one aspect of it.

Touchscreen interfaces give you a worse reaction time than drunk driving [0]

This alone should be reason enough to regulate infotainment into oblivion.

[0] https://trl.co.uk/publications/interacting-with-android-auto...

iambateman• 4 years ago

This is coming largely from Tesla-envy, and for them it made sense…

In 2016, They thought they were going to be pushing level 4 self-driving capability to their cars in 2021. As soon as a car has true self driving, a giant screen makes the most sense.

But now we are getting a bunch of cars which still require traditional steering and that’s obviously much worse.

Cthulhu_6• 4 years ago

And I think Tesla could get away with it, because to a point they were trying to be like Apple for cars, and Apple has reinvented some user interfaces very successfully - including touch screen interfaces in favor of physical buttons.

It can work. I remember so many people sticking with their Blackberry for so long because it had physical buttons. And to be honest, I'm still not comfortable with touch screen keyboards. However, I can see a lot of benefits in having a touch screen for text input; predictive text, language switching, character set switching, 3rd party keyboards to combine emoji into monstrosities (https://emoji.supply/kitchen/), etc.

The cost was ergonomics; the gain was dynamic options as described above.

Anyway, I think that's what Tesla was aiming for, I don't know if they or other car manufacturers have achieved it. I don't have experience with it myself, only drove a VW for a while that had a screen for the gauges so you could change the styling and get some sweet animations; I didn't mind that, it was workable enough, and allowed for more efficient use of available real estate.

master_crab• 4 years ago

Dynamic keyboards are great but the main reason physical keys lost out on phones was because the space trade off wasn’t worth the extra screen real estate afforded by virtual keyboards.

That’s not a problem with cars. Particularly American ones. “Acres” of dashboard to work with there.

neither_color• 4 years ago

I tried to be open-minded with Tesla but way too many features are in 2nd & 3rd level menus and it's just plain annoying. Their UI sucks

I need a sub menu to switch the headlights to parking lights

I need a sub menu to adjust the mirrors

I need a sub menu to open the glove box

Not knowing for sure if your car is locked when you get in or having to walk several feet away before it auto-locks is really bad if you live or stop in sketchy areas. Instead of a quick lock button you have to go into... you guessed it: sub menus. This may seem benign but let's say you walk out of your house a couple minutes before your passenger and you're waiting for them. When they get to the passenger door is it open or not? With a Tesla you don't really know until they try to open it. Now what if you're in a sketchy block and you just got in? You also don't know. There's no quick "lock all doors" button.

If you want to idle/wait in your car somewhere with everything off you have to go into sub menus and power the AC and headlights off one by one. It's not like an ICE car where you just flick the key back until only the radio is on.

I thought voice commands would redeem it:

"turn on parking lights"

"set lights to parking"

unknown command

It's worse than siri. Car UI designers need to understand that we are not online shoppers needing to be funneled into a single call to action. We are operating complex machinery in sometimes life-or-death situations - minimalism and machinery are a bad combination. Even if we achieve full self driving in 10 years we'll still be piloting our cars not just sitting in them waiting for the AI to guess what we want. We need instrument panels too.

zaroth• 4 years ago

You don’t have to go to a submenu to lock and unlock the car. Just tap the padlock status indicator. It will also tell you if the doors are locked or not. It’s right there in the top row!

The mirrors are automatic and set themselves for you as soon as you sit down based on the profile tied to your phone. Changing driver profiles is super slick in the Tesla and way easier than any other car.

I’ll take the glovebox being behind a second tap because I also get to put access to the glovebox behind a PIN.

rsynnott• 4 years ago

In 2016, They thought they were going to be pushing level 4 self-driving capability to their cars in 2021

I can't imagine anyone in Tesla _actually_ thought that.

trixie_6• 4 years ago

I do over 100 miles a day in a Tesla on autopilot. Touchscreen works fine.

leejo• 4 years ago

I've commented on touchscreens before[^1], but here's my latest anecdote: we finally got a replacement washing machine in the apartment (owner's choice, not ours). It's top loading and has a touchscreen and a spinny wheel for selecting the program. So it's a hodgepodge of physical, mechnical, electronic, and touch sensitive controls with a screen.

Except it's not a screen at all, the interface is entirely static and the function of each "button" is always the same; so really it's "touch sensitive buttons" with something masquerading as a screen. I don't understand why. They're annoying because they don't always register the touch, and sometimes over register so you go past the option (e.g. setting the timer or spin speed).

Then there's the start/pause/stop button, which is a mechanical switch/button that is also touch sensitive. It boggles the mind, we interact with this thing a couple of times a week - why does it need touch sensitive buttons rather than just being fully mechanical switches?

[^1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17448932

sdflhasjd• 4 years ago

To be fair, in this instance touch-sensitive buttons are more robust when it comes to leaks and spills.

My LG washer is the same (albeit frontloading) and its far easier to clean than the Miele my parents use.

kristaps• 4 years ago

To nobodies surprise.

ajross• 4 years ago

So folks are aware: this isn't research, this is a single test designed by Vi Bilägare, which is a Swedish auto industry magazine. And like the US auto industry rags (Car & Driver, Motor Trend) it's dependent for its revenue on advertising business from the industry being reviewed. And Tesla doesn't advertise.

delackner• 4 years ago

Indeed this "test" is laughable. "the drivers had time to get to know the cars and their infotainment systems" really though? Like an hour? Is it their personal car? "...By photographing the same driver in all cars..." How many drivers were involved and how long did they use their car?

A photo of the winning 2005 Volvo V70 shows it is a pure traditional all controls, zero screen interface. So only intentions that are possible in that era are testable. It is not feasible to have a button for every possible command today.

I've been driving Audis for several years, with their rotary dial interface, and it takes a maddening amount of time to do anything, so much that I often just give up and don't do whatever task I was trying to accomplish.

On a touchscreen, I can be driving along, then 1. take perhaps 0.1s to glance at the screen 2. while watching the road, move my hand to hover a finger where I think is the right place. 3. take another 0.1s glance where my finger is. If I was right, just tap and immediately look back at the road. 4. If I was wrong, while watching the road, adjust and repeat.

At no time am I ever looking away from the road for more than a fraction of a second, and since I don't have to think about finding where some "currently highlighted screen element cursor" is, my mind is relaxed to focus on driving, and each glance at the screen is just to look at EXACTLY what I know is the location of the feature I want to touch.

yonatron• 4 years ago

Duh!

einpoklum• 4 years ago

That's right!

And I want my bottom buttons on my smartphone, too. No, I don't need the extra ~50 pixels at the bottom for some video or game, damn it.

dotancohen2• 4 years ago

I love my Tesla model 3. It's the best car I've ever owned from a comfort standpoint, an economic standpoint, a cargo-space standpoint, and a performance standpoint. I do four hour road trips with the children regularly in it, no complaints.

But I can not stand the touch screen.

DrBazza2• 4 years ago

The number one thing you should be doing in a car is paying attention to the road, not glancing at a touch screen because there's zero tactile feedback.

And even worse, putting what would have been a physical button on an old dashboard, or car stereo, 2 levels down in a touchscreen menu. If we have to have touchscreens in cars, then at least put "the most used buttons" at the top-most level.

The current touchscreen-in-cars is a dangerous UX disaster.

Frankly, I'm surprised there hasn't been more accidents. Perhaps annual accidents statistics will increase as more cars get touchscreens.

trixie_6• 4 years ago

Looking at a touchscreen isn’t a big deal, people look down and around their cabin all the time while driving. People here sound like you have to be staring at the road without blinking to drive. In reality people are always looking around the cabin while driving for all sorts of reasons.

greyhair3• 4 years ago

Touch screens suck. My twenty year old son and I were just discussing this a couple days ago. He has been working part time as a valet to make some extra money, so he gets to drive a lot of different cars, just to park them, but has to interact with the transmissions, at the very least, and often has to turn off blaring sound systems (yeah, people drop their cars with the valet with the radios cranked.)

His daily driver is a 2012 Hyundai Elantra GLS. He also occasionally drives my 2007 Ford Fusion. Both have fairly logical physical controls.

He hates how non-intuitive the touch screen controls are, and how you physically have to look (even if briefly) at the screen to see what state it is in, and to find the buttons. You cannot just operate them by feel.

He also does not like electronic shifters. I have never driven a Mercedes, but he says the shifter on the newer Mercedes is frustratingly slow. You have to put you foot on the brake, tap the lever, then wait for the indicator to actually change.

What I find particularly frustrating on all this, I know that the knob driven climate controls are just inputs to a computer that is driving servo motors under the dash. There are no cables. But it is intuitive, it is tactile. I don't have to look to change the fan, or the temperature, or the vent configuration. Same with the radio. I know where the on/off and the volume is. I know where the AM/FM/CD buttons are. I know where the six preset buttons are. I can run the radio with out looking. And when I move the shift lever on the Elantra, it has a very distinctive 'gate' flow. It is easy to know what gear it is in without looking. Doubly true for the five speed manual in the Fusion.

So this change to glass panels is not for the consumer, it is for the manufacturer. It is for the designer. We have reached the age in electronics where the display is cheaper than physical controls. The manufacturers are trying to sell it as a 'feature'. It is not a feature, it is cheapness. It is crass.

fbanon2• 4 years ago

My 2010 Opel/Vauxhall Astra has tons of buttons/knobs, and I love it. I hope the next time I'll have to buy a car (in 3 years? 5 years?), the touchscreen fad will be over.

qikInNdOutReply• 4 years ago

At some point- optional physical buttons attached via magnets that transcribe the input to the touchscreen, will make a comeback.

spotlesstofu3• 4 years ago

The automotive industry is moving to self driving cars. Screens will be needed for entertainment and trip planning. You won't need simple physical buttons to quickly actuate while you're driving, since you won't be driving. The car will drive. You'll be a passenger like on a plane for most of the time.

I like physical buttons and dislike cars :)

masswerk3• 4 years ago

I don't believe the mantra. Not every road is in the US and there are more driving scenarios than highways. There's a long way to go until self driving cars will be able to master the tiny streets and complex (behavioral) patterns fond, say, in a medieval Italian town. And there is more to driving and the car as a product than just commute. Will BMW change the slogan from "aus Freude am Fahren" to "play Solitaire while being bored?" I think, manual driving will be always at least an option. And, if self driving really becomes a sorted thing, it's the manual driving option that will define a car as a product.

spotlesstofu3• 4 years ago

Cars are being banned from towns and city centres. You shouldn't listen to car slogans/commercials, they sell a reality that can't exist.

radiojasper• 4 years ago

My 2004 Fiat Stilo has dedicated buttons and no single touch screen. The "board computer" is a 5 "pages" menu that is able to adjust simple things like dashboard lighting and disable my door light, that's it. I never have to search for anything and, even more important, don't have to take my eyes off the road to adjust heating, radio, etc.

What's next? Touch screen gear shifting? Touch screen horn? It's dumb IMHO.

ryanbrunner4• 4 years ago

I think my (old, 2nd gen) Prius was a decent balance of physical controls and touchscreen controls. It does have a touchscreen integrated, but it's used primarily for display and very secondary functions. Most of what you need to do is controllable from the steering wheel or physical controls on the dash, it's only secondary things like adjusting the A/C (which isn't needed frequently since it auto-adjusts to temperature) and maps (which is clunky as hell but ideally is being manipulated when you're stationary.

throwaway0a5e2• 4 years ago

The best thing the prius does is put the display forward where your hands and steering wheel spokes can't obscure them. This is cancelled out by that godforsaken shifter that returns to the same position regardless of the gear it's in and is only one step above the stupid FCA knob.

aembleton• 4 years ago

You also have some A/C controls on the steering wheel, so rarely need to use the touchscreen.

coleca• 4 years ago

This article is spot on. I am not even a fan of how the manufacturers switched from sliders and knobs on the HVAC controls to up/down buttons with a digital temperature reading. Does it really matter if you set the heat to 78 or 79? Most people I venture would be happy with all the way low, all the way high, and the midpoint. It's so much quicker and less distracting to be able to turn a knob for temperature to your desired level without even taking your eyes off the road. Up/down arrows with a readout require you to look at the current reading, then press the correct button a number of times, sometimes 20+ times to get your desired setting.

devilbunny• 4 years ago

Even worse, those digital temp settings try to make your cabin that temperature. No, no, no. Let me pick the temperature of the air that blows out of the vents, and just keep on blowing at that temp. If I'm in the sun in my car, I'm going to need cool air (but not necessarily the coldest setting) blowing on me to avoid discomfort. But no; it's winter, and now my choices are either coldest setting or at least somewhat warm air. I'm in winter clothes; the sun is more than enough heat.

anothernewdude• 4 years ago

My eyes will be on the road. How am I meant to use a touchscreen?

walnutclosefarm2• 4 years ago

Touchscreens seem to me to be wrongheaded primarily because they inevitably end up with multiple screens and layouts that require "navigation" to perform a task. Every navigation action is a hand-eye-brain coordination problem to be solved. Moving common tasks to a touchscreen multiplies the cognitive and re-focus burdens very quickly, and sometimes by quite a lot. Environmental controls are a great example of this. I can turn down the heat on my Tacoma with at most a single glance at the dash, followed by a "muscle memory" action to turn a knob counterclockwise, with haptic feedback as to how far (one, two, three clicks). Put that on a slider on a touch screen and I may have two or three purely navigation steps to get to the right screen, and find the slider, and then a visually engaging task to move it. This is nuts, as the Swedish study shows.

beambot• 4 years ago

With my touchscreen, I can set the temperature controls to precisely 72F and never touch it again.

Perhaps I'm a counter narrative -- I find touchscreens vastly simpler than a bunch of old buttons: you have vastly superior configuration potential, connecting to other technology is easier, the few buttons you have make scrolling through options easy (eg steering wheel for audio & channel select), and the UIs are constantly improving via software updates. Yes, you lose some of the physical affordances, but the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

(Speaking specifically to Tesla Model-3.)

amluto• 4 years ago

That has nothing to do with this touchscreen issue. Any car with a decent thermostat works like that, going back to at least 1991 (the model year of the oldest car I recall with a decent thermostat). There are plenty of cheap cars today with physical, non-thermostat climate controls.

walnutclosefarm2• 4 years ago

ith my touchscreen, I can set the temperature controls to precisely 72F and never touch it again.

Sure. I can do the same. That doesn't eliminate the fact that I frequently do want to adjust the environment controls. And the temperature, was, of course, just an example. My argument goes for any common control operation that gets stuck onto a touch screen for the manufacturer's convenience.

hasbot• 4 years ago

I'll be needing a new car in a couple of years; I hope physical buttons are back in style by then.

civilized• 4 years ago

I'm refusing to buy any recent model car until an automaker defects from the horrible trend of touch screen hell.

cs702• 4 years ago

This strikes me as an unjustifiably harsh/absolutist conclusion based on a tiny sample. Reality is more complicated.

For some things (e.g., turning on blinkers, turning on a windshield wiper), a physical control may be the best choice.

For other things (e.g., scanning the map of an area, configuring trunk opening height), a touch screen may be the best choice.

And for yet other things (e.g., choosing a destination, finding a charging station), a voice command may be the best choice.

Finally, if we ever get fully-conversational self-driving cars at some point in the future, most physical controls may become unnecessary. For now, I'm OK having a modest number of physical controls for common everyday tasks and a touch-screen and voice commands for all other tasks.

riskable• 4 years ago

"Instead of developing, manufacturing and keeping physical buttons in stock for years to come, car manufacturers are keen on integrating more functions into a digital screen which can be updated over time."

That's lame. 3D printing buttons is a very quick and simple solution to that problem. They can even use my lasts-forever, contactless analog hall effect Void Switch design: https://github.com/riskable/void_switch

Keeping buttons--something that's so quick and easy to 3D print--in stock seems like a huge waste of storage space.

martythemaniak• 4 years ago

Love the controls in my Model 3. Whenever I see people complain about this, I always think "What is it that you're fiddling with your car so much that you need a shortcut button for everything?" because I don't fiddle with my car while driving, and little while parked.

Not surprisingly, this test is highly contrived and nonsensical. Let's review:

1. Activate the heated seat, increase temperature by two degrees, and start the defroster.
2. Power on the radio and adjust the station to a specific channel (Sweden’s Program 1).
3. Reset the trip computer.
4. Lower the instrument lighting to the lowest level and turn off the center display.

1. Seats, steering wheel, air are warmed by the app before I leave. Seats and air temp are set on auto and I rarely have to change them during a trip. defroster is a button on the bottom.

2. I click a button and say "Play <Blah> on Spotify". Sometimes I play stuff from my phone. Four years in, I have not yet used the radio.

3. Car has auto trips from last charge, last park as well as two manual ones. They are burried deep, in the menu. But why is anyone resetting trip counters while driving on the highway?

4. Ugh, it's set on auto brightness and I've never touched it after setting it up. Switches to dark mode on sunset as well.

Touchscreens are better because you don't need to fiddle with the cars they come with.

kipchak2• 4 years ago

Is this the case for all cars with touch screens or Teslas in particular? I've seen some pretty horrible touch screens in cars. For a recent example, the MK8 Golf GTI.

hebrox• 4 years ago

That's what I like about Tesla, it has buttons for stuff you'd expect (lights, cruise control, wipers, volume, media navigation, a/c) and touchscreen for something complex like navigation or for settings that aren't used frequently.

masswerk3• 4 years ago

Haven't they moved gear shifting to the touchscreen (with neutral in a submenu) on some models lately?

vel0city16• 4 years ago

A lot of these experiences focus on the driver's experience using the center console while the car is in motion. But, when the car is in motion, the driver really shouldn't be messing with the stereo or most anything else in the center console. Any controls the driver should need should be available on or immediately around the wheel, where the driver's hands and focus already are.

What about the experience when the car is not in motion, or by the passenger? Personally I like having a large touch screen when going through the media I'd like to play rather than a tiny screen far away. Same for going through the settings of the car. Same when planning out a route or even just entering a destination.

I have a car with a big touchscreen. I have a car with a ton of buttons and a small screen. I prefer the car with the big touchscreen, hands down. When stopped it's a much better experience as I'm almost exclusively using the screen. When driving, I'm practically never pressing any of the buttons on the dashboard. Meanwhile, the screen being much smaller makes the map and directions harder to see, just about the only thing I do bother to to care about on the center console while the car is in motion.

My car with a bunch of buttons has lots of buttons that practically never get pressed. That's such an immense waste of space on that dashboard.

https://arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tbt.s3.amazonaws.com/public...

You're telling me having a SETUP button is useful for driving? INFO? BLUELINK? Should I be using the PHONE button to scroll through my address book while driving? No! All of this is essentially a waste of space. I shouldn't be pressing most of these buttons while driving, so the argument of safety of a physical button is moot.

ARandumGuy• 4 years ago

Touchscreens work well for functionality that the driver shouldn't be touching while in motion. Stuff like adjusting settings or configuring bluetooth. And some car manufacturers do use their touchscreen primarily for these sort of tasks.

The issue is when car manufacturers put stuff you need modify while driving in their touchscreen. Stuff like climate controls, pausing music, or switching driving modes. Sometimes these controls have associated buttons on the steering wheel, but not always. This causes issues because it's harder to navigate touch interfaces by feel, which forces the driver to look down at the screen to make necessary changes.

vel0city16• 4 years ago

Stuff like climate controls, pausing music, or switching driving modes.

None of these things are things you need to be doing while actively driving.

devmor3• 4 years ago

I view my car as a tool for driving. You seem to view yours as an entertainment center. I think consumer preference sides with you, and thus manufacturers cater more to people with your line of thought, but I don't think your line of thought lines up with safety on the road.

When my car is not in motion, I don't care what's on the screen because I'm probably about to get out of it.

vel0city16• 4 years ago

When my car is not in motion, I don't care what's on the screen because I'm probably about to get out of it.

So do you just not stop at stop lights? When you enter your car, do you somehow manage to get it to engage into reverse without you being in it and you jump in it while its moving?

No?

I guess when you get to a stop light you shift into park and step out of the car then?

No?

Huh. I guess you probably do spend some amount of time with your car not actively in motion then.

I view my car as a tool for driving. You seem to view yours as an entertainment center.

If anything my comment is arguing the opposite. I'm arguing when you're in the driver's seat, and the car is in motion, the only thing you should be doing is driving. You shouldn't be fine tuning to a radio station or changing some other stereo setting. You shouldn't be adjusting the AC. You shouldn't be pressing that PHONE button or BLUELINK or INFO button or NAV button while you're driving the car. You shouldn't really be doing anything on the center console, at all. Both your hands should be on the wheel, and all your attention should be focused on the road ahead, the environment around outside the car, and how your car is currently moving.

So with that, it shouldn't matter what the center console is like, because the driver shouldn't be messing with the center console at all while driving. It might as well not even exist to the driver. That's my argument. I'm far more leaning towards your car being a tool for driving when you're in the driver's seat and the car is in motion than you probably are, as I imagine you'll probably say the driver should be adjusting the fine tuning of the radio, the driver should be changing how the AC is blowing, etc.

When I'm driving my car, if I can't do it from the steering wheel or the toggles immediately around the steering wheel or is manageable from the voice commands, I don't mess with it when my car is in motion. When I'm at the wheel and the car is in motion, my focus is on driving not playing around with dozens of buttons and knobs and wheels on the center console.

squaresmile2• 4 years ago

I agree. I think touch screen is a balance that should be designed thoughtfully rather than an all or nothing thing. My car isn't the best but I think it struck a good balance.

It has a 10" infotainment screen with physical climate control. I much prefer looking at google maps on a bigger compared to using a phone mount. It's easier to glance and get the direction, where I am, next turns with a bigger screen. The steering wheel has change tracks, change mode, volume which is all I ever need while driving and can be navigated by feel without looking at them. A bigger screen also allows for a bigger backup camera view and 360 view. The climate control has knobs to change the temperature which is perfect.

What about the experience when the car is not in motion, or by the passenger?

Yep, on the right seat, navigating the map with drag, pinch to zoom is intuitive. Using Android Auto/Carplay without a touchscreen or with a poor one is a miserable experience. My friends have always commented on the intuitive infotainment and thought about replacing the ones on their cars or looking at cars with the same infotainment.

vel0city16• 4 years ago

There's only one button I press for my climate control, AUTO. Everything else is just a waste of space to me. Auto climate controls with some decent low-emissive tint on my cars have been fine for over 20 years, and I live in a place that gets snow and >100F temperatures over the course of the year, at somewhat low latitude for the US so I get lots of long sunny days.

I do agree with the idea that not everything should be behind a screen. There's one button I miss on my car with mostly just a touchscreen. My many-buttoned car has a button to engage the 360 cameras while at a low speed even in drive. That's so useful for parking rather than waiting until I get close to something for the car to automatically show it.

But even then, theoretically that could easily be achieved without me needing to press a button. I'd love for there to just be a toggle to say "if I'm creeping and the radar senses I'm probably in a parking lot or garage, engage the cameras". It wouldn't be that hard for the car to tell that I'm going slow in a narrow space with lots of probably-car-like-things on the sensors and cameras.

alexb_2• 4 years ago

But, when the car is in motion, the driver really shouldn't be messing with the stereo or most anything else in the center console.

In a fantasy world where everyone follows every single rule, correct. In the real, actual world, I'm driving 70mph down the highway and want to skip this song without risking my life to do so.

vel0city16• 4 years ago

In every car I've owned for over 20 years skipping a song is something that can be done from the steering wheel. It would be a less safe choice for me to use the center console to change the track than just using the control on the wheel.

lazide6• 4 years ago

It is when you’re sitting at a light, or crawling at 2mph on the freeway and can keep an eye on traffic.

Do you really think it’s ridiculous to change the radio in those scenarios?

Most folks in California would literally never be able to do anything at all to their car otherwise.

vel0city16• 4 years ago

When I'm sitting at a light I'd prefer a large and easy to navigate interface to change what playlist I'm in or maybe change to the podcast app or something along those lines instead of a clickwheel. There's a reason why I don't have the MacBook Wheel.

When I'm sitting at a stop light and want to change the music, I prefer a big touchscreen versus a single-row seven segment display, several knobs, and a bunch of dials.

When I'm wanting to quickly type an address I prefer a QUERTY keyboard on a touchscreen than a list of letters alphabetically and a wheel to scroll and select them.

atoav• 4 years ago

No shit. This is why all the good professional gear in any field (think of 100 k€ cinema cameras or high price audio recording equipment) has physical switches on it. Having a 5 position turn switch that you can turn blindly (with a satisfying physical response) will always be better than a touch screen that you have to look at to figure out:

- is the touchscreen in the right context? (Sure you could make important controls the same independent of the submenu, tab, page etc, but you still have to hit the right button)

- did you actually hit the button?

april_222• 4 years ago

yes and the consequences of 'not hitting a button' on a car can be really bad

shafkathullah• 4 years ago

I see much parallel with this and MacBookPro touch-bar failure. Visual interaction need much attention, so switching from primary attention(Road/MacBookPro main display) seems to be a slow/tiring overhead.

djhworld• 4 years ago

I think my car has it right, it does have a touch screen but there are tactile buttons for the common ancilliary controls (air con, hazard lights, shortcuts to navigation, radio, settings) underneath.

To me it seems "why not both?" with proper thought to the UI is the right approach.

throwaway92921• 4 years ago

These results are so overwhelmingly obvious to anyone who drives. It makes no sense to have to use a screen for simple car features like A/C.

What screens make sense for are maps and safety features like showing your cars relation to the road, people, or other cars.

Hopefully this is a fad

rbanffy2• 4 years ago

I really liked the physicality of the Fiat Uno satellites - you could operate all the more important functions without moving your hands off the steering wheel.

https://i0.wp.com/blog.carlider.com.br/wp-content/uploads/20...

Buttons and instruments would vary depending on the model, of course, but the satellites were there for a long time before being replaced with more usual levers.

In a sense, it's a design reminiscent of the Citroën Karin concept:

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lkoNEToBeSo/YW2L9JqMzgI/AAAAAAAAg...

kelvin0• 4 years ago

No.Shit. So called infotainment systems have the most ridiculous UX/UI I've seen.

nakedrobot2• 4 years ago

Sorry but my only reaction to this can possibly be, "No Shit!"

cooperadymas• 4 years ago

Yes, but you can't show ads on physical buttons.

It's only a matter of time, folks.

intrasight• 4 years ago

"So in what way have these screens affected safety? Vi Bilägare gathered eleven modern cars from different manufacturers at an airfield och measured the time needed for a driver to perform different simple tasks, such as changing the radio station or adjusting the climate control. At the same time, the car was driven at 110 km/h (68 mph). We also invited an ”old-school” car without a touchscreen, a 17-year-old Volvo V70, for comparison."

"The easiest car to understand and operate, by a large margin, is the 2005 Volvo V70. The four tasks is handled within ten seconds flat, during which the car is driven 306 meters at 110 km/h."

That's my car (2004 actually) and it fits like the proverbial glove. I am pretty anxious about getting a new car. I may just get a newer V70 - like a 2015.

kk6mrp• 4 years ago

The other huge advantage to physical buttons is no blue light. I get too much already, and I really don't want to be seeing the glow of a screen in my car. If they came out with an eInk model, they might get me then. :D

UmYeahNo• 4 years ago

I drive a 2007 pre-touchscreen car, and have told the dealer every time I go in for service (yeah, yeah) that I will hold on to this car until the bitter end because it has physical buttons. I tell them "I can 'touch type' this car" i.e. I never need to take my eyes off the road in order make a critical adjustment.

I've driven a LOT of rental cars in the last 5 years, and the de-standardization of the interface elements -- even how to shift!, increasing distraction and eye-aversion has made the highway driving experience much worse - both as a driver and someone who has to share the roads with distracted people baffled by their cars.

nso2• 4 years ago

The shifting thing has not been standardized in a while. Stick shift, stick on steering wheel, even buttons on steering wheel in some cars. I agree with you tho.

Ichthypresbyter2• 4 years ago

Even within floor-mounted stick shifts there's a bunch of different layouts- reverse can be anywhere from up and left to down and right, and can have various different lockouts (push the stick down, pull up a ring...) or none. And then there are "dog-leg" shift patterns, where reverse is immediately above first (this means that the shift between second and third, which is the one most commonly needed in racing, is a simple straight movement)

The only legal standardization in the US is the PRND layout (and the direction of automatic column shifters). Before this was codified, in the 50s, some cars had PNDLR layouts which resulted in people accidentally selecting reverse while driving.

(There is also a requirement that the shift pattern of a manual car needs to be displayed somewhere visible to the driver, except if it's what is still, amusingly, called the "standard" 3-speed H pattern. The last passenger car available in the US with a 3-speed column shift was the 1979 Chevy Nova, though it hung around on trucks for another 8 or so years.)

spywaregorilla3• 4 years ago

I see comments like this and I don't really get it. What are you changing during your drives? What are those critical adjustments? I've got a touch screen, but I don't touch it while driving, and I'm not sure why I would. Aside from volume control but hopefully that's not on a touch screen.

nvr219• 4 years ago

Change radio stations, change A/C settings.

dangerlibrary• 4 years ago

If you live in less-than-temperate climates, adjusting the AC/heat is very common.

If you listen to the radio, switching stations is common (a not-safe-for-kids story comes on the news, a song you hate comes on, there are obnoxious commercial breaks).

slau• 4 years ago

Both AC controls and volume are on touch-sensitive buttons on the new VW entertainment systems. The volume bar/AC temperature buttons don't even light up at night, making it completely invisible under the bright touch screen.

Once in a while, the system locks up, and you can't change AC anymore (can't turn it on/off, can't change the intensity). You have to shut down the engine, walk away from the car (with the key) for more then 20-30 meters and then wait 10 minutes.

I love my Seat Leon for many reasons, but the lack of buttons is not one of them.

Ikatza• 4 years ago

Aircon, music volume and skipping songs, emergency blinkers, driving mode (suspension, etc)... These are some things that I could manage with a physical button and are now placed on a screen, forcing me to look since I don't have tactile feedback.

dmix5• 4 years ago

Yeah in my modern Civic I use Carplay touchscreen all the time. The only controls I need during driving are:

- volume

- change the song

- air conditioning

- signalling

- cruise control

All of those are on the steering wheel besides air conditioning which is still a dial.

For the touchscreen I open Spotify and then Waze and use voice commands to set a destination before I drive (which is pushing one button to toggle voice and one button to select the top result). I might ID a police car or hazard using Waze if I'm in slow traffic but usually my passenger does that. That's the only touch screen apps I use.

alistairSH2• 4 years ago

Things I regularly adjust... - seat heaters - HVAC temp/fan level - audio volume - audio track

Last two are via steering wheel controls on both our cars (BMW, Honda). But, on different sides of the wheel, so I frequently hit cruise control buttons when intending to hit volume.

First two are via physical buttons in both cars. However, buttons are located in very different locations, one uses dials and the other paddles. Also, the BMW has what I feel is a needlessly complicated fan control/temp system with a left/right split and also a chest vent temp setting that functions independently of what the HVAC panel displays, which means even in "auto" mode, there are manual settings that need tweaked (and this is all in a small 230i coupe - total overkill).

I can't imagine the mental load using a Tesla, where the seat heat control is burned 2-3 menus deep at the bottom edge of a touchscreen where the virtual buttons actually change function depending on what your doing. It's a UX mess and never should have been allowed.

fbanon2• 4 years ago

- Switch to internal air circulation if I'm stuck behind a diesel car

- Adjust temperature

- Turn off automatic high beams if it misbehaves and starts blinding oncoming traffic

- Switch suspension to comfort mode if bumpy road is ahead

- Turn on/off fog lights

baby• 4 years ago

The fan for when the windows get sorta wet. I always have trouble turning it on, even with buttons.

Also the AC and the recycled air.

throwaway9870• 4 years ago

I accidentally turned on manual shift while recently driving I am unfamiliar with. WTF. Didn't know how to turn it off and had to drive that way until I could safely pull over, put in park, and then back in drive. Bat-shit insane.

giaour• 4 years ago

What are you changing during your drives? What are those critical adjustments?

Lights, wipers, and cruise control are critical adjustments. I also often change A/C and audio settings because I can do it without looking (though it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I couldn’t mess with those while the car was in motion).

danparsonson• 4 years ago

Never been driving along on a wet day and had your windscreen suddenly fog up? This happened to me once in a car with unfamiliar controls and within moments I could barely see a thing, even making it difficult to pull over and sort it out. Those kinds of critical adjustments :-)

dr_orpheus2• 4 years ago

This is what they tested in the article:

1. Activate the heated seat, increase temperature by two degrees, and start the defroster.

2. Power on the radio and adjust the station to a specific channel (Sweden’s Program 1).

3. Reset the trip computer.

4. Lower the instrument lighting to the lowest level and turn off the center display.

mbar84• 4 years ago

It's not just the frequency of access, it's things that are time critical: Next song. Hazard lights. Lock doors. Accept call. Hang up call.

k2enemy• 4 years ago

Speaking of non-standard controls, it does seem that in the last ten years car designers have just plain forgotten long-standing conventions. It used to be that the fuel gauge would appear on the same side of the instrument cluster as the gas cap for refueling the car. Now it seems to be random. It makes it very frustrating with rental cars.

ziddoap• 4 years ago

Every car I've been in has a little arrow/triangle on the fuel gauge that points to either the left or right, wherever the fuel cap is.

I've never actually heard of (or noticed) the entire fuel gauge being on the respective side. Only ever noticed the arrow.

huffmsa• 4 years ago

The little arrow by the E is supposed to point to the fuel cap side.

E> means right <E means left

stewarts• 4 years ago

There is often an indicator on the gauge itself. The spout or an arrow will point to the side of the gas cap.

driverdan2• 4 years ago

There are still a lot of cars with physical buttons. My 2018 Camaro, for example, has physical buttons for all normal functions. I don't love that it has screens since they will be impossible to replace in 20 years but at least everything important will be usable.

tibbon• 4 years ago

I feel the same way! I have a 2005 Porsche Boxster, and it doesn't have a touch screen or junk like that. I can operate all controls without looking at them. People are shocked to find its 17 years old because it doesn't look dated like cars just a few years newer with bad TFT displays, slow touch screens, infotainment, etc. This car is the best driving experience I've ever had, and for less than a new Kia.

pdimitar• 4 years ago

Every time I see this format of a title:

"$EXTREMELY_OBVIOUS_THING that literally everyone outside the corporations knows, $STUDY_FINDS"

...I lose a little bit of hope for humanity.

Physical knobs, levers, buttons etc. have superior usability and the fact that car manufacturers deliberately closed their eyes on that is only saying bad things about them.

What's even more despairing is seeing comments arguing in favor: "it's cheaper". Yeah well, it's also cheaper to die on the road because you couldn't press the touch-screen control and not live 20-50 more years and pay those pesky bills and food now, is it? Both what they say and what I said are complete non-sequiturs.

What's "cheaper" might seem like an awesome idea to some manager looking for a promotion but they never play the long game. They'll be gone and another more sensible human will take their place... eventually. Any day now... Maybe this century?...

[starts crying]

WalterBright4• 4 years ago

I don't need no steenkin' test to know that's true. Nothing like a knob or switch with tactile feedback as to its function and setting.

dusted• 4 years ago

Water wetter than air, test finds

wikitopian• 4 years ago

It's disappointing to me that there's not a manufacturer leaning into a market for people who don't want big screens and spyware in their ride. In every thread, I see a lot of people who share my concerns, but they don't seem to manifest as an actual consumer class to be catered to.

https://twitter.com/jazz_inmypants/status/138178395638376038...

rahen• 4 years ago

Dacia does. The Spring and Sandero are hugely popular in Europe as no-frills cars.

globalise83• 4 years ago

Seconded. Their 3rd gen Sandero and new Jogger (basically Sandero Stepway estate version) are really great value for money, and have physical controls for almost everything important.

cheschire• 4 years ago

"Great news!" -James May

Joking aside, I wonder if it's a difference in much pride is tied to cars in USA vs Europe, or if there's the same amount of pride but just fewer predatory loan offerings allowed in Europe. Is it a legal limit, or just people unwilling to commit to 8 year loans?

I suspect if there were some government mandated limit of 5 years on car loans you would see no-frills cars take off like gangbusters in the USA as well.

jdvh4• 4 years ago

I got a Mazda for this reason. Physical buttons for everything and carplay for navigation+spotify. Best of both worlds. Infotainment has touch screen when stationary, but while driving it can only be operated by voice and console buttons/wheel.

robin_reala• 4 years ago

This is what I was going to reply with. Mazda’s viewpoint is that using touchscreens is dangerous while driving, so they specifically deactivate it above around 5mph. Surprisingly this works fine with Carplay: the navigation dial moves a focus outline through the various focusable elements of the screen, then a press to activate it.

Fine for me as the driver, absolutely infuriating for my partner as passenger.

fishywang3• 4 years ago

That's last gen. Current gen they removed touch altogether (not even when stationary), and since the screen is no longer touchable, it no longer needs to be within arm's reach, and they actually moved the screen to a better position closer to the driver's pov (it's upper, further, and slanted towards driver)

arthurofbabylon• 4 years ago

The layers of separation between stakeholder interests (what does the customer want?) and operating behavior (what gets built?) is fascinating.

In this case, I wonder what the story is. Ideas... - Feedback loops are very slow to close in auto design/manufacturing, widening the stakeholder-execution gap. - I have the impression that disconnected, unaccountable "futurists" lead auto design and obfuscate real human needs - Classically, there is a big gap between what people say they want and what they're actually willing to pay for

What else might be contributing factors?

natch• 4 years ago

People with a bias, working for publications that take massive advertising dollars from the auto industry, design biased tests and publish them, is one contributing factor.

But then consumers who imagined all sorts of problems with a system sit down and try the system in real life (not in a contrived test) and they find they surprisingly like it and it works very well.

dfxm12• 4 years ago

Cost - as others are pointing out, it costs a lot more (in time and money) to design a physical interface, and then you can't deliver updates if there is an error, so you gotta really take the time to test that everything works.

The other is that, when it comes down to it, consumers probably care more about other things, like price, MPG/range, exterior styling, brand loyalty, etc. This means that even if the car has a sub-optimal UX, customers will still buy it (because the positives outweigh the negatives).

LittleAnaconda• 4 years ago

There might just not be enough demand overall to justify creating lower tech versions of cars. Similar to how car enthusiasts tend to like manual cars. The economies of scale for companies just often isn’t there to create manual versions across multiple models of cars.

It should in be easier to create low tech versions of cars (no need to have an entirely different transmission) so perhaps this is a flimsy reason.

the_snooze• 4 years ago

I bought a 2020 Honda Civic hatchback a while back and found it reasonably designed. There's a small touchscreen for Apple/Android integration, but the car itself has no internet connectivity, and the center console has plenty of physical buttons and knobs to control sound and climate.

Honda said they're not too keen about touchscreen-mania [1], but that seems to have gone away in more recent model-years (at least based on what I saw displayed at a recent auto expo).

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/32797/long-live-buttons-hondas...

Pasorrijer3• 4 years ago

Just a note, this is because in the 2016-2017 Honda Civic Hatchback, they went all in and buried all the physical buttons and knobs for sound and climate in the touchscreen, and got major negative customer feedback to the point where they brought them back.

wistlo2• 4 years ago

Our 2009 Honda Fit has a gloriously button-face radio with a giant knob that's primarily for volume, but can serve a few other (and harder to access) functions. It's absolutely the easiest radio to use, kind of like a FIsher Price toy.

The Fit was redesigned with a touchscreen for 2015. ONe of the biggest owner complaints was lack of a a volume knob for the audio system. In 2018, Honda responded with a mid model change that added a knob. I have a 2018 with Android Auto, with a side array of fixed buttons (Home, Back, Menu) that have proved useful when underway and making split-second decisions (need to see map right now for instance).

The Fit's HVAC system is delightfully simple: Fan, Temp, and a mechanical lever for fresh/recirc. We would have liked dual zone controls and the dozen-speed fan control in higher models instead of just 4 speeds, but also I'm old enough to remember car air conditioners with 3 speeds (1964 Impala, for example). To me even the 4 speeds still seems like something of an upgrade.

Sadly the HR-V with its increased weight, cost, and height siphoned off sales from what was an already anemic sales performance for the poorly marketed Fit. It was dropped in the US in 2021. The Jazz (the moniker for the Fit in most places) continues to be available in sales territories when people still buy cars.

lastofthemojito2• 4 years ago

I don't think we can expect manufacturers to lean into this. They care about sales. It seems like regular folks are more impressed by whiz-bang, "wow, this new Bronco played a video of beautiful scenery on its HD screen when I got in" than, "hey, this car's button layout is just like my last couple of cars, there won't be any learning curve". The automakers know which trims and options have sold best and presumably they're competent at interpreting this data and catering to the whims of the market.

It may make more sense for regulators to get involved. "Include physical buttons for commonly-used controls" is a clear common-sense goal, although I'm not sure which things would qualify as commonly-used. And of course automakers could maliciously comply - maybe Tesla would bury tiny controls in the bottom of the center console or something and just keep focusing on touch-screen controls and minimalist dashboards.

briandear3• 4 years ago

Definitely don’t want government involved in car UI design. Imagine if government dictated that phones must have BlackBerry-style keyboards. Even the FAA doesn’t go that far. Speaking of aviation, avionics is where UI gets really good for the most part. The Garmin G1000 is nearly perfect in my opinion — powerful tech with great hardware controls that are easily to use when task saturated in difficult flying conditions. Car makers could learn a lot from Cirrus, Garmin, and Embraer.

freedomben5• 4 years ago

The automakers know which trims and options have sold best and presumably they're competent at interpreting this data and catering to the whims of the market.

Based on conversations I've had with people involved, I think presuming competence is too generous. The huge number of variables and gigantic bureaucracy involved is highly stifling to legitimate improvements and ends up making terrible decisions. They do try to make data-driven decisions, but they're quite incompetent at it. And, most of the decisions they do are to comply with regulations and protect their asses from lawyers. Much better (from their perspective) to have an enraging user experience for navigation than to have a person crash because they were plugging in an address while driving.

lallysingh• 4 years ago

http://ineosgrenadier.com/ is probably what you're looking for.

dailykoder• 4 years ago

I just want a "dumb", but good and kinda long-range EV.... (that's affordable somehow)

I don't need any big screen or surveillance things. I just want to drive, with a little music and that's it. Nothing more nothing less. Maybe navigation, but even that is not necessary. I have my phone, which works fine.

liotier• 4 years ago

A basic Bluetooth interface to the car amplifier and microphone, a sturdy tablet stand that takes multiple sizes... And that's it - cheap and future proofed.

... But no way to keep the commercial relationship going after the sale - huge downside, for the manufacturer !

WorldPeas• 4 years ago

i'd wanted a bollinger for so long for this reason. shame they were 125k and now only make industrial chassis

CountHackulus• 4 years ago

Kia Niro EV. It's basically just a car but with EV systems. I've owned one for 2 years now. The newer ones have slightly larger touchscreens for Android Auto/Apple Carplay but there's buttons for everything. The Hyundai Kona is basically the same thing but I don't have one to compare.

troyvit• 4 years ago

I'm hoping for two things, and I mean "hope," not "expect." The first hope is for the growth of aftermarket mods that electrify internal combustion cars.[1][2] They don't save you money right now but maybe costs will come down. They'll never be as slick as the OTS stuff.

The second is even more distant, and that is for the right to repair to extend to cars so that we can safely mod all the software that comes with a modern car. Then, at least if we don't want it we can turn it off.

One bright spot though is a massive growth in non-car transportation. I work by the window in a lower middle class neighborhood in a small town and I already see all kinds of cool e-bikes, scooters and hell-knows what whizzing by the house. No room for awful electronics on those, they're just wheels, motors, and helmets. Here in Colorado something like that would serve 80% of my transportation needs. Maybe renting a car for the other 20% becomes more of an option.

[1] https://www.electric-cars-are-for-girls.com/electric-car-con... [2] https://canev.com/

dotopotoro3• 4 years ago

Probably we are like linux users. In total, over whole globe, we make up quite a sizeable number, but in each geographic location we are still a rare breed (not enough to get the enough momentum).

darthcloud• 4 years ago

The thing I hate most in new car is clicking forever on the temperature button to get to the min or max degree setting. At time it's really distracting from the road. All I want is either maximum cold, maximum heat or off.

I miss the hold rotation knob so much.

speedgoose• 4 years ago

What a badly designed test though.

Why not testing the navigation system or the radio? I suspect they would not get the same results. Like who cares about changing the luminosity of the instrument system while driving?

atty• 4 years ago

Many of the top rated comments in here are kind of missing the point. “No touch screens” isn’t the optimal configuration. Instead, you want buttons on the dash or wheel for commonly used actions, and you want less common actions on a nice large touch screen that also functions as a good GPS screen. The touch screen, since it can have scrollable menus, gives significantly more customization opportunity than pure physical controls allow.

I’d also point out many of the things they asked the driver to do are things you wouldn’t normally be doing once you’re already driving, you’d do then before you started. A much more representative sample of things you’d do while driving would be something like “turn down volume, turn on windshield wipers”.

alexb_2• 4 years ago

The touch screen, since it can have scrollable menus, gives significantly more customization opportunity than pure physical controls allow.

You can do this while also having actual physical interfaces. You just have to put actual effort into making a design. Touchscreens are not the end-all-be-all of good design.

jollyllama• 4 years ago

Speak for yourself; I'd rather be able to leave the GPS at home when I want.

tinsmith• 4 years ago

What you described should be the industry ideal. I point to my 2017 Kia Niro as a good example of this. For the most part, it offers physical buttons for all common and "while driving" actions, leaving the touch screen to be an effective passive display for navigation. In fact, this is largely why I purchased the vehicle after test driving a few others that had much bigger touch screens, but less physical buttons. The Niro felt the most balanced.

Oddly (perhaps not?), I use this same thought process when shopping for smartphones. One or two physical buttons is not enough, especially with screens being prone to the same failures they were 10 years ago.

sbradford26• 4 years ago

So my wife owns a 2017 Kia Niro and I have a 2017 Hyundai Ioniq. The cars have the same drive train and the infotainment systems and controls are similar but there are small differences between the two of them. For one both cars have dials for controlling the temperature but my Ioniq has a dedicated display for the temperature while the Niro only has a display overlay that appears when you adjust it.

Just always thought it was odd to have a physical control for something but then relegate the display for that control to a pop up on the touch screen.

MaulingMonkey2• 4 years ago

“No touch screens” isn’t the optimal configuration

[citation needed]

Instead, you want buttons on the dash or wheel for commonly used actions,

Yes.

and you want less common actions on a nice large touch screen that also functions as a good GPS screen.

No, I don't want a whole second set of controls tossed willy nilly into an entirely different physical interface as a second-class afterthought because the designers were too lazy to figure out how to do it properly with physical controls. Consoles like the XB1 and PS4 have been doing fine building gamepad-driven user interfaces with a relatively limited number of physical inputs, no touchscreens required. Yes, including such things as scrollable menus. And given the disappointing nature of bespoke car GPSes (my current one can't even handle my home address!) I'd honestly prefer a proper phone dock replacing that touch screen, and allowing my car's manufacturer to focus on their core competencies, and allowing me a modular choice for handling what the car lacks.

[...] gives significantly more customization opportunity than pure physical controls allow.

A power which is used for evil far more than it's used for good. "Customizable" and "bespoke and standardsless" are synonymous here. The limitations and constraints of physical controls are a wonderful forcing function that made for more consistent, tactile interfaces, that will inevitably be skipped over for some gauche touchscreen based vomit whenever there's an opportunity to do so.

vsdlrd2• 4 years ago

I'd honestly prefer a proper phone dock replacing that touch screen

So you are not against touch screens, but against poorly designed touch interfaces

systemvoltage2• 4 years ago

> “No touch screens” isn’t the optimal configuration
[citation needed]

Yeah, citation isn't going to convince me. Touchscreens are still shit. Data can be tortured into submission depending on how and what metrics we look at. To be fully thorough is hard.

jehlakj• 4 years ago

Does "turn down volume" work when you're playing loud music or have the windows down driving on a windy/noisy road?

karaterobot• 4 years ago

The touch screen, since it can have scrollable menus, gives significantly more customization opportunity than pure physical controls allow.

I do want a screen for GPS navigation, and for the backup camera, but I don't need it to be touchable at all. I'd rather have fewer features that need customization than add a whole system that allows me to customize those features.

LtWorf3• 4 years ago

The screen should also be matte. The glossy screens which point the sun at my face when the sun is behind aren't so good.

cush• 4 years ago

If the only way to access the extra "less common" features is via touch, then it's a fail. Mazda has lots of menu options, and you can access it all via their click wheel. It's a great UI, and if you like touching, you can touch the screen too.

abap_rocky• 4 years ago

My favorite thing about the touchscreen on the used car I bought 2 years ago is how the lower third of the screen no longer accepts any input. Given that many important buttons and options are only present on this region of the screen, I'm essentially locked out of using them. To this day I've never been able to configure Bluetooth.

major505• 4 years ago

I cloud had saved some money and told them this from beginning. Driving around is hard enough. You need some tactile feedback when you press something in the car.

robg2• 4 years ago

This finding has been known for decades. There used to be heads up displays with info projected on the windshield. Seems futuristic and compelling. Until you investigate how long people look away from the road to focus on the display. The brains in us meat bags are embodied from birth, baked into our how we think and act with precision. Driving is a risky proposition, milliseconds lost can be deadly.

butterfi• 4 years ago

Anyone with a touchscreen on their stove can tell you physical buttons are superior

eimrine• 4 years ago

Yes and no if you need/want to clean them somehow

danielvaughn• 4 years ago

It's usually bad form to claim that you had some special insight prior to anyone else, but this should have been obvious to everyone from the start. How such a terrible idea made it through various teams of experts at these large car companies, I'll never understand.

hoffspot• 4 years ago

In my car, there are physical buttons on the steering wheel. A left and right button with a scroll wheel in between on each side. Those buttons change context depending on what you're doing. Left side is usually audio controls and the right side does a few different things but I mostly use it for adjusting the adaptive cruise control. I find no other need for buttons all over the place. Climate is set to auto, most everything else used for driving is on the stalks. I don't understand this great need for lots of buttons. Just have a few useful physical buttons and controls.

robg2• 4 years ago

Part of the problem is the car industry operates in 10 year product horizons, given costs to amortization and legacy systems. I consulted at a 2012 LA autoshow workshop led by a major vendor of in-car systems and equipment (Faurecia). The default assumption for two days was in 10 years (this year!) we’d have self-driving vehicles for most of our in-car experiences. So design that cabin. These screens and legacies are part of that false belief from 10 years ago. Tesla’s “success” has only helped fuel the assumption. If you got that assignment this year for the year 2032, what would your in-car experience look like? It’s a really hard problem to build big, costly, deadly consumer products into. Knobs and buttons still seem preferable cause they just work and work well for 10 years or more.

reader_x• 4 years ago

Re:long term costs for maintenance, seems like there should be a secondary market for 3D-printing replacement knobs, buttons, and related parts. No inventory needed. Especially if the knob designers had that in mind at the outset.

chestervonwinch2• 4 years ago

I would love what you describe. Producers would have to design and manufacture like this from the outset (like you said) but also open source their CAD files.

There's already a market for these things. But the prices are often crazy high because the supply is limited to the parts that people are able to get from scrapped vehicles. For example, see this $200 plastic radio bezel for a 1995 Toyota: https://www.ebay.com/itm/264805497008

ho_schi• 4 years ago

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur...

Mazda learned it already and prefers HUDs. Tactile interfaces (buttons, wheels, keyboards...) perform generally better when well arranged. Mercedes did a good job about that thirty years ago. Logical layout, one button one task, LEDs within a button representing the status and the buttons arranged in the layout of the seat.

I wonder how a complete industry just assumed that touchscreens are somewhat better just because their widespread in smartphones. Smartphone are small devices, require visual attention, every app is different and distracts the users, touchscreens are cheap and - therefore working on them is slow. Apple and Lenovo tried both the add a "TouchBar" but the tacticle keyboard has proven to be better. Apple tried also a touch area in Apple Remote, the current one is back to tactile buttons ;)

gnrlst• 4 years ago

As a Mazda owner, I can confirm the general layout and philosophy was a key reason for me to choose it over others - couldn't be happier. It's not a perfect car, but damn it's got super intuitive controls.

snarfy2• 4 years ago

Now if they could only figure out their electric vehicles. I've been looking to buy an electric. I love my Mazda but 100 mile range is a non-starter.

para_parolu• 4 years ago

Mazda controls layout is one of the main reasons I chose their cars.

SN76477• 4 years ago

I wonder how a complete industry just assumed that touchscreens are somewhat better

We as people have learned to trust technology... I miss the times when we were more skeptical about it.

joebob42• 4 years ago

Frankly in my experience the literal opposite is true. I and the people around me trust technology less and less with time.

duped2• 4 years ago

If only Mazda sold hybrids (barring the new EV and plugin hybrid which you can't buy). They really screwed up being late to the game.

altairprime• 4 years ago

I wonder how a complete industry just assumed that touchscreens are somewhat better

They didn’t assume that they’re better for drivers, only for themselves. Touchscreens are considerably better for manufacturers, and their severe usability issues in a moving vehicle were until recently “unproven” and therefore could be disregarded with plausible deniability.

It would be very revealing for automotive reporters to ask car manufacturers what their views of the safety of a touchscreen are compared to physical buttons.

fckgw• 4 years ago

I wonder how a complete industry just assumed that touchscreens are somewhat better just because their widespread in smartphones.

When the requirement for backup cameras mandated a screen in the car the automakers responded by utilizing that screen for other functionality.

There was a set time for when screens were going to end up in cars which is why they all seemed to do it at the same time.

thereddaikon• 4 years ago

Ask how the US Navy thought touchscreens were a good idea for steering warships? Sometimes people don't think decisions through and just got with the bling and institutional momentum makes it hard to change.

Mercedes old layout way great and a good example of a well thought out analog interface.

dotopotoro3• 4 years ago

For ship, there is probable benefit (tradeoff) of making backup bridge easy - theoretically just a bunch of tablets.

lolinder• 4 years ago

"Fast" for a warship is 50 mph, they're in theory piloted by a few well-trained sailors, and they're doing that mostly on the open ocean with very few obstacles. In retrospect touch screens were still a bad idea, but they're less glaringly so in that context than in the millions of consumer vehicles being driven by largely untrained citizens at 80 mph in thick traffic.

gregw134• 4 years ago

I've got a 2017 Miata with absolutely no screens at all, which I love. There's a law now requiring all cars to have backup monitors, so I plan on keeping this car for another 30 years.

orev• 4 years ago

A backup camera/monitor is a game changer, so not really the best place to draw the line. I think you’re probably more concerned with them also using the monitor to do other things.

tim333• 4 years ago

I recently sold my 31 year old Miata and they last well.

grelek• 4 years ago

Can confirm. Mazda got it right and it's so easy to use. I only have to move my arm a little to reach the main control button and after a few days/weeks of driving the car you mostly memorize the common stuff you do or you can really quickly peek at the screen and focus on the driving.

Hardware buttons are the way to go, always. The most basic and common tasks apart from driving should be doable without taking eyes of the road (volume, AC, rolling windows, ...).

bonestamp2• 4 years ago

In 2012, Cadillac went to a touchscreen in their vehicles. They too have come back to regular buttons too. What looks nice isn't always what is the most safe while operating a vehicle.

rootcage• 4 years ago

Mazda makes cars that are aimed at maximizing performance/comfort/usability/etc for the driver and nobody else in the car.

With this in mind it makes sense to not have a touch screen, but what happens when the front seat passenger is controlling the music? It's not a great setup if you tend to have multiple people in your car often.

If most of the time you're a solo driver (perhaps like Uber?) then Mazda's focus on building everything with driver in mind makes sense.

antifa• 4 years ago

I'm surprised so many people are praising Mazda's physical buttons when my Mazda doesn't have a physical play/pause button...

LanceH• 4 years ago

I can't believe some of the choices they make with touchscreen. Some screens in my car have tiles -- large squares where 8 of them fit on the screen -- which are easy to press. Then there is the phone number listing for dialing, which is are line items which only fit 4 or 5 per page, they are wide, but short. So if you're driving and the road isn't completely smooth, it's very difficult to press the correct line, and requires a lot more attention on the screen.

dbg31415• 4 years ago

It's two things...

Buttons are easier to find without looking. Nice tactile "you pressed it" feedback instantly.

And the fact that all of the cars have such horrible touchscreen UI design. We're used to Apple and Android, and what the cars have is so crappy. And it's always those junky feeling plastic screens. Like how is it they don't just hire Samsung or any tablet maker to build something nice and then hire good designers to just blatantly rip off Apple?

Honda seems about as good as any I've used. I was in a Ford the other day... it was horrible. Just unusable. I couldn't find how to turn the radio on. It was tucked away under "input" and it took me literally 5 taps to get from power off to music playing. And forget trying to tune the damn thing, I had to pull the car over before I realized those buttons were on the steering wheel.

Cars used to be really standard. You could hop into any car and you knew the radio was in the center console. And the lights were on the left (or right if you're foreign), but the brights turned on the same way in all cars. It's just the wild west right now. The designs aren't just non-standard, they're really bad. The tech the cars are using is really bad.

polynomial• 4 years ago

I'm not sure this was ever in question, but it's good to see supporting research. The problem would seem to be economic in that the market seems to be going in the latter direction. (As wikitopian points out, there's a lack of manufacturers offering non spy-screen based dashboards.)

minutillo2• 4 years ago

There's another reason why touchscreens are used. It breaks up one of the "long poles" in the project schedule.

Hardware buttons and switches have to be designed, tested, re-designed, and validated very early in the process of designing a new model so that there is time to figure out how to manufacture / source all the parts, how they integrate with the rest of the car's systems, and how they'll be wired and assembled. Just imagine what the impact would be if late in the process a new feature needs to be added! Pretty much forget about it, add it in the next major model refresh.

With a touchscreen all those dependencies go away. The hardware team just says "there's going to be an iPad sized capacitive touch screen here for climate/infotainment, and another custom sized display here for the instrument cluster". The software guys can independently do the design of the UI, changing things down to the very last moment, or even after the last moment if the car can be updated.

ISL• 4 years ago

It is almost as if there is a market for a touchscreen that can reconfigure itself to present arbitrary tactile physical buttons.....

comicjk• 4 years ago

As long as the design team has the discipline to freeze the button layout for any given car, so the driver doesn't have to deal with moving or disappearing buttons.

incrudible2• 4 years ago

No, the problem is that a car interface isn't supposed to reconfigure itself. You're supposed to be able to learn to use it blindly.

Designers need to be able to make decisions and stick to them. If they can't do that, it means they suck at their job.

trey-jones• 4 years ago

Because this paradigm has been working so well for the software industry. Physical buttons being better (and safer!) for a driver is so obvious it's almost not even worth testing. No science required!

falcolas3• 4 years ago

Cost and driver safety are orthoganal. You can't increase driver safety without increasing the cost. And given how we treat companies which don't grow their profits yearly, it's (sadly) an unsurprising output.

packetlost2• 4 years ago

I've long had the belief that a handful of multi-function buttons below a touch-screen headunit or something would be ideal. Give me physical buttons and a very clear and easy way to tell what "mode" they're in (and switch it if necessary). As long as you don't have too many functions and have glance-able labeling (perhaps with small OLEDs on the buttons themselves) you'll get the best of both worlds

edit: hire me VW, I'll fix your awful infotainment lol

unwiredben• 4 years ago

Effectively an ATM-style interface?

khy• 4 years ago

I had a car that had a single physical input: a dial that you could press. The dial would move the focus around the screen, and you'd press the dial to click. This was, in my opinion, a far superior experience than regular touch screens, and it probably doesn't suffer from the problem you're describing.

Tagbert• 4 years ago

No but it converts the action into a multi-step process. A button is a single-step process. Multi-step is fine for infrequent configuration-type actions that happen when you are not actively driving but are a distraction while driving.

dmead• 4 years ago

cars that support android auto try to do this. theres a button on the steering wheel that turns on the voice assistant like a phone. you can do a lot an definitely not take your eyes off the road.

someguy5344523• 4 years ago

Really? That sounds like the worst of both worlds to me; you still have to look at the screen to see what you're selecting, but you also can't just click the thing you want directly.

SomeBoolshit• 4 years ago

For use cases where you don't want to look away from the main task you're performing, it's definitely better than a regular touchscreen.

You don't have to aim your finger at anything, you just have to scroll and check whether you're there, yet.

And you'll start remembering how many notches you have to scroll to reach the functions you need, becoming less dependent on the screen at all.

The difficulty is in balancing the number and arrangement of submenus and the buttons/menu entries triggering whatever function, although the same issue exists with regular touchscreens.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 4 years ago

The dial would move the focus around the screen

That sounds dangerous. It's basically the interface that AppleTV uses.

I find it extremely confusing, as I frequently select the wrong item (and I have been using AppleTVs for years).

Also, it's no fun to program.

ricardobeat• 4 years ago

The BMW i* line is like this, and although it works alright, it's a terribly clunky experience when you're actually driving, even more distracting than a touchscreen.

banannaise• 4 years ago

Audi used this through around 2018. It's wonderful. Absolutely superior to a touchscreen. It's very hard to precisely touch a screen at the distance and angle typical of a car touchscreen (and even harder if you're actually driving the car). Wheel-and-button means more scrolling through options, but zero accidental inputs, and you don't need to focus on the precision of your inputs.

It's a bad interface for everything but a car screen, and an unquestionably superior one for a car screen.

bluedays• 4 years ago

I had an ipod once.

mLuby• 4 years ago

That makes sense.

Do aftermarket physical panels exist for consumers to replace their touch dashboard with physical buttons linked to the same functionality? That'd sidestep the long pole issue and give drivers the ability to customize their cars.

If they don't, I imagine the Devil's in the "linked to the same functionality" details. It could be that carmakers make doing this legally or technically impossible or maybe just that there isn't demand for aftermarket adaptor software.

dublin5• 4 years ago

No, we lost what little ability we had to do that when manufacturers abandoned the globally used single and double DIN radios for tightly coupled and proprietary systems tied to each individual car. NOTHING on current cars control and "infotainment" systems is upgradeable or changeable by the buyer anymore.

Oh, and a reminder: Stand for freedom and NEVER buy a car that has a data connection (Internet or private radio) back to the manufacturer. I want my car talking to its manufacturer (and by invisible proxy, the big ad tech corps, governments, and insurance companies) exactly never.

dr_orpheus2• 4 years ago

Yes, but a lot of car manufacturers got around this by making a relatively common control suite for all of their cars. There are car-specific items, and luxury versions of a brand tended to change it up from the standard, but most manufacturers seemed to have an identical set of buttons/knobs for climate control in each of their cars.

katbyte2• 4 years ago

I am pretty sure my 2022 tacoma has the exact same clutch start cancel button as my 1998 4Runner did. But then that’s a very Toyota thing to do.

logifail• 4 years ago

Yes, but a lot of car manufacturers got around this by making a relatively common control suite for all of their cars. There are car-specific items, and luxury versions of a brand tended to change it up from the standard, but most manufacturers seemed to have an identical set of buttons/knobs for climate control in each of their cars.

I drive in rental cars quite often and it's always a huge relief when I'm at the desk to pick up a vehicle and they hand me a key for either an Audi or a VW.

Before even I've even seen the vehicle, I know I'll be able to use the controls in it.

incrudible2• 4 years ago

I get it, but how much more crap must you pack into the interface of a car, to the point where you can't decide ahead of time, like with all of the other physical components? This is lazy design and the results are terrible. Is this really what people want, or what the car design echo chamber believes people must want, because Tesla is somewhat successful with it?

potamic2• 4 years ago

The obvious solution is to use a touchscreen with cheap plastic buttons that sit on the touchscreen and emulate touch.

titzer5• 4 years ago

The solution to that is simple. Put four/five physical buttons down each side of the screen, maybe along the bottom too, and then you can make everything still programmable in software. I have no idea why you absolutely need to put buttons in the middle of the screen to be touched. It's one thing to put items or whatever that can be selected, or allow pinch/zoom, but in reality almost all interaction just boils down to picking between a limited set of options at any given time.

With a decent response time and hierarchical menus, it's easy to make a system that is navigable without looking. Throw in some (hopefully non-annoying) audio feedback, and it is extremely accessible--even by a blind passenger! In fact, that's a good benchmark. If a blind passenger could operate the thing, then the driver should be able to as well.

Angostura• 4 years ago

Put physical buttons and knobs on and allow configuration of the image displayed on the button - like programmable keyboards.

jlkuester7• 4 years ago

This. %100 this. The airline industry figured this out years ago with some of the cockpit controls. (admittedly there are a lot of other buttons and switches for the pilot to worry about too, but it seems like the digital display panels always are flanked by rows of buttons which were used for interacting with the panel. Works great even with gloves on and does not lock you into a single feature set.

fridek• 4 years ago

FWIW this is what Audi's MMI does. (Or used to do? My car is old.)

The control panel has:

* 6-8 buttons for switching between different MMI modes, labeled

* 4 universal buttons, function contextual to the current screen

* 1 return button

* Turn/press controller

I can navigate 90% of the menus blindfolded. Despite my older MMI not being a marvel of UX, I can access functions 5 actions deep, while driving, from pure muscle memory.

Findecanor• 4 years ago

BTW, what you are describing has a name: "Soft keys", and had first been developed for use in air plane cockpits. (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_key>)

tablespoon4• 4 years ago

The solution to that is simple. Put four/five physical buttons down each side of the screen, maybe along the bottom too, and then you can make everything still programmable in software.

This, though functions like climate control, audio, and anything needed to operate the car while in motion should still have dedicated buttons. Touchscreens in cars are an abomination.

I have no idea why you absolutely need to put buttons in the middle of the screen to be touched.

They don't need to, they're just following the touchscreen all the things UX fad. Turns out capacitive touchscreens were a great fit for cell phones, but that doesn't mean they have a place anywhere else.

LordKano• 4 years ago

I think that manufacturers are too busy trying to be the Steve Jobs of cars.

They're thinking about making their vehicles look differently than everyone else's instead of thinking about what would work the best?

snowbrook• 4 years ago

Just like every gasoline pump I've used in the last decade.

andrewla4• 4 years ago

General-purpose buttons whose action changes with context are just as bad as touchscreens. The whole point of tactile interfaces is that the buttons and controls have a consistent action regardless of context. A button that sometimes does one thing and sometimes does another depending on what is on the screen is no better than a touchscreen, since it requires active attention to operate.

kbenson• 4 years ago

A central rotating knob or directional jiystick that can be pressed is also fairly intuitive. I fortunately they've futzed that one up often too by making it rotate and a directional pad (such as in Honda Odysseys, at least circa 2017), where you can rotate and also tilt the knob left or right, and I can never remember whether a particular menu section wants one or the other to change selections.

To the automakers, when two controls have overlapping things they're good at doing, maybe pick the one that fits best and just include that, but at a bare minimum make sure they are always used consistently and clearly, please.

mywacaday2• 4 years ago

Audi have had this for years, dial with four buttons around it down by the handbreak so you don't have to reach up. Also some industrial pick and place machines work this way, I used to operate them over 20 years ago and the speed you could navigate through the screens once you built a bit of muscle memory beats any touch screen.

macspoofing2• 4 years ago

The solution to that is simple. Put four/five physical buttons down each side of the screen, maybe along the bottom too

Absolutely. It's why smart-phones and tablets (the ultimate 'touch' devices) still put some physical buttons (power, volume control).

A well designed UI, complemented with physical input (buttons or knobs) is best.

mfer• 4 years ago

With a decent response time and hierarchical menus, it's easy to make a system that is navigable without looking.

There is a difference between working with a touch screen where you can focus on it and using a touch screen where you need to focus elsewhere (like the road). There is also a difference between something like a plane where you have a great distance from other moving objects most of the time and a car where you are regularly around other cars.

My wife has a slightly older car with no touchscreen. We can operate it by feel. Without ever needing to take our eyes or focus off the wheel. My car has a touch screen. I can't operate that by feel. Constant glances are required.

These are different experiences. Looking at the situational environment is important when creating a good user experience.

I wish I could buy a car with more physical buttons. Would make the whole car driving experience more usable with me as a less distracted driver.

mbjorkegren• 4 years ago

Encoders are great for this too. Music hardware often uses mappable encoders with LED rings to indicate the current value, and/or with the screen showing what the encoder is controlling.

https://www.ableton.com/en/products/controllers/apc40mkii/tr...

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/keyb...

kawfey• 4 years ago

They really should.

Even commercial and fighter aircraft -- which have human-interface requirements of incredible depth and complexity -- are transitioning to large touchscreen displays. ALL of which require physical boundary buttons and knobs as a redundancy for touchscreen controls.

In fact, controlling the screens via buttons are the preference for many pilots since accurately fiddling with touchscreens during turbulence, pulling Gs, evading missiles, while being task-saturated etc is very hard to do, but doing the same with physical buttons is far more reliable. Button-pushing tasks can be performed from memory in the blind (or while not looking) (a.k.a. "memory items").

There's always been a dichotomy in human-machine interfaces between airplane customers (airlines, charters, governments, and militaries) vs. their own pilots. Airplane builders have to keep up appearances and look cool by putting in putting in flashy, futuristic features like big screens and AI, and ditching old button-laden displays and the "old way of doing things." It too often disregards the needs and wants of pilots and "human factors" engineers. Fortunately, safety comes first, so the buttons and redundancy must stay.

_nalply• 4 years ago

even by a blind passenger

but not by a deaf driver

ChikkaChiChi• 4 years ago

Is there a standard for this or any defaults in an OS for this? In the past, I've been monumentally frustrated by the inability to bind inputs to non standard keys.

I've tried building out several projects like this, and using HID keyboard as standard, you are relegated to ANSI keystrokes or combos that a user/os wouldn't need, or third party drivers that come with their own headaches. Another option is a video game controller.

I never understood why we can have a billion emojis but adding some additional unused input mappings is a bridge too far.

Kye• 4 years ago

More to the point: the missing physical buttons that really grind people's gears are gimmes. You need some way to control the heating and air. Some way to control audio. Some way to control safety stuff like wipers and signals. These have been around as long as the things they control. Decades! It is known. This is the way.

Give those physical buttons and 99.999% of complaints vaporize, and people are happy. Apply your idea for stuff that's up in the air. Boom. Done.

cjohnson318• 4 years ago

Absolutely. I have a 2016 Outback with a touchscreen that I can't see in sunlight about 90% of the time. I can, however, see the smudge on the screen where I press play for audiobooks. (Plugging a phone in pauses the audiobook.)

I'd love more physical buttons because, and this may come as a shock, usually when I need to use these darn things, I'm driving.

djaychela• 4 years ago

Exactly. Back in the hardware days of music technology, I had an Akai S2000 Sampler. I could navigate the most commonly used functions by touch alone, using actual buttons - even with complex menus.

With simple menus (or a custom setup of your own), the common things could be on buttons, instead of taking your concentration off the road.

pavon3• 4 years ago

That's not a panacea. My Honda CRV has buttons along the side of the screen, and after seven years of owning it, I still have to look at the screen to do anything.

mnot• 4 years ago

Like the Apple Touch Bar.

The problem is that it’s contextual, so you still have to look to it you can trust that a hardwired button won’t change purpose; that’s the important property here.

thwarted• 4 years ago

Another solution is to not make every make and model have a completely custom dashboard interface. The physical interface for turn signals is completely standardized. The physical interface for windshield wipers is about 95% standardized (I wish we would finally decide on if the short bar or the long long bar indicates frequency of activation or delay between activations). The physical interface for the radio is mostly standardized, at least the icons on the buttons are well defined and understood. It just gets worse from there. The climate controls look standardized, and often have well-established icons and coloring, but not standard positioning. Then again, even things that are standardized, people can't fully grok: how many people know how to find out which side of the vehicle the gas tank is on while sitting in the driver's seat? It's so goofy, the Mini I drive regularly is infuriating because the touchscreen has a paddle/joy-knob in the center console for navigation, and you turn it COUNTERCLOCKWISE to move "forward" and "down" through menus/option lists.

th1s1sit• 4 years ago

Because unlike airline and medical industry, the auto industry does not have regulation around user experience.

Normalized functionality is required by law for air and medical to reduce risk of operator error.

The auto industry does not have to consider a confused operator killing someone else. That risk is on the individual driver, not a hospital, airline, or airport.

illiac7863• 4 years ago

My dream:

* a row of programmable buttons with LED or lit e-ink screens for software developers to go nuts with =) – and for end users to customise to their preference. * static physical buttons for basic functions (climate control, wipers, cruise control, volume, etc.)

And of course a large touchscreen with buttons on the sides as well.

ok, ok, it’s probably too expensive… As an option maybe? Let the end users vote with their wallets.

LorenPechtel• 4 years ago

And put different textures on them so you can easily feel which button you have (so long as you don't have gloves on.)

linkdink• 4 years ago

This is not a solution. You still have to look at (or listen to???) the screen. But now you also have to find and operate one of several identical input devices that are not colocated.

This works for cheap oscilloscopes because you're not simultaneously driving a car. What you're proposing would make the safety issues worse, and probably be unacceptably frustrating for most people.

jfoster• 4 years ago

I've heard it's also cheaper from a hardware perspective, because ultimately any modern car was going to have some kind of screen anyway, so you get the screen to replace every instrument cluster. It might then mean using a better screen for usability reasons, but all of the other instrument cluster parts no longer exist; they cost $0.

minutillo2• 4 years ago

I worked on a project (not cars, phones) where we replaced an older model that was operated through buttons and LEDs with a newer model that was just a giant multitouch screen. Surprisingly to me, it was way, way cheaper! And cheaper in multiple dimensions: the hardware buttons and LEDs weren't just more expensive, they implied a multi-step manufacturing and testing process on every unit. The touch screen was relatively standard and just came as an integrated assembly from a supplier.

We also went through a phase where we had a hybrid interface, the most common interactions done through hardware controls, everything else on the touch screen. There was always some level of regret associated with the hardware stuff, like we had some extra LED we never actually needed or just one more button would have been nice.

the__alchemist• 4 years ago

An MPD (screen with buttons around the edges) gets you best of both worlds.

giantg22• 4 years ago

"Hardware buttons and switches have to be designed, tested, re-designed, and validated very early in the process of designing a new model"

To be fair though, the buttons should be pretty standard from the previous model or other models. Vehicle design is generally iterative, building off the prior models.

otikik• 4 years ago

Hi, I am the guy who was going to buy a house in the countryside and who might need to talk to you about killing hornets. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32149932)

I'm contacting you to tell you that I bought the house, and I have finally moved, and I love it here.

But guess wha? We have hornets. And I already hate them. 10 minutes ago I removed my first nest. It was a small one, inside our mailbox! Highly inconvenient and disgusting.

There must be some other nest nearby, those buggers keep coming to pester us while we eat.

Do you have any pointers about how to find where a hornet's nest is?

ec109685• 4 years ago

The Tesla Model S/X did this right. All commonly used functions are on the steering wheel, with customizable rocker knobs, and voice control works.

rstupek• 4 years ago

Agreed. I never need to look at my screen to change volume, skip songs, adjust the A/C.

powerbroker• 4 years ago

In 3 Tesla's I've owned, voice commands are only 80% accurate. This is with a male midwestern accented (U.S.) English. I can talk with a Texas drawl... if that is necessary, to see if the car gets my speech better.

My wife, on the other hand, thinks voice recognition is a joke, and doesn't even bother trying. Its hard to call voice recognition redundant or helpful to the touch screen.

albertopv• 4 years ago

For their front car doors Vw, Audi, Seat have been using same design for years. Touchscreens are just an easy way to cut costs.

toss1• 4 years ago

Yes, that is definitely a key reason touchscreens are used.

This does NOT mean that it is a good reason.

The design team saves time & project risk once, and every user for decades (the car is supposed to live that long, right?) pays for the entire life of the car, a few pay with their own lives or the lives of a random pedestrian/cyclist because they are distracted by a bad UI at just the wrong moment and end up in a preventable accident.

Plus the test in the article is GREAT! It should be enhanced and required as a manufacturing standard. The test should also include blindfolded trials, or with a screen blocking the dashboard — it's not rare to have to operate the controls without looking at the dashboard — rainy, cool, dark, in 2-way traffic, and your windshield is fogging fast... that should require 1.5sec blindfolded for a person new to the car.

nopenopenopeno• 4 years ago

How hard could it be to have physical buttons with miniature lcds in them so that their labels could be programmed as well?

In fact my 2022 Honda Civic has climate controls with dynamic labels like this, with LCDs in them. I see no reason why these couldn’t be programmable.

Also the left half of the gauge cluster in my Civic (behind the steering wheel) is an LCD that can almost perfectly imitate a physical needle gauge one moment and or be a settings menu the next, and a fully customizable output the next.

ortusdux• 4 years ago

It is really common for $1mil+ super-cars to have OEM turn signals, window toggles, etc. from budget cars for this reason.

PontifexMinimus• 4 years ago

Hardware buttons and switches have to be designed, tested, re-designed, and validated very early in the process of designing a new model

No they don't, just use the same ones as the previous model.

systemvoltage2• 4 years ago

Yes, but the most important reason is cost. Alps catalog for switches has been diminishing and they are becoming more expensive.

Development/schedule impact is NRE, but any addition to COGS impacts the bottom line in every car.

tomxor• 4 years ago

if late in the process a new feature needs to be added! Pretty much forget about it

This is a feature of the physical process... can you imagine how annoying it would be if the dial for your aircon or volume control kept changing it's position!

If they can't plan the feature properly, I don't want it, I don't want a buggy piece of software with UI that changes every week. In a way I wish this was true for modern software as well... no more updates at any time, at least try to get it right the first time rather than just rushing any old shit out of the door "because you can fix it later AKA never".

I understand there is a balance to be struck with these manufacturing decisions and quality - sometimes it's worth sacrificing some things so that other areas can benefit and the overall quality can improve or the reach that a product has is greater - but this is nuts, touchscreens in cars is just dangerous and annoying.

SoftTalker2• 4 years ago

if late in the process a new feature needs to be added! Pretty much forget about it

What are you going to need to do while driving?

Operate the headlights. Operate the wipers. Operate the climate control fan speeds, mode, and temperature. Operate the windows.

There are not an endless number of essential operations that cannot be foreseen at design time. These are the ones that should have single-purpose, fixed context physical controls.

screye• 4 years ago

Genuine question, why do buttons take so long when keyboards are so standardized ?

Mechanical keyboards have mastered haptics, replaceability and reliability over high repetitions. They could easily iterate over a mechanical keyboard housing that's custom, but the individual components within it stay completely interchangeable.

Also, why is it so hard to understand that touchscreens can be good if they've got haptics ? Is a mac-book-sized haptic-trigger motor THAT HARD to facilitate in a vehicle ? Is a blackberry like physically moving touchscreen a complete no-go ?

Lastly, I wonder if touchscreens can be used as a large capacitive backend to put physical buttons on top of. That way the UI can be designed independently, and the independently tested buttons get added last minute onto whichever grounding spot on the touchscreen is agreed upon by the designers.

anigbrowl3• 4 years ago

Or, and hear me out on this, just standardize and keep it as modular as possible. Competition is said to require innovation, but we're all familiar with how this tips into planned obsolescence and just pushing out a new model with largely cosmetic changes every year for marketing purposes. It's not so uncommon to see excellent overall designs acquire incongruous and thus ugly chrome for no other reason than to distinguish this years' model from last.

pkz• 4 years ago

Maybe a button cluster for cars could be standardized? Everything relating to AC, heat, etc could work with similar symbols and placement. Everything else had to go below or above this module?

itslennysfault• 4 years ago

Sometimes "long poles" are good.

Having a touch screen means they can (and will) half ass the UI/UX because they can update it later.

Also, this isn't just a car problem. You can see it all over the web and mobile apps. I'm a huge fan of rapid iteration, but it has the unintended side effect of allowing people to ship half baked products because they "will iterate on it over time"

neogodless• 4 years ago

Yeah I'm starting to notice how pre-release slowness is hand-waved away... but the reality is that they may not actually fix it in time for production (or ever).

NonNefarious2• 4 years ago

That's the rationale, for sure; but for mechanical features physically built into the car that can't be altered by software, there should be physical buttons.

I don't even like electronic climate controls. I drove a minivan last week that had a click-wheel for the blower speed, which inexplicably suffered from a several-second lag. Yes, multiple seconds before the fan speed changed, making the selection of one a ridiculous pain in the ass.

And any UI that makes you poke at a button or twiddle a dial to iterate through a list one item at a time, without showing the whole list at once, is a monumental failure. You see this blunder way too often, when there should simply be a drop-down list for a finite number of options.

dottedmag• 4 years ago

In the world I'd love to live we as a humanity would conduct an experiment: design two cars differing only in touchscreen/regular controls, produce, sell them and collect accident history.

Let's say touchscreen version would end up having a bit more accidents, say, one death more per 10000 machines sold.

And then the critical step: for every other touchscreen car ever designed by anyone, charge a manager who signed off the touchscreen with one manslaughter for every 10000 machines produced.

oliwarner• 4 years ago

With a touchscreen all those dependencies go away

Not quite. You need a rough idea of where the controls are going to be so you can make sure that the user can reach them. The placement of that "iPad sized capacitive touch screen" is incredibly important, especially if the user has to search for the control.

That's no less true with hardware controls, and I'm probably splitting hairs, but it's not as simple as just allowing for it. There is still hardware to consider early on.

And when manufacturers do forget to plan for it, and shovel a touchscreen into an old-design cockpit, it's super-obvious, and awful.

HellDunkel• 4 years ago

Games are fine with simple controllers which provide 2 analog sticks and a few buttons. Why can’t cars do the same? They have even put touch displays on steering wheels!

mralexc• 4 years ago

Clearly! One more dependecy gone away, phew!

On the cost of what? Driver safety?

asoneth• 4 years ago

I once worked on a user interface for passenger use in military vehicles and field testing similarly showed that hardware buttons were superior. I wasn't even a driver interface so glanceability was not the issue, it was the improved haptics and being able to differentiate buttons by touch in a moving vehicle.

Given the added cost of physical buttons, the compromise was a series of physical buttons along the edges of the screen.

One technique used to convince stakeholders that the added cost was worth it: have them sit an an office chair and ask them to complete tasks on each prototype while someone holding the back of their chair occasionally jerked it around to simulate vehicle movement. Never had objections from anyone who went through one of those presentations.

bastardoperator• 4 years ago

I have a touch screen, hud, voice, and my steering wheel has controls on it. I haven't missed having a knob once and rarely do my hands leave the wheel.

What controls are we talking about? Air conditioning? Radio? What else? I've always felt the analog controls were made out of cheap plastic regardless of how expensive the car was.

dom9301k• 4 years ago

Shocking

evanreichard• 4 years ago

I just picked up a new Mazda 3 Turbo, and absolutely _love_ the dial interface. It took a little bit to get used to, but the muscle memory is now there and I can do most everything while barely even glancing at the screen.

I have the touch screen in my Porsche, as well as in my fiancée's Civic. But I definitely prefer the dial.

All that being said, there are some quirks. Mostly around CarPlay "losing" the focus. It might just be an app thing (it pretty much only happens in Apple Music). I'll scroll through some options, and just as I'm about to click something, the focus goes back to the first option.

jeremy_wiebe• 4 years ago

Here in BC we have fairly tough distracted driving laws (ie don’t even think of touching your cell phone while at the wheel). Yet the proliferation of touch screens in cars seems like it’s almost exactly the same type of distraction as looking at your phone. In both cases you have to look away from the road. Tactile buttons given you “no look” control.

powerhour• 4 years ago

I wonder if the engineers working at car companies use keyboards with physical switches or if they've moved on to superior touchscreens laid flat on their desks.

spicymellon• 4 years ago

never liked the buttons on the smart devices. It is annoying to have to look at a button to push it. With old dump phone, can call people with almost looking. Physical button always out perform touch screen.

scaredginger• 4 years ago

In other news, water is wet.

I'm sure manufacturers have known since before the proliferation of touch screens in cars that it's a worse product, but they chose it for convenience. Maybe there's an argument that the convenience allows them to make things cheaper or spend the development budget elsewhere, but I'm not convinced it's a good trade-off. The lack of a tactile button is a huge downfall when one needs to keep their eyes on the road.

ladyattis• 4 years ago

This reminds me of how the US Navy had touchscreen controls which ultimately were found to be dangerous, especially for ship throttle controls. All these touchscreens result in gorilla arm and engineers know this. It's not like it's an unknown problem as aircraft control designers have had to deal with the same pressure to make controls look fancy and new.

cosmos14• 4 years ago

Nice to see Dacia Sandero from Romania. I have a simple car with a basic screen(nit even in color) with physical buttons. Easy to operate.

mancerayder• 4 years ago

I wish the Model 3 had more physical buttons. Some of the important stuff requires reaching and looking. Man, even the odometer requires turning your head down and to the side to view.

I knew touchscreens were a nightmare path we were going down when I had the Sidekick phone and I was typing without looking at a very rapid clip, while the iPhone had come out and typing on a shitty feel-less keyboard became the latest fashion.

And here we are. I hit backspace probably 15 times typing this (and that's with word prediction). Not on an iPhone though.

28304283409234• 4 years ago

My expectation: Just like Open Office Floorplans, this common sense backed by science will be happily ignored because it's not sexy.

fallingfrog• 4 years ago

Yes but you don't expect me to listen to YouTube while I'm driving do you? How am I supposed to watch TikTok on the highway without a touchscreen?

_ea1k• 4 years ago

They should have tested opening the glovebox while driving too.

TBH, the test should have been more real world: - Turn off the heated seat (this is more likely than turning it on... most turn it on when getting in and turn it off later) - Turn on the wipers when rain starts - Use the washer fluid - Turn on the headlights when it gets dark - Change the navigation destination - Change the climate temperature - Change the vent direction

The results would have likely been more ambiguous for a car like the Tesla. Heated seats can be automated, so that would depend on whether the person liked the Tesla algorithm. Wipers and headlights are likely automated in the touchscreen car too. Voice works pretty well in some for navigation selection, and probably doesn't work well in the non-touchscreen cars.

OTOH, Tesla would do really poorly at climate temperature changes and vent direction. I suspect some other cars would fare badly at those too, but probably Tesla is uniqely bad at vent direction.

omega3• 4 years ago

Physical buttons will be definitely one of the more important criteria when buying a new car.

tzs2• 4 years ago

If I weren't sure that car makers would botch the security, I'd be in favor of legislation that requires that for a specified list of controls or categories of controls if the car does not provide dedicated physical controls for them (either solely or in addition to non-dedicated controls) the car must also must provide an API for those controls to allow third-party add-on devices to operate them.

The API and how it as accessed (e.g., OBD port, Bluetooth, USB-C) would be specified, along with an extension mechanism to allow car makers to optionally allow more than just the required things to be controlled in a way that wouldn't conflict with extensions from other makers.

Then go ahead and go full touchscreen if they want. I'll buy a nice third party set of controls and use that with the car, and since the API and interface is standardized I can move it to my next car and so on, and so not have to learn a new layout for each car.

I say "non-dedicated controls" above instead of "touchscreen" so that a manufacturer can't do something like have a knob and a couple buttons coupled with a screen where you use the screen (via touch or using the knob and buttons to navigate) to choose a set of functions from a menu tree, and then activate/adjust those settings with the knob and buttons, and say that they don't need to provide the interface and API because they are using physical controls.

stuaxo• 4 years ago

They should test it with phones.

RajT883• 4 years ago

This was known when the iPhone came out.

Studies about how using the touchscreen was less efficient than physical buttons.

Shocker: It's still true!

My new phone which arrives shortly will have a full keyboard.

Also: Stay off my lawn.

ok1234562• 4 years ago

Link to phone with full keyboard.

RajT883• 4 years ago

Boom: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transforme...

marcrosoft• 4 years ago

I don’t know about other cars but the 2020 Prius touchscreen is laggy. It reminds me of early android phones. If your going to make touchscreen the main input source please make it responsive.

spurgu• 4 years ago

Would've interesting to see how long the actions took to perform for the first time vs for the 10th time (it's not apparent to me what they were actually measuring in the test).

Also, after having just read the title my immediate reaction was "duh". I've been aware of this ever since phones switched from keyboards to touchscreens. Back in the day I could text with the phone in my pocket, or while driving. Nowadays I have to steer with my leg so that I can operate the huge mobile phone with both hands.

hooby• 4 years ago

I have only one big question:

Why does that need to be tested? Does any driver exist on this planet, to whom this is not immediately and completely obvious?

aarghh• 4 years ago

One of the reasons I like Nobe - https://nobecars.com/100gt/ - is the fact they have a very simple,tactile user interface while being an EV. We really need more auto makers to get that not everyone sees an EV as a media experience that also provides mobility.

gertrunde2• 4 years ago

Being a driver of a car with a buttonless touchscreen... it's such a joy when something screws up in the software, and you stop being able to alter any of the climate control settings, or change any of the audio until after rebooting the infotainment system by holding down the on/off button for 10 seconds...

But at least it doesn't happen very often, only half a dozen times a month...

Isn't technology progress wonderful? /s

vsdlrd2• 4 years ago

To be fair, the test is pretty biased as they only tested use cases that are bound to be better as physical controls. It would have been more interesting if they had includes cases like selecting a route on Google Maps or navigating an app like Spotify.

brailsafe• 4 years ago

This tendency really drives home the fact that my last car was probably my last car, and new ones aren't objects of desire. I forget this sometimes, until I drive a rental or something and expect to be able to adjust volume or heat without much thought while driving. Nope, gotta slide some laggy fucking thing on the middle of the dash.

Bad physical controls can be almost just as bad initially, but easier to remember and feel for.

gertrunde2• 4 years ago

Another fun facet of in car touchscreens that I've seen - icons and 'home screens'...

Lets have a home screen consisting of a 2x5 grid of icons, and because we have 14 icons to fit in, lets make that scrollable by swiping, but not give any visual indicator of that at all.

And just for fun, lets have half the icons overlap in functionality, so Radio, CD and USB Media are all different icons to get to mostly the same functionality, and we have two different settings icons, so if we did a better job of grouping functionality we could manage with <10 icons...

alediaferia• 4 years ago

no way!

systems_glitch• 4 years ago

Big reason I avoid modern test equipment, too.

jonplackett• 4 years ago

The trend to touch screen and touch control in general is so pointless and regressive.

It’s not just cars. You now get high end cookers with touch buttons that can’t be quickly adjusted, require long presses to turn on and off and don’t work when wet.

Same with high end digital cameras. My old SLR from the 90s had instant access to shutter speed, focus, f-stop, +/- with clicky dials that you could use with your eyes closed. Modern ones have half that buried in a menu somewhere.

The Touch Bar on mac - now you have to look at the keyboard to use shortcuts. Useless.

This was a god damn solved problem! Buttons let you use them without looking, touch screens don’t.

api• 4 years ago

One of the things I like about my 2022 Nissan Leaf is physical buttons and switches. It has a touch screen but it's only really for config stuff, the radio, and of course showing maps from the phone which is its primary role.

The lane keeping works very well too.

Only thing that sucks about the car is the CHADeMO fast charge port. There's a good number of them around here but not as many as CCS or Tesla and they're probably on their way out. Of course I don't road trip with it that much so it's not a huge deal for me personally.

There are some indie folks working on a CHADeMO/CCS dongle but it's non-trivial. It can't just be a dumb dongle. Basically has to emulate both sides. Will end up being expensive, and would also mean your car has a dongle. But then again in the future everything has a dongle.

olivierlacan• 4 years ago

This is precisely why I'm so infuriated so many people (me included until recently) aren't aware of the excellent alternative manufacturers like Mazda are offering in their cars, their Command Controller:

  - no touch screens
  - no embedded screen below the dash, instead screen is at instrument cluster height
  - in center column, where your hand natural can rest, a palm-sized wheel:
    - tactile feedback on rotation
    - multi-directional shifts (cardinal & diagonal)
    - pushing/clicking wheel is selection/confirmation
    - finger tips buttons surround wheel with shortcuts: 
      - navigation (either CarPlay/Android Auto nav app or GPS)
      - music (either radio or CarPlay/Android Auto currently playing music app)
      - favorites (can be radio, satellite, etc.) 
      - home (one click -> CarPlay Home, double click CarPlay Dashboard with map & media)
      - back

Here's a good video showing how it functions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ORngbdKI4

I've seen myriad folks passing judgement on these systems because they've lived with touch screens in cars for a very long time. I was lucky to skip that entire generation going from a minimal LCD digital screen straight to a Mazda with this system. It took a few weeks to feel comfortable, but not once did I ever feel as insecure as I have in a vehicle with an touch screen located below the instrument cluster line.

I think we've numbed ourselves to the routine distraction of touch screens which (generally) bypass most people's ability to mentally map physical buttons to specific actions. It's obvious as has been mentioned in this thread that touch screens are a massive cost saving (initially at least) and vehicle production timeline trick.

The huge missing story for touch screens is user experience and safety. The Mazda input system does take some time to learn, and it does divide my attention when I use it, but it has trained me to be more sparse with my interactions with the multimedia system and to rely far more on voice input control whenever I absolutely need to input data into the system (music selection, route finding, text response, etc.)

This isn't even getting into the surprisingly well-designed software and hardware intermingling that Mazda has accomplished between the instrument cluster (which features one central LCD gauge that mimicks the two real physical gauges that surround it) and the multimedia operating system navigation.

Here's some references for folks who find it interesting and are interested hardware/software design for safety in vehicles:

  - https://www.wardsauto.com/interiors/why-mazda-blindfolding-its-engineers-and-designers
  - https://www.mazda.com/en/innovation/technology/philosophy/human-centric/

PS: not a Mazda shareholder or rep, just a happy owner, take that bias as you wish

kingkawn• 4 years ago

We need an in between interface. Maybe a physical interface that can remodel itself to present different button options based on what the user needs at the time without requiring visual interaction.

EricE• 4 years ago

File under "water is wet". I loath touchscreen only controls.

brundolf• 4 years ago

Can we get some regulation here?

"New cars must have dedicated physical controls for critical functions A, B, and C, and always-present displays (physical or otherwise) for critical info X and Y"

Can leave room for nonessential functionality to live on a touch screen

I think it's a safety issue and I think manufacturers will never be motivated to do it otherwise

gfodor• 4 years ago

There are two kinds of cars with touchscreens, ones that will always be driven by a driver, and ones that probably eventually won't be. Only the latter ones really can justify their touchscreens. (And even then it's a bit of a tough sell.)

dz0ny• 4 years ago

Fine but get them fuck out away from steering wheel, I hate cars that put 30+ buttons for shit you never use there.

sddat• 4 years ago

I also do product safety risk assessments , yet in other industry . But from safety perspective , I cannot come up with any reasoning how touch screens are acceptable . For sure they distract eye from the road when you try to find the right button . In a good car , your hands find the right function without the need to look for them . And not to speak of Tesla tachometer on the touchscreen. To my understanding , this has to be banned . It would’ve been acceptable if the things would drive themselves , yet as this is not in sight , that kind of distraction from the road seems unacceptable . I would never buy a car designed like this just out of safety reasons

trixie_6• 4 years ago

Idk my Tesla drives itself 95% of the time. It also drives better than an most of the raging morons on the road.

nextstepguy• 4 years ago

I like the nest therm except for the most intricate choices (typing passwords) but it still beats the touchscreen from the competition.

sizzle• 4 years ago

This should be regulated that physical buttons are mandatory for frequent core functionality e.g. air conditioner, windshields, etc.

tomohawk• 4 years ago

touch screens are for phones, not cars.

colordrops7• 4 years ago

I wonder if any of you that consistently spew all this hate for touchscreens own a new-ish Tesla. I was skeptical at first but it's far better than the myriad of buttons and knobs in any car I've had before. The combination of automation and voice commands cover most of the cases where you'd be fiddling with controls. And interacting with the display really isn't all that difficult either, especially when you've got lane keeping on, where you can afford to look at it for a couple seconds.

There are also physical controls on the steering wheel for the most used functions, but they aren't absolutely necessary.

I'm also curious about how they accounted for bad UX in this study. They didn't just test Teslas, but also other cars with touchscreens. My experience is that the touchscreens in other cars are smaller, slower, more janky and have worse UX in general.

michaelgrosner22• 4 years ago

Totally agree. There is so much less interaction required with the controls (whether hardware or software) with a Tesla. I also have a relatively recent Audi Q7 in addition to my Tesla and holy crap the physical dials and buttons are horrible to use in the Q7 compared to the Tesla M3. With the Tesla, all my settings such as my last listened to Spotify station, seat position, auto wiper/lights preferences, etc is saved and I never really have to interact with the screen unless I need to enter in a map destination.

colordrops7• 4 years ago

Even for map destinations, I always use voice control. Don't remember the last time I entered an address manually - the voice recognition is nearly flawless.

yreg• 4 years ago

I drive a Tesla and to be honest I would appreciate a few more physical buttons, e.g. for climate control and seat heaters.

But the touch screen is not as bad as it sounds like. The trick is to grab the screen by the edge and use the thumb to tap it precisely. It can even be done withou looking.

Steve Jobs said it best in 2007. They have all these phones with full physical keyboards. But what happens if three months down the line you get a new brilliant idea on how to improve the interface? You can’t add more buttons! The devices have already shipped.

colordrops7• 4 years ago

I agree, but I think it's more a problem of the latest software update rather than a fundamental issue with the touch screen. Older versions of the UI had climate control and seat heaters always up front and in the same location on the main screen. They recently buried these in version 11, which was a huge mistake. I think they believe that climate and seat heaters are better automated and don't need user interaction but I don't know if that's true.

trixie_6• 4 years ago

Can confirm, drive a Tesla and don’t need any extra buttons the screen is fine thanks.

rzimmerman• 4 years ago

My family has two cars - a 5 year-old Subaru and a relatively new Tesla. The Subaru has great physical controls for pretty much everything. It has a slightly janky touch-screen for changing audio sources (with nice physical buttons on the wheel for pause/skip/change channel). The touch screen is a little frustrating to use, but I rarely need it. I can imagine I'd be pretty annoyed if it was required for car functions or climate control. But the buttons and knobs are great.

The Tesla touchscreen is very good. I would be annoyed if I frequently had to use it while actually driving, but I don't. Everything in the Tesla is pretty much automatic, including climate control, windshield wipers, lights, and door locks. It's easy to use the touchscreen to raise or lower the temperature a degree - that's the main thing I find myself doing while driving that requires the screen. Everything else I do has a physical control on the wheel. The one frustrating exception is defog which the latest update put behind a menu. I have them shortcutted on the home screen but it is obnoxious.

I think having a big screen is nice. It does require thoughtful UX design and a few physical controls. Tesla probably errs a little too much on the side of automation + no buttons but it's generally well done. As driving becomes more automatic I think it really is less important to have tactile controls and more important to have screen real estate.

cespare• 4 years ago

Well that's partly sampling bias. You're not likely to own a Tesla if you hate the touch controls. My wife and I went through the car buying process this year and test drove a Model Y. I was pretty meh on the touch interface and my wife hated it. We ended up with a non-Tesla EV.

colordrops7• 4 years ago

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Like I said I was skeptical at first. There's also a bit of acclimating to a new way of interacting with the car - e.g. trusting it to turn on the lights and wipers for you, as well as learning how to use the voice controls. I don't think it's biased to say that automation and voice are more ergonomic than buttons and knobs while driving. The screen is mainly used for visualization in the Tesla. The navigation experience is so much better than other cars.

wilg• 4 years ago

Yeah, I have no issue with my Model Y.

telcal• 4 years ago

I've owned a Tesla for nearly 3 years and I love the touch screen and the lack of dashboard buttons. From a purely design point of view, buttons/switches/dials, IMO, really make a dashboard look like an ugly mess. I get the heebie jeebies whenever I drive my wife's older Honda. As others have pointed out just about everything can be done through the steering wheel buttons and/or voice control.

I'm wondering about the test though. "the drivers had time to get to know the cars and their infotainment systems before the test started". They tested 12 cars, how many testers? How long did they really take to get to know the system? I know for me, when I'm driving a new car I feel like I just stepped into the pilot seat of a plane. It takes me several days to get comfortable with any car. In addition, they only performed 4 tests which could have easily been memorized prior to driving. One test being "Reset the trip computer" give me a break, who does that and while driving??

Does safety improve as length of ownership increases? Does age make a difference? Do people who grew up with touchscreens fare better than those who didn't?

eaplant• 4 years ago

Anyone who works in automotive manufacturing/pricing: what does the touchscreen/cameras/“smart” part of the vehicle cost? I’d love to buy a “dumb” chassis/motor/battery/interior from Toyota (for example) and plop in a tactile console with a simpler controller. I wonder if there’s a market for something like that at a possibly lower price point.

0xbadcafebee• 4 years ago

As a teenager I built a Car PC for my Toyota Corolla (I was pretty cool, I know). I added 3 control mechanisms:

  1. Video touch-screen
  2. Mini numeric keypad
  3. Audible User Interface

The touchscreen allowed me to navigate through my custom menu system by touching the screen. The numeric keypad worked as "arrow keys" as well as allowing numbered inputs. The Audible User Interface gave me voice feedback of any selection I made, and would ask me to make a selection; I could make my selection by voice feedback, the numpad, or the video screen.

Voice feedback was iffy and the touchscreen was distracting and finicky. What ended up sticking was the numpad and audio feedback. I could navigate every single aspect of my UI without ever taking my eyes off the road. I would hit a "Menu" button, and the car would say "Main menu." I would hit the down-arrow and it would say "Music." Another down-arrow and it would say "Settings". Hit the Enter key and it would say "Settings menu." And on and on... Any selection could be made by scrolling through a menu or typing a number, and I could hear where I was in the menu.

To impress people at car shows (well, to impress girls) I mapped an RF remote control to the numpad. I'd stand outside the car and hide the remote behind my back and talk to the car, then hit the right button on the remote, and the car would talk back, like Kitt. People loved it :) mostly guys though :(

That was 18 years ago. I don't know of a single device that provides an Audible User Interface today, but it's still my favorite.

osigurdson• 4 years ago

I think a lot of automakers have landed on pretty good ux. Some physical buttons / knobs for commonly used features and a touch screen for less commonly used things.

AtNightWeCode• 4 years ago

Like that they added traveling distance for comparison. Very pedagogic.

Btw, I believe touch screens originally was more or less created for military vehicles, so I don’t buy a lot of comments in this thread.

gitpusher• 4 years ago

Um. Duh?

zzo38computer• 4 years ago

I think physical buttons are better anyways and I do not like touch screen. I also think physical buttons are better than voice controls, too. This would be applies to other computers too though, not only the car.

We have computer with a full keyboard, that all of the commands can be entered, and many key combinations are possible, so a touch screen is not needed. Even many function should not need mouse but sometimes mouse is helpful, though.

Specifically in a car controls (I am sometimes passenger, not the driver), tries to lock some controls while car is moving, preventing the passenger from adjusting the controls. It is better to allow the passenger to adjust the controls in order that the driver will not be distracted from driving the car, I think.

I think that a reasonable design for buttons will including a numeric keypad. You can include other controls such as volume, channel, play/pause/stop/rewind/fast-forward/previous-track/next-track/eject, radio (AM/FM), and possibly a few other function if needed, but many function can be done by combination of other function, e.g. sequence of numbers for a more complicated function option

zephrx1111• 4 years ago

Do we really need a “test” to find this?

smm11• 4 years ago

My source is a BMW with DAB, and a Prius with whatever that tablet is.

The DAB system is a thousand times better, and I can use it 90 percent of the time without looking at it. The tablet? No way.

highspeedbus• 4 years ago

That's why I like to think of Alien's Nostromo tech as perfectly on point. Just enough computing to get things done and working for hundreds of years.

Maybe the Prometheus era folks eventually got sick of touch screens and sleek, barely useful software that keeps changing for the sake of it.

vishnuharidas• 4 years ago

Another thing, in countries that drives on the left (right-hand side driving) it's hard to use a touch screen using the left hand for most of the people. Physical buttons are always good, and makes use of muscle memory to operate without taking eyes from the road.

plussed_reader• 4 years ago

I'm faster with one thumb on t9 than two thumbs on a touchscreen and I don't need my eyes except to proofread. Those phones with the transforming screens changing from smooth to textured.

naet• 4 years ago

I remember going from my small "t9" style flip phone button texting to my first touchscreen texting and thinking it was a huge downgrade- I had internalized my keypad well and could easily text one handed under a desk or in my pocket without looking at what I was typing, whereas on the new smart phone I was constantly accidentally fat fingering one letter over another even while staring directly at it using both hands. Not to mention how much bulkier smartphones are compared to flip phones, the battery life being way worse, etc.

This got slightly better with autocorrect fixing some of the accidental misses, but it's really a bandaid over the fact that key misses still happening constantly on touch screens, and now anytime you need to type something other than what the autocorrect expects it becomes doubly hard, since you have to not only fight the touch screen but also fight the autocorrect trying to help by actively changing your inputs.

I'm still looking for a great "smart" flip phone. It should have a decent screen and camera, real buttons, be not too big, but still be able to use most standard apps like maps, web browsing, etc. I did see a friend with a foldable double screen smart phone, which is... sort of in the right direction? Cool tech, but doesn't help with the tactile feedback issue.

trixie_6• 4 years ago

I love driving a Tesla with no buttons. I hate buttons. The two multipurpose buttons on the steering wheel are enough for me. I don’t even like having a HUD. Just useless information in front of my face. Just give me a big touch screen and I’m happy.

colordrops7• 4 years ago

Absolutely. My theory is that most of the people hating on touchscreens in this thread are using horrible solutions provided by manufactures other than Tesla.

It's similar to when everyone claimed that touchscreens on phones wouldn't work. They were right until they weren't. Touchscreens on phones didn't work until Apple fixed that. Tesla has done a proper job on car touchscreen UX, but everyone else is putting out garbage.

barnabee• 4 years ago

I dislike touchscreens.

Sure, phones are a marvel ans show what you can do with touchscreen apps but that is nothing like driving. I also can't play games on a phone well without a controller (or keyboard and mouse for FPS) for the same reason (computer aim/walking assistance is cheating, why bother?!). I use an external mechanical keyboard even when on the road (Keychron K7) because I don't find even the M1 Macbook Pro's keyboard good enough for real work.

So yeah, the touchscreen puts me off getting a Tesla (alongside a bunch of other cars) almost as much as the amount of remote control they have over their cars. No thanks, as much as I love the idea of owning a Tesla.

dotopotoro3• 4 years ago

Would you use a PC without any of keyboard hotkeys?

I’m not fanatical about this, I would use it if I would be forced by circumstances. But I would not be happy about it. And I still would try to educate/convince older colleagues that hotkeys make things quicker/easier/“reliabler”.

From your speculation of source of touchscreen hate, I see that you feel that tesla has superior car touchscreen experience. And I don't doubt that. But however good you can be with touchscreen, you can do even better if you also have bunch of physical buttons (in addition to touchscreen/must look then point device).

SSchick• 4 years ago

I do prefer touchscreens although I wish design philosophies would shift away from tiny buttons to bigger ones, also I really wish Tesla etc. would offer haptic feedback on their touchscreens.

robomartin• 4 years ago

I have done a lot of work in this area. In commercial, industrial and aerospace applications (not automotive). If I had to summarize it to a single word I would say touch screens are dangerous.

Context is important, of course. Many have mentioned airliners with buttons surrounding a screen. That is very different from the automotive use case. For one thing, the cognitive load required to interact with a full touch screen or one with buttons and knobs around the periphery is much comparable. The difference is that pilots are able to take shift their sight and attention to the display for as long as necessary to operate it. Anything important during takeoff and landing is on a physical interface they can just reach for. Also, outside of single-seat fighter jets (which is an entirely different category) you have a copilot to assist. Anything works if there's another person who can focus on the UI while you do something else. And, of course, let's not forget that pilots have far more training on the aircraft they are flying than the average driver has on their vehicle. It isn't about experience, it's about having to pass tests to obtain qualification to operate the equipment.

The problem with touchscreens is cars is that it takes a non-trivial level of concentration, focus and physical interaction to operate them. Beyond that, they are fragile. Very fragile. I don't mean in the mechanical sense (not talking about breaking them). Randomly run your hand on the surface of your iPad and see what happens. That's a fragile UI. It's OK for a tablet, where you are focusing on that task. Not OK for a vehicle where you could end-up in some undetermined state if you touch the wrong area on the screen. I've been involved in some pretty high level evaluations of touch screen technology for aerospace. The outcome is always the same: For things that matter, add dedicated physical buttons.

A long time ago we worked on a project to add full touch-screen control for an industrial CNC machine. The end result was to abandon the idea completely when a mistake caused the Z axis to crash into the table at high speed, causing severe damage. As I said: Dangerous.

I would argue that the issue on the road has nothing to do with being able to operate the touch screen and everything to do with potentially causing a horrible accident due to the shift in focus. I am sure accidents have already happened because of touch screens. They are probably not recorded in statistics for us to be able to understand just how prevalent this might be. I know I still see tons of people messing with their smart phones while driving on the highway, which isn't a formula for safety.

marviel• 4 years ago

I would have purchased a Tesla by now if the controls were not touchscreen-only.

Critical (to me) operations like volume control, should be manageable from any context, and with physical controls for precision and no-look-requirements.

llIIllIIllIIl• 4 years ago

Touchscreen for media system and navigation in the car is ok. I always find it distracting to go through the menus to change air conditioning.

VLM• 4 years ago

If it doesn't work they can blame the victim. Same as accidents with self driving cars.

not2b• 4 years ago

My 2012 Prius has the most commonly used controls (sound system, temperature, answer a call) right on the steering wheel meaning they can be accessed without taking my eyes off the road. That's much safer than a touchscreen (it also has a small touchscreen but that doesn't have to be used nearly as much).

havblue• 4 years ago

While I like the Mazda I own with physical buttons, it can get confusing for newer users to traverse the screen in Android auto. There's the spin knob, the click action and the up right down left rocking motion.

I know how to use this but most people I know prefer to start with the touch screen.

adrianmonk• 4 years ago

To quote the late Norm MacDonald from a Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update" segment:

A new study says that people who quit smoking have healthier lungs. Yet another groundbreaking story from the pages of the medical journal "DUH".

acd• 4 years ago

Cars are not video games. Cars is a 1500kg - 2500kg heavy object that can kill pedastrians if the driver is distracted.

Puzzled how these new interfaces passed regulators.

dag11• 4 years ago

I really love the idea that the Hummer EV has which is a row of large (hopefully clicky?) switches that each have a tiny display above them indicating their function. They can be reprogrammed by the user, but still interacted with entirely by feel. I'd loove to see this concept taken to much greater lengths! User-programmable knobs, toggles, buttons, etc., with tiny embedded displays that aren't (too) modal in use.

Disclaimer: I haven't actually been inside the vehicle.

riffic• 4 years ago

file this under no shit.

Even better than buttons are good old fashioned dials and knobs, those little twisty things that click into place and give you mechanical feedback when you are adjusting something in a car. Rocker switches are great too.

hollowturtle• 4 years ago

Not a surprise to me! I resonate a lot with the study findings, sometimes I just dream of a world with high precision physical devices(buttons, high precision geared wheels) for using productivity apps but also for filling out forms of everyday life. Being mostly a UI developer I believe touch screen interfaces need to be researched better, we can’t just produce nicer and nicer animations to give some feedback, they still feel annoying and every ui is designed and developed by different thinkers and everyone has its quirks. I don’t know as I user I just have the feeling that a geared wheel or a big pushy button could let me feel more productive. As a developer I would love to just listen to the click event of a button I haven’t designed

agumonkey• 4 years ago

Reinventing the material design wheel :)

Maybe one day touch interfaces will evolve into serious performance but most of the time physical interfaces got enough performance as they were before smartphone came into play.

blobbers2• 4 years ago

Touch screens are a cheap way to create modular displays: they can be reused for any "app". They're upgradeable and skinnable.

In a car, maybe they have a place for people who want customization; my personal take is the opposite though.

I just want something tactile where I know that I've depressed, turned or toggled the right knob without any visualization.

My cars have had simple analog buttons that I enjoy using and can switch without distraction through muscle memory.

macspoofing2• 4 years ago

The screens in modern cars keep getting bigger. Design teams at most car manufacturers love to ditch physical buttons and switches, although they are far superior safety-wise.

Why do those have to be in conflict? I want a big screen, and physical buttons (for the most common car functions - AC/Heat, Volume Control, windshield control, etc.)

psychomugs2• 4 years ago

Car design peaked in the 90’s with the Toyota Camry and has been an overengineered shitshow ever since.

beeboop2• 4 years ago

I really like my 2015 Yaris. Modern air bags and traction control/ABS, but windows/locks/AC controls/seat adjustments/everything big is all mechanical. Changing where the air blows with the dial is mechanically opening and closing valves using wires attached to the dial. There are of of course toggle buttons for defroster/air recirc but I love not having to worry too much about computer crap breaking. I had to replace my alternator and managed to do it in an AutoZone parking lot in a couple hours (and only got attacked once by someone with substance abuse problems - this was in Seattle). Great car.

psychomugs2• 4 years ago

That does sound nice; most cars I've driven this side of the century annoy me with pointless "eco" gauges and infotainment screens that just serve to distract.

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Hence why the Miata Is Always The Answer.

spandrew• 4 years ago

Doing evaluative research on "screen v. buttons" you'll find that even on smartphones physical buttons outperform touchscreens. The reason people choose no-keyboard is the benefits a phone brings them as a multi-purpose device outweighs the benefit of "more accurate typing than on a screen".

Creative Selection is a good book to read. It details the process at Apple from the dev who worked on the very first keyboard of iOS. The design of the keyboard + autocorrect needed to be good enough that people could type on it reasonably well. It was one of the credited reasons why the Newton was said to have failed so they put A LOT of effort into this feature of the handset.

Does this apply to a car screen? Probably. A car is also much bigger than a handheld device so maybe you don't have to choose. But in the end great design is always about making good choices.

iepathos• 4 years ago

To the surprise of no one.

dm3192• 4 years ago

I was trying to use my e-tron to change radio station this week. But it kept registering my press on the station as a small scroll. Probably due to the slight undulation of the suspension. Very frustrating and dangerous when travelling at speed on the motorway. I guess it's better just to not use it.

rob_c• 4 years ago

this isn't just cars, there's a reason warships don't use giant touch-screens during warfare

fnordpiglet• 4 years ago

They don’t out perform in coolness.

viktorcode• 4 years ago

The important part

WHICH TESTS WERE PERFORMED? Activate the heated seat, increase temperature by two degrees, and start the defroster. Power on the radio and adjust the station to a specific channel (Sweden’s Program 1). Reset the trip computer. Lower the instrument lighting to the lowest level and turn off the center display.

pwinnski• 4 years ago

Physical buttons outperform touchscreens in every situation, but they're not always compact and portable. Smartphones and tablets work better with touchscreens because portability matters more, and because no two apps have the same input expectations.

A physical knob, slider, or lever is always going to be a more effective control, but if it's only usable a small percentage of the time, it's pretty wasteful to have it always sitting there taking up space.

There are contexts in which the space and uniformity matters more, like smartphones and tablets, and contexts in which the effectiveness of the control matters more, like in a car.

Cars invented by computer people have touchscreens because they're cheap and easy, and because some computer people don't understand effective interface design. Of course, now cars invented by car people also have touchscreens because they're cheap and easy and because Tesla's getting away with it, so why can't they?

Having a round knob (or slider, but a round knob is standard in cars) always in the same place for volume control is better than having a touchscreen widget that might or might not be visible at all times, because it can be found by touch and doesn't require anyone to take their eyes off the road while driving, and because it can be spun or pushed quickly when needed.

This is really, really basic stuff.

ericmcer• 4 years ago

Touchscreen interfaces in cars never made even an iota of sense to me. What if we make an interface that requires you to stare down at it... while driving...

After a few months in a car with tactile controls it is easy to turn on the A/C, radio, whatever with a quick glance or not looking at all.

fleddr• 4 years ago

There is one way to make a touch screen suck even more, which is found in my car. As your finger is under way in mid air to press it, it detects this motion, and then changes the UI. Some pulldown hover menu pops up, displacing the thing you wanted to touch.

This is also a car where when you slowly park close to something (bushes, wall) it has a complete meltdown as if in a car crash.

When in a traffic jam, 10 minutes later it loudly alerts "slow traffic ahead".

It even auto breaks in situations where I had plenty of response time, and then some more.

It feels like I'm in some sociology test. How far can we push this guy before he drives this piece of shit off a cliff? I imagine a team of engineers watching me on a live feed for Friday afternoon entertainment.

the_black_hand• 4 years ago

The guy who thought that it was a good idea to put volume controls on touchscreen needs a spanking. It baffles me that some companies still think this is a good idea.

gitgud• 4 years ago

Touchscreens in cars just add yet another layer of abstraction to the user, rather than permanent controls.

You have to wait for it to boot, button layouts change in different modes, it will be updated by the manufacturer.... All these things add to a feeling of less control which is not what I'd like in a manually driver car

myrandomcomment• 4 years ago

Is "no shit?" a reasonable comment here?

My wife's new car, to many screens. My old car, buttons I can touch from memory without looking. The worst part about her car, you can customize the screen in front of the driver but not really. 3 items on the screen - circular thing, status thing, circular thing. There are a total of ~12 versions of the stuff in the circular thing. The information in circular things would work just fine on either side. However for some reason they spilt it 6+6. You want item from right circle to be on left side, nope! There is no reason why. It is a flat display (ie, on flat screen, not 3 screens) and it is just software. No reason for this. It is a display.

For everything that is normal, like AC, etc. please just stick to buttons!

fmihaila5• 4 years ago

Is "no shit?" a reasonable comment here? My wife's new car, too many screens. My old car, buttons I can touch from memory without looking. The worst part about her car, you can customize the screen in front of the driver but not really. 3 items on the screen - circular thing, status thing, circular thing. There are a total of ~12 versions of the stuff in the circular thing. The information in circular things would work just fine on either side. However for some reason they spilt it 6+6. You want item from right circle to be on left side, nope! There is no reason why. It is a flat display (ie, on flat screen, not 3 screens) and it is just software. No reason for this. It is a display. For everything that is normal, like AC, etc. please just stick to buttons!

fmihaila5• 4 years ago

Is "no shit?" a reasonable comment here?

For everything that is normal, like AC, etc. please just stick to buttons!

fmihaila5• 4 years ago

Is "no shit?" a reasonable comment here?

My wife's new car, too many screens. My old car, buttons I can touch from memory without looking. The worst part about her car, you can customize the screen in front of the driver but not really. 3 items on the screen - circular thing, status thing, circular thing. There are a total of ~12 versions of the stuff in the circular thing. The information in circular things would work just fine on either side. However for some reason they spilt it 6+6. You want item from right circle to be on left side, nope! There is no reason why. It is a flat display (ie, on flat screen, not 3 screens) and it is just software. No reason for this. It is a display.

For everything that is normal, like AC, etc. please just stick to buttons!

fmihaila5• 4 years ago

Is "no shit?" a reasonable comment here? Yeaas.

For everything that is normal, like AC, etc. please just stick to buttons!

"I don't think he can fill that void". --Tony Brouwer

'Oh,' but He can. Said fata lu 'Nicki Miraj.

fmihaila5• 4 years ago

Is "no shit?" a reasonable comment here?

ryanmarsh• 4 years ago

Changing the fan speed (UI slider control) in the model X without killing yourself is fun.

To those who want to say “use voice control” let me tell you about all the times I say “turn the fan speed up” and it turns it DOWN.

wtf_is_this• 4 years ago

Well, DUH.

Edit: saw this has already been posted, which made me say "duh" again.

dustractor• 4 years ago

When it is bitter cold, the touch part of a touchscreen ceases to function and you will wish you had a flip phone with real buttons.

InDemoVeritas• 4 years ago

I just want the touchscreen buttons for a choice to be separated on the screen by more than a finger’s width. Every yes/no choice is right next to each other, and driving and hitting 1cm^2 a millimeter away from another 1cm^2 is not good UIX.

running101• 4 years ago

No test was needed to determine this. Common sense

LinuxBender• 4 years ago

Physical buttons also give me positive control over a thing. Touchscreens are software inputs. I will never buy a vehicle that has software control over anything. Even cars made in the early 2000's stretch my limits. Software bugs, remote control and RF interference can change the state of software controlled devices. Even cars made a long time ago had some aspects of this. Some models of cars had cruise controls that could be manipulated by driving close and whistling into the microphone of a CB radio and a tiny linear amplifier of only 50 watts.

On a related note I would never own a vehicle that has software control over steering, drive train or brakes. This will be an unpopular opinion right now but I think it will sadly and unfortunately age well with time.

iancmceachern• 4 years ago

100% this, I've been saying this for years. A touchscreen is a horrible interface for the situation. You need to take your eyes off thr road, with a tactile button it can be felt, found, and actuated without sight.

cdeutsch• 4 years ago

Did they also do a study to find out if water is wet?

The disappearance of buttons and knobs in cars is super frustrating. Thanks Elon and all the sheep copying his bad UX.

Physical buttons outperform touchscreens in new cars, test finds

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