74
votes
Touchscreens are out, and tactile controls are back. Rachel Plotnick's "re-buttonization" expertise is in demand.
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Q&A: Rachel Plotnick On the Return of Tactile Controls
- Published
- Nov 3 2024
- Word count
- 1457 words
The fact that cars ever moved to touchscreens in the first place was silly. Haptic feedback! You need to feel the button to press it while keeping your eyes on the road. Even adjusting the volume on the radio with a touchscreen is crazy to me.
I'm an ex-automotive engineer. About 10 years ago I was sitting in meetings trying to explain to my dumbass managers and the design teams that touch screens are terrible and that we need as many physical buttons as possible because haptic feedback is important. They fought me at every turn because touch screens look cool and when people are choosing to buy cars that they are sitting in a showroom lobby. I was literally told that actually usability was secondary to how it impressed people in the showroom.
Specifically most of my fights were around the controls for the climate system, since that was the area I had the most say over.
Edit: I also told them that instead of trying to guess which type of plug would win the format wars, we should make a module that's designed to be swappable in the future once the industry as a whole shifted. This was back around 2014-2015, before USB-C became the clear winner. I'm still mad about that job.
Edit again: I had to talk my manager out of putting a 5 disc CD changer as a standard option for a luxury vehicle that was going to launch in like 2020. Literally laughed at him in a meeting for that one. God I hated him
This is a noise comment but I just wanted to let you know I commiserate. That sounds awful but I'm happy you had your priorities in order. Especially the 5 disc CD changer is stupid. The people that still use that are in the absolute tiny minority.
I do appreciate that some cars still come with CD players though. Recently found some old CDs and quickly realized the simplest way for me to listen was to pop them in the 2022 Subaru.
Yeah the issue isn't that he wanted a CD player, it's that he wanted a five disc one that would cost a bunch and was so big and bulky that it was going to make the glove compartment noticeably smaller because of where all the components were going to end up
And he wanted it as part of the standard package rather than an optional upgrade
What a dipshit lol
Yeah I hated that guy, but he made at least three times what I did
And that is what drives so much hate at management. If they made the same amount as you, their idiocy would at least be more tolerable, rather than seeing them being rewarded extra for it.
I still buy all my music on CD!
Buuuuut… the first thing I do with it them rip them and put them on my phone, so the CD player in the car still doesn't get any use. =P
Every car I've had had stupider climate system controls than the previous one. I don't even like buttons there. Tell your ex-manager to give me my knobs back! I want to be able to tell the current setting by touch. I've been making this argument to my family and friends since I was barely more than a teenager.
(EDIT: I've had a Ford ;) )
I drove a hire car recently that just had a button for where the air was blowing, and you had to cycle through to get to whatever setting you wanted. Infuriating.
There are so many things where buttons are used where rotary knobs would be far superior! Buttons are for boolean stuff and everything else should be a knob.
I don't understand why every device is so heavy on buttons. Knobs can't be that much more expensive, and from a hardware perspective, I would assume that they (can be made to) produce the same signals as a button press.
I suppose the one problem with "stateful" knobs is that they're "expensive" to be resettable programmatically (they'd require a motor)?
Not the modern knobs I know. They send one signal if you turn them one way and another signal if you turn them the other way. I assume the software doesn't even know if it's a button or a knob. It just needs to be able to react to "button press" events reasonably fast. But even if it doesn't, the user can just turn the knob some more until the display says what it should say or the volume is what it should be.
Man I'm with you on that. I drive a higher-trim current-gen Mazda 3, the upper trims come with a "fancy" climate system where you set your desired temperature in Fahrenheit. Then it does math based on the outside temperature to decide how hot or cold the air blowing into the car should be.
But in a car the air blows directly on you, so usually what I have to do is reverse-engineer this algorithmic temperature adjustment - for instance, if I want cold air but it's 72° out, I have to set the car temp way low.
Pretty sure that Mazda management decided that upper trims needed a fancier climate system, the designers designed something that sounded good on paper, then the engineers built it and realized it sucked, but the people up the chain didn't care because buyers wouldn't realize how much it sucked until they'd lived with it for a while.
(That aside, most other things about this car are great! 😊)
I remember reading Donald Norman's Things that Make us Smart in 1994, and he already had a ton of examples from the automotive industry of not taking the importance of haptics and affordances in general seriously. Frustrating!
Heh I was told that the drive towards touch-screening everything had more to do with ease of assembly and minimizing the numbers of parts needed for long-term maintenance. Since you don’t have to maintain a stock of every type of control panel for every model if it’s just one or two big screens, that’s a ton of logistical complexity taken care of. Did that just never come up as a rationale?
Also I never really liked that explanation because, in truth, I don’t think it’s that important to have a different type of AC or radio control panel on every model of car. Just make a standard one for every model you make and use it for 10 years it’s not a big deal. Might have been back when you had to wire everything together but nowadays the panel just talks to a microcontroller that talks to the car. You ought to be able to plug whatever into it. The stalks and drive mode selectors are probably a bit more finicky but even the touch-screens for everything cars still have those anyway.
Someday maybe it’ll be normal and reliable to use voice commands for basic functions like climate control, and then we won’t actually need the tactile interfaces as much and it’ll be okay to put it all on a screen, but we’re probably a good 5 to 10 years away from that.
I think aesthetics really do play a MAJOR part in our choices; you do need to find a balance. If a car is too unusable then the wow factor disintegrates on the test drive. If your car looks too ugly then its not even going to make it to the test drive. That said, if buttons are making it look bad then you need to find a better person to design the button layout because I've definitely seen enough cars over the last decade that still had the screen AND usable tactile buttons AND looked good.
Ford? That was the first car I saw move heated seats into the screen (on a car I rented). That was about 10 years ago and it drove me NUTS; if your ass gets too hot and you can't pull over then you have to decide between increasing discomfort or risk crashing the car while trying to turn it off.
Ha. They want you to swap the entire car not just some module. I wish I was joking but I'm fairly certain that would be part of their rationale for shooting you down on that one. Thanks for trying to do the right thing though.
Typically I don't mention which company I work for but fuck it, yeah it was Ford. That being said, at the time I was working on cars about five or so years ahead of their release, so if they had already pissed you off 10 years ago, that would have been before I was working there
And while it's true that they did want you to just buy a new car they just kind of assumed you were going to stick with the same brand
My father retired from Ford a few years back as someone who was in a sales position i didn’t understand at the time. Apparently he had an assigned region and was the “manager” between corporate and those dealers, so on the road quite often.
I still remember him raging about the Firestone fallout as a kid and only asked him about it years later. I guess he had been pulled back to Dearborn multiple times with how they were going to PR their way out of that catastrophe.
He’s been pretty vocal since retiring a few years back about how the company has gone but hey, has still offered me A plan pricing. Probably won’t take him up on it since cars are way too expensive these days.
Ya, I didn't actually expect you mention the company but it did sound a lot like Ford to me... both past and recent (this year) interactions actually.
I'm not sure if you worked on it or saw it, but the higher end f150 lightnings have a 15 inch (portrait) screen with some big volume knob thing ON the screen and just about every control that would have been in the center dash is in that screen. It looks incredible but holy crap NO.
I would like to direct everybody to stereos of the 60's and 70's. Especially ones with aluminum or steel. In particular volume knobs and FM tuner knobs. Other settings have solid clicks. If I had a knobs with half as good feel to that for the volume and climate in my car, I'd be ecstatic.
I'll present the second gen Honda Fit as the most recent example I've seen of near perfect control design. The outside of the climate knobs is what turns instead of classic inset pointer things so there is a lot to grab onto. Tactile detents so you can feel the controls move. Nice big stereo buttons... Where it falls apart is when they have a nav screen option, but at least the heater controls are still there.
This reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer gets to design a car.
I waited for many years before getting an EV, and a large part of it was the obsession with touchscreen controls. I hated the idea of having to navigate through a touchscreen just to defrost my windows (I live in a cold area).
I finally found the perfect car for me recently - the 2024 Hyundai Kona EV. All the important controls (lights, heating/cooling, volume etc.) are physical buttons. But it still has a nice big touchscreen for all the less vital stuff (directions, music). I'm hoping this is the template for cars going forward - touchscreens are great for some purposes (like maps), but shouldn't be relied upon for critical functionality.
Fellow Kona owner here, albeit an older model (2020). Like you having physical button was definitely a factor in my thought process.
There's one thing with physical button that you cannot do with touch screen: mod it! In my car (see photo for reference ) defrost button is somehow lost in the sea of button (second button of the second row) , and the heated wheel button is somewhat awkwardly placed (second button where it used to be a shift stick).
Those button I often use during winter, and especially for the defrost I'd like to be able to locate them blind.
So my solution was to but googly eyes stickers on them. And so now I can locate them by touch alone. (since then the eyes fell off and I replaced them with stars).
I got some adhesive bumpers to put on some of the most-used buttons in my car to help me navigate them by feel. They work really well, and they haven’t fallen off yet.
I should have thought of that, especially since I've got some at home! Thanks!
I absolutely hate touchscreens in cars. Phones have so much to answer for and are now a huge reason for crashes.
Having tactile buttons and touch memory for them is the way to go. In my old 2016 car, I still have all buttons, and it's so easy to change radio station, make a call, volume up, etc. It doesn't allow you to access GPS to set a destination while in motion either, which I think is great because you shouldn't be so distracted whilst your vehicle is on the move.
It was always a cost cutting measure, especially when it was brand new and seen as "premium"
Those touch screens honestly cost very little and being able to replace (and not having to design) potentially dozens of buttons is huge savings. It also lets the designers make minimal changes between different trims because all of the buttons can just be changed in software instead of having to add/remove physical buttons for things like seat warmers, moon roof, etc.
Not to mention most people expect a touch screen in their cars these days anyway for things like GPS, backup cameras, etc so it made sense to just cram everything they can in there and call it a day from a business perspective.
Obviously this was a mistake because no one actually wants to fumble around with a touch screen to adjust the volume of the radio or turn the AC down a few degrees, it's dangerous and awkward.
Nitpicking, but... It's not just haptics. I drove a modern CX-5 for a bit, and while the whole JiNbA iTtAi! dogma is appreciated, when they let you do Android Auto / Apple Carplay touch interfaces it's absolutely awful. Cardinal directions and a scroll wheel don't adapt well to an interface made without a care for them, so nothing goes the way you think. I found it way more distracting to have to watch if my direction went the way I expected, then have to watch again if it missed and observe exactly what it's doing. Mazda's UI had none of the robustness, consistency, or voice capability of Android Auto to be as useful either.
That's another bit - voice commands! That shit's great when it works right. Huge shortcut to precise commands. (Google's works; Mazda's doesn't.)
On the other hand, I think people severely overestimate how often they use center console buttons without looking. Everyone talks about doing it, but I feel like anyone I see driving always glances down. They just may not fully notice because it's subconscious and they're still focused on driving.
Of course, that's still simpler than navigating menus.
I think that if you really track what happens when using buttons vs using touch screen, the benefit becomes obvious.
The user will glance at the buttons to get their fingers there, then they glance back at the road while making an adjustment. Then they glance at the console to see that the setting is what they intended then they glance back to the road.
With a touchscreen, you look at the screen, continue to look at the screen while making the adjustment, then Iook away when the adjustment is complete.
It's not that you don't look at buttons at all, it's that the attention required for buttons is less than what is required for a touch screen. You can make adjustments using haptic feedback while still maintaining most of your concentration on driving.
That is not valid for everyone; some people do interact with buttons more similarly to how they interact with screens. But on average, you can more easily divide attention with buttons, and they are safer.
Also, if somebody touches the buttons with dirty fingers, they're just a bit yuckier to use until you get a chance to pull over. If somebody does the same with a touchscreen, well now your car just became a hazard.
Source: Have children.
Yeah we have to replace the radio in my car and unfortunately the best we can do right now is a Sony that has physical fast forward and rewind controls but no physical volume button (really? So when I need to suddenly turn down the radio for whatever reason I have to fumble around or look for it?). I'm going to miss my old radio as it was designed around 2000 (It's a 2003 car but I've seen the same radio in older models) so it is all physical buttons (and it plays cassettes and CDs and i have both honestly). But the volume knob is getting all weird and the ipod I have for it (we modded it to be able to control an ipod) is broken and it seems expensive just to buy another old ipod (it had the original fat ipod connector) for a radio that we don't know how much longer it has.
Oh yeah, and I love my car is old enough to have all physical controls (and also for my husband to work on at our house... from what I understand newer cars are a lot harder for people to do their own repairs on... not that my car has needed much. It's a Toyota and it definitely fits the stereotype).
An interesting read! I'm definitely happy to see the return of buttons in many places. I think a lot of regular people seem to underestimate how much they miss the feedback from pushing buttons until they have to use an interface that only has physical buttons. My dad recently swapped out his Tesla Model Y for a BMW i4 and he was gushing about how much he missed having buttons in his car. Funnily enough, BMW got rid of a lot of the buttons in their interiors with the i4 but its chock full of buttons compared to his old Tesla.
Screen fatigue was actually something I hadn't considered when it comes to using touch screens but it makes a lot of sense. I was thinking about this in the context of driving cars but we're subjected to so much light in cars nowadays. The bright headlights from other cars, the instrument cluster + infotainment screens, the sometimes bright ambient lighting. It can be a bit much. Even though my car only has one screen for the infotainment, I actually find myself turning it off when driving at night and I do feel slightly less irritated by the light when driving.
Okay, so I should hold out hope for a new BlackBerry then?
I miss the old BB's, BBOS10 was probably the best OS out of them all. It's such a shame it was so late to market.
You could make your phone even more unwieldy with something like this: Clicks.
Ha. No way.
Give me an older style half screen, half keyboard and I'm happy. These weird bolt on things turn your phones into stupidly sized things.
I was always partial to the slide out keyboards. But Unizhertz makes some Android phones like that.
OMG THANK YOU. I had never heard of this company, and they make exactly both kinds of phones I'm looking for:
Shoutout for Symbian too in that case :D ?
While we're moving basic controls off of a central touch screen, lets remove touch sensitive anything. I was recently driving a newer VW - the fan and climate controls were their own separate controls (not part of the main "infotainment" screen), but they were touch sensitive. On multiple occasions, while trying to turn the fan up or down, I'd accidentally touch just slightly off of where the fan speed touch area is to make the fan go either up or down one notch, and the fan would end up fully off, or full blast - now I've got to spend extra time and attention getting it back to where I want it. It was like this for most of the climate controls. Horrible design - not user friendly, dangerous, distracting, and incredibly frustrating. If I went to a dealer to buy a car and saw that, I'd immediately cross that car off my list. No chance I buy a car with that nonsense.
It's all very reminiscent of The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, where radio buttons are replaced with touch controls, and touch controls are replaced with "wav[ing] your hand in the general direction of the components and hop[ing]" so once you find a programme you actually want to listen to you must sit very still.
I just picked up a 2021 VW ID4. It is annoyingly touchscreen, though not as bad as my Subaru was. However, it also has "hand wave in front of touchscreen" to be able to swipe it without touching the screen. Which is actually kind of great to swap between the two main dashes I use: A maps/driving stats and "everything else".
It also helps that the ID4's voice controls actually work, which could not be said for my Toyota RAV4 or Subaru. That smooths out a lot of the worst of the touchscreen.
Now this is something I can get behind. I understand the need for touchscreens for small devices such as smartphones or ipads, this makes sense. But having touchscreens for a car console? Sometimes you just can't get away with removing a button on a device.
I think this is tied into the ideal of software design utilizing skeuomorphism during the early days - a good example of this being DAWs and desktop applications such as winamp or the Creative Mixer (with it looking like a hi-fi system). This was later incorporated into the design of smartphone apps (especially early apple ones), and what ended up happening was this tied into the idea of utilizing digital buttons for touchscreen interfaces.