I drive a car from the 90s and to be honest, there isn't really anything outside of the early 00s that I would want to own. These screens not only are unnecessary from a reliability and functional...
I drive a car from the 90s and to be honest, there isn't really anything outside of the early 00s that I would want to own. These screens not only are unnecessary from a reliability and functional perspective, but also introduce an additional layer of complexity to the operation of the vehicle. The sheer amount of information available to the driver is impossible to process while still paying adequate attention to the road.
There have been times when driving modern cars that I have been distracted by the information presented in the gauge cluster and realised that I hadn't been paying attention to the road for the past five seconds or so. That might be caused by my relative unfamiliarity with these features, but as a relatively focused driver who enjoys the driving activity I could imagine that others who are less satisfied by the act of driving might be even more susceptible to these distractions. In addition to this, simple actions like changing the audio and climate controls often involve interaction with an interface that provides no tactile feedback, increasing the amount of time spent looking down - not at the road!
I think that by including complex displays in their vehicles automakers are undermining public efforts to reduce distracted driving - they are almost as distracting as mobile phones!
Not even navigation? That’s really the major driver behind having ever bigger and bigger screens. It also becomes somewhat integrated to how you do a bunch of stuff. Once you have a bunch of...
I drive a car from the 90s and to be honest, there isn't really anything outside of the early 00s that I would want to own.
Not even navigation? That’s really the major driver behind having ever bigger and bigger screens.
It also becomes somewhat integrated to how you do a bunch of stuff. Once you have a bunch of seldom used features it gets unwieldy to put switches and knobs to manage them. Cars now come with stuff like massaging seats, heated seats, cooled seats, granular controls for multiple climate zones, ride modes where you optimize the steering, suspension, shifting, etc. for varying degrees of sportiness vs. economy, internal lighting controls, various kinds of audio input (phone via aux, phone via mp3, phone via Bluetooth), bluetooth syncing, Bluetooth integration with a garmin, phone and text management, satellite radio, AM/FM radio, raising or lowering ride height, preference controls for the automated driving features, cross-traffic warnings, blind spot monitoring, rear backup cameras, warning chimes for pedestrian or obstacle detection, driver side control of child safety locks, automated lift gates and doors, and on and on.
That would end up being a ton of switches, each of which is a mechanical part that’s more prone to breaking (and possibly requiring an expensive replacement or fix) than a regular touch screen. It becomes unwieldy. Stuff you access while driving should be tactile or voice controlled, but I don’t see how the other suites of features can be in a car without something like a touch screen without becoming a mess.
So is 90% of modernity. I’m not sure what argument this is making. People have the features and, since we don’t live in the Soviet Union, there isn’t a central planner deciding what functions we...
So is 90% of modernity. I’m not sure what argument this is making. People have the features and, since we don’t live in the Soviet Union, there isn’t a central planner deciding what functions we ought to have.
Again though, people want the features and, since we don’t live in the Soviet Union, you don’t get to tell them what’s “necessary” or that they’re not allowed to have extravagances. And many of...
Again though, people want the features and, since we don’t live in the Soviet Union, you don’t get to tell them what’s “necessary” or that they’re not allowed to have extravagances.
And many of the features I listed are safety functions, fuel economy functions, or parking aids, so good luck telling people stuff meant to prevent accidents, prolong the mechanical health of the car, or improve fuel economy are unnecessary.
How much of this is an actual rational look at what people need and how much is the old man yells at cloud meme in action?
I believe some functions currently on touchscreens might prove beneficial, but this is not true for the majority of them. Yes, a rearview camera is great for parking, but for the most time a...
I believe some functions currently on touchscreens might prove beneficial, but this is not true for the majority of them. Yes, a rearview camera is great for parking, but for the most time a complicated set of commands that require me to take the eyes off the road for two seconds or more is extremely dangerous. I'm not the one coming up with this data, this is not an opinion: this is the object of serious research. Two seconds off the road can be the difference between life or death. Touchscreens provide no tactile feedback, requiring constant bursts of attention that are most certainly longer than two seconds.
You overestimate the capacity of most drivers to actually use those tactile controls in a hands-free manner. I know people who have used computers for decades and are still hunt-and-peck typists...
You overestimate the capacity of most drivers to actually use those tactile controls in a hands-free manner. I know people who have used computers for decades and are still hunt-and-peck typists somehow. Very few drivers are actually bothering to get habituated enough to do this sort of tuning without looking.
And computerized interfaces are more often automated, meaning you’re actually interacting with this stuff less. You are interacting with the touchscreen to configure preferences rather than trying to manage it while driving. Comfort features on seats mean you sit longer without fidgeting or losing focus because your shirt is bunching you behind your back.
Stuff you actually do while driving all have secondary controls on the steering wheel anyway.
In my experience both as a passenger and as a driver, it doesn't take long for one to get used to a limited and sensible set of tactile controls. Since touchscreens require visual focus in all...
You overestimate the capacity of most drivers to actually use those tactile controls in a hands-free manner.
In my experience both as a passenger and as a driver, it doesn't take long for one to get used to a limited and sensible set of tactile controls.
Since touchscreens require visual focus in all cases, the difficulty to manipulate tactile controls will tend to be less dangerous than the difficulty to manipulate touchscreens.
So, in one case (touchscreens), the added danger is mandatory, while in the other (tactile) it is merely a possibility.
And yet accidents per vehicle mile travelled have stayed fairly steady since the introduction of touchscreen dashes. So this doesn’t seem to be borne out. In fact, the addition of auto focused...
In my experience both as a passenger and as a driver, it doesn't take long for one to get used to a limited and sensible set of tactile controls.
And yet accidents per vehicle mile travelled have stayed fairly steady since the introduction of touchscreen dashes. So this doesn’t seem to be borne out. In fact, the addition of auto focused screens to the dash have likely reduced people’s likelihoods of using their phones in the car. The alternative to no touchscreens isn’t usually tactile controls. It’s people trying to achieve navigation and audio controls via their smartphones instead.
What safety concerns we have that are actually getting worse seem to be more a result of poor visibility and preference for cars with high ride-heights.
So, in one case (touchscreens), the added danger is mandatory, while in the other (tactile) it is merely a possibility.
When you have a control panel of 40 buttons and knobs you’re not getting a meaningful tactile control experience for most people. If you want to argue that all cars should be frozen in state with the feature sets they had in the 90s that’s an argument to make. But unless you have a plausible alternative to modern feature sets that don’t involve having a literal keyboard’s worth of control panels on your console this world of tactile only interfaces you’re positing is pure fantasy.
Moreover “possibilities” that are so prevalent that they’re almost mandatory seems like a distinction without a difference to me.
I have an alternative to modern feature sets controlled by a touchscreen. Modern features controlled by a few well thought out physical controls and advanced features controlled by a well designed...
But unless you have a plausible alternative to modern feature sets that don’t involve having a literal keyboard’s worth of control panels on your console this world of tactile only interfaces you’re positing is pure fantasy.
I have an alternative to modern feature sets controlled by a touchscreen. Modern features controlled by a few well thought out physical controls and advanced features controlled by a well designed touchscreen. This is not an all or nothing decision we have to make.
For example, I drove a new Ford (I think) SUV that had adaptive cruise control. It works like normal cruise control but automatically slows you down to the speed of the car in front of you. It was quite a nice feature once I figured it out. It was activated with a single dedicated button that was with the cc controls. Advanced things, like following distance, were controlled with general use buttons on the steering wheel. An unfamiliar driver does not even need to know the following distance control exists to use this feature, they just need to press a physical button.
My dad's car has automatic headlights that are controlled by a daylight sensor (I assume). They are activated by a single extra twist click on the turn signal lever, along with all other headlight controls. New features don't need a paradigm shift of the control scheme. (side note, I still don't understand why all headlights aren't connected to a switch relay. There is zero reason that leaving your headlights on should be possible. Actually, there is no reason to have headlights off when the car is running at all. Why don't we just connect them directly to a switched relay and remove the controls completely?)
There are plenty more examples of this type of design if you look for it. I think this is sort of an extension of the "sensible defaults, but plenty of settings" type of design.
Everything you’re talking about has significant discoverability problems and, as you keep adding them on, makes the overall experience much more complicated than a textual interface with tooltips....
Everything you’re talking about has significant discoverability problems and, as you keep adding them on, makes the overall experience much more complicated than a textual interface with tooltips. What you’re talking about requires people to read user manuals, which they will not do.
Is that a rhetorical exaggeration? I'd hate to manipulate such a car. In fact, I'd prefer not having anything even resembling a "control panel". I'm in the third-world, buddy. The dream of the 90s...
When you have a control panel of 40 buttons and knobs
Is that a rhetorical exaggeration? I'd hate to manipulate such a car. In fact, I'd prefer not having anything even resembling a "control panel".
If you want to argue that all cars should be frozen in state with the feature sets they had in the 90s that’s an argument to make
I'm in the third-world, buddy. The dream of the 90s is alive in Brazil ;)
This is probably just due to lack of experience. In truth most of the items are automatic so the touchscreen is used to set preferences, not to use during actual operation. In that case it’s...
Is that a rhetorical exaggeration? I'd hate to manipulate such a car. In fact, I'd prefer not having anything even resembling a "control panel".
This is probably just due to lack of experience. In truth most of the items are automatic so the touchscreen is used to set preferences, not to use during actual operation. In that case it’s basically just flipping between navigation, which necessarily needs a screen, or the music/radio.
I don't generally use navigation - if by chance I do need to, I clip my phone to an air vent with one of those phone holders. It works well enough for me. I understand that people like techy...
I don't generally use navigation - if by chance I do need to, I clip my phone to an air vent with one of those phone holders. It works well enough for me.
I understand that people like techy features in their cars and a complex computer interface is the only realistic way to manage these features. My issue is more with fact that you can use these interfaces while operating the vehicle.
My personal belief is that cars should be as simple and light as possible - if it isn't essential to the driving experience, I don't want it. Heated seats, multi-zone climate control, fancy internal lighting - they're all wasteful features to me; the trade off between weight and energy use versus actual utility is incredibly low.
I know I'm in the minority here though, must just be a bit old fashioned about this stuff.
This is less safe and more prone to distraction than a built in system though. The phones UX is designed to have you looking at it. Running it through Android Auto or CarPlay is much better.
I don't generally use navigation - if by chance I do need to, I clip my phone to an air vent with one of those phone holders
This is less safe and more prone to distraction than a built in system though. The phones UX is designed to have you looking at it. Running it through Android Auto or CarPlay is much better.
I don't really see how it's more distracting - when it comes down to it it's a picture of a map with some arrows on it. I suppose it takes a bit more focus to look at a smaller screen though. Like...
I don't really see how it's more distracting - when it comes down to it it's a picture of a map with some arrows on it. I suppose it takes a bit more focus to look at a smaller screen though. Like I said, I generally know where I'm going so navigation isn't important to me.
The point I was trying to make is that there's a difference between a simple navigation display and a full featured in car computer. If someone is using navigation, they will input the destination before before they start their journey. They might glance at the screen a few times throughout the drive and listen to the audio prompts, but they are not required to put any input back into the screen.
I think a better way to deal with this sort of information is with a HUD projected onto the windshield.
[rant] The day advertising shows up on a car display will be the day I'm fumbling behind the dash with a pair of wire cutters. It's already bad enough that I get daily prompts to update (at an...
[rant] The day advertising shows up on a car display will be the day I'm fumbling behind the dash with a pair of wire cutters. It's already bad enough that I get daily prompts to update (at an annual subscription cost) the data for a GPS product that's worse than what my phone provides. At a purely esthetic level, I loathe the insinuation of advertising into every aspect of life, down to the interior doors of public bathroom stalls; I don't need the further colonization of a vehicle I own.
As others have mentioned, the ergonomics on car displays are horrible. No one should have to look away from the road to perform basic actions like changing the radio station, or adjusting the screen brightness.
Driving is too damn dangerous under the best of conditions - current U.S. fatalities on the roads exceed 40,000/year. [Sidenote: the U.S. is exceptional in having double the road fatality rate per unit population of most developed nations - we drive more miles and have more fragmented regulation.] The U.S. National Highway Safety and Transportation Administration currently estimates that 10% of fatalities and 15% of traffic injuries are due to distracted driving.
There's a neat analysis here about the distraction potential and cognitive stress involved in interaction with touchscreen systems. Looking away from the road is fraught with peril at the best of times; the touchscreen locations in most current vehicles seem to be oriented to take your attention away from driving.
The one feature I find useful in a dash monitor, the backup camera display, wouldn't be necessary if cars still had adequate rear windows.
I don't know why the same investment isn't showing up as true HUD. Even then, HUD may not be a better option if it's still dependent on the closed-source, difficult to update, insecure, rapidly obsolescent operating systems in cars.
Most of the features like this are geared towards people with small children and have their hands full. Closing the lid is less of a thing than opening it automatically so you can do it with a...
Anyone who can't close a trunk lid probably shouldn't be operating a steering wheel anyway.
Most of the features like this are geared towards people with small children and have their hands full. Closing the lid is less of a thing than opening it automatically so you can do it with a handful of grocery bags and a car seat.
This whole line of argument is bizarre to me. I’m not a big fan of these interfaces either and I think it’s made designers lazy about interaction design. But these companies are doing plenty of market intelligence and research to figure out what people want. Most things aren’t doing to be geared towards you specifically, and stuff starts to make a lot more sense if you think about who a feature is for or why someone might think it’s handy.
Most companies to market research to convince themselves that people want what they want them to want. These also have a large helping of confirmation bias and other biases. Then they spend tons...
But these companies are doing plenty of market intelligence and research to figure out what people want.
Most companies to market research to convince themselves that people want what they want them to want. These also have a large helping of confirmation bias and other biases. Then they spend tons of money on advertising to convince people to want what the companies want them to want to increase sales. This is the stated goal of advertising.
Companies can’t “want” things. People in companies want things, and they muster various arguments based on various research or data points to support them. From what I’ve seen most people in the...
Most companies to market research to convince themselves that people want what they want them to want.
Companies can’t “want” things. People in companies want things, and they muster various arguments based on various research or data points to support them.
From what I’ve seen most people in the auto industry don’t really like touchscreen stuff much as it is. They feel market pressure to do it.
This is where the annoying truths about economies of scale come in. Manufacturing benefits enormously from standardization and scale, so you end up with product lines that really start to average...
This is where the annoying truths about economies of scale come in. Manufacturing benefits enormously from standardization and scale, so you end up with product lines that really start to average out to whatever the most “average” consumer wants. And with a lot of these technical features, the additional cost is really low, so once you put a computer in there, you might as well throw ALL the computer stuff in there.
Is it even possible to get a new car without a touchscreen in it any more? I haven't owned a car in many years, but every time I rent one I find myself wishing for a radio with two knobs and a few...
Is it even possible to get a new car without a touchscreen in it any more? I haven't owned a car in many years, but every time I rent one I find myself wishing for a radio with two knobs and a few presets buttons on it.
I hope this isn't too off topic, but a few years ago, nearly the same thing happened with laptops. It was around maybe 2012-2013, and while shopping around, it seemed like every laptop in the...
I hope this isn't too off topic, but a few years ago, nearly the same thing happened with laptops. It was around maybe 2012-2013, and while shopping around, it seemed like every laptop in the midrange or higher had a touchscreen for some reason. Now I barely see it unless it's a 2-in-1 or something.
This is because Microsoft was pushing Windows 8 really hard at the time, and the recommended stats included touch screen support, and Windows RT, the ARM-based (!) tablet-oriented version of the...
This is because Microsoft was pushing Windows 8 really hard at the time, and the recommended stats included touch screen support, and Windows RT, the ARM-based (!) tablet-oriented version of the operating system, required touch input as it only ran Windows Store apps using the touch-first Metro interface.
This didn't work out very well, and now Microsoft has mostly reverted to the traditional interaction paradigm with Windows 10. The touch interface is still there, as you see in the Surface line of products, but it's been deemphasized compared to Windows 8.
It was pretty bizarre to observe all of this as a Mac user.
I think it might have been more that, as a Mac user, it was weird to see Windows laptops seemingly go all-in on touchscreen laptops while Apple had zero interest in it. :p But yeah, it was a...
I think it might have been more that, as a Mac user, it was weird to see Windows laptops seemingly go all-in on touchscreen laptops while Apple had zero interest in it. :p But yeah, it was a crummy position to be in, because I felt like I couldn't avoid a part of my laptop's cost going towards touchscreen hardware I was sure I would never use.
As for cars, I can see (some) place for touchscreens, but absolutely not in place of physical buttons and dials. It's great to have, say, a full keyboard pop up only when you need it for the GPS or media player, but I agree that anything you'd want to use while driving should be tactile. I see cars that just have one flat panel on the center console and think it's both unpleasant to use and a safety hazard.
I used to not like the idea of touch screens in cars. It was one of my big reservations of getting a Tesla. But after sitting down and using one, and then going for a test drive, I was sold. Most...
I used to not like the idea of touch screens in cars. It was one of my big reservations of getting a Tesla. But after sitting down and using one, and then going for a test drive, I was sold. Most things you need are easily available with the buttons on the steering wheel or the stalks. Beyond the 2 buttons on the steering wheel, the only buttons in the car are the door release and the windows. That's it.
The minimalism is very attractive and it didn't take me long at all to adjust to using a touch screen from memory. How many of you can do everyday things on your smartphones without looking at the screen? At this point I can type comfortably without looking down. Using a well designed and functional touchscreen in a car feels the same way.
That last part is key, and frankly many automakers suck at making good touchscreens. But that doesn't seem to be the case with my Model 3 (or probably any Tesla vehicle, but I can't speak from experience on the X or S).
We heard the same things when smartphones started picking up traction, people liked to feel the buttons and would never get a touchscreen. Look where we are today. How many phones have physical buttons beyond power/volume control?
I do want a touchscreen in my car, but all I want it to do is receive CarPlay and Android Auto, and show a backup camera. On top of that, I demand a good set of physical buttons on the steering...
I do want a touchscreen in my car, but all I want it to do is receive CarPlay and Android Auto, and show a backup camera. On top of that, I demand a good set of physical buttons on the steering wheel, including one that invokes Siri. The way cars these days are shoving tons of essential functionality like AC control into their infotainment systems is absurd. The head unit in your car should essentially just act as a dumb terminal for interfacing with your phone.
Navigating with CarPlay is such a dramatic improvement over any other system I've used. I will never go back to an OEM nav system or piping Siri directions through the AUX port.
I have one and it turns out I really really don't want a touchscreen in my car. It's noticably harder to locate virtual buttons than physical ones. I have to take my eye off the road, find the...
I have one and it turns out I really really don't want a touchscreen in my car. It's noticably harder to locate virtual buttons than physical ones. I have to take my eye off the road, find the control on the screen, navigate my finger to it - which is far harder than not looking much and banging my hand into a physical control until I can grab it. I hit the wrong control on my screen all the time, I never press the wrong button for the AC or to skip music tracks or other things with physical controls.
It might sound like a small issue but I want to minimise the effort it takes to do anything in my car which might distract me from the business of driving. Fiddling about on a screen is dangerous compared to bashing a knob or button.
I use voice recognition where-ever possible because of this but Google never recognises the names of my playlists so that's super annoying. It's not bad at navigation though.
I would only want a touchscreen in my car if it is something I control. I was an early backer of Automatic because their product interfaced with my car’s built-in computer and my phone so that I...
I would only want a touchscreen in my car if it is something I control. I was an early backer of Automatic because their product interfaced with my car’s built-in computer and my phone so that I could see error codes and track things like fuel consumption and the location of my car when the engine turned off (before phones started offering this functionality in their OS). This was all useful functionality because the car computers are normally treated like appliances which end-users rarely have any interface with nor control over. Automatic since moved to a subscription model that is too expensive IMO, but the idea is still nice in theory: give car owners more insight and control over the cars they’ve paid for.
If car manufacturers started adding touchscreen interfaces that the end-user could actually control and provide utility that smartphones cannot by directly interfacing with the internal computers built into the cars, then I’d be in favor of that. But I really doubt that is going to happen because most people do want to treat their car like a dumb appliance and not a compute platform where they have to manage the OS and software on top of it.
I drive a car from the 90s and to be honest, there isn't really anything outside of the early 00s that I would want to own. These screens not only are unnecessary from a reliability and functional perspective, but also introduce an additional layer of complexity to the operation of the vehicle. The sheer amount of information available to the driver is impossible to process while still paying adequate attention to the road.
There have been times when driving modern cars that I have been distracted by the information presented in the gauge cluster and realised that I hadn't been paying attention to the road for the past five seconds or so. That might be caused by my relative unfamiliarity with these features, but as a relatively focused driver who enjoys the driving activity I could imagine that others who are less satisfied by the act of driving might be even more susceptible to these distractions. In addition to this, simple actions like changing the audio and climate controls often involve interaction with an interface that provides no tactile feedback, increasing the amount of time spent looking down - not at the road!
I think that by including complex displays in their vehicles automakers are undermining public efforts to reduce distracted driving - they are almost as distracting as mobile phones!
Not even navigation? That’s really the major driver behind having ever bigger and bigger screens.
It also becomes somewhat integrated to how you do a bunch of stuff. Once you have a bunch of seldom used features it gets unwieldy to put switches and knobs to manage them. Cars now come with stuff like massaging seats, heated seats, cooled seats, granular controls for multiple climate zones, ride modes where you optimize the steering, suspension, shifting, etc. for varying degrees of sportiness vs. economy, internal lighting controls, various kinds of audio input (phone via aux, phone via mp3, phone via Bluetooth), bluetooth syncing, Bluetooth integration with a garmin, phone and text management, satellite radio, AM/FM radio, raising or lowering ride height, preference controls for the automated driving features, cross-traffic warnings, blind spot monitoring, rear backup cameras, warning chimes for pedestrian or obstacle detection, driver side control of child safety locks, automated lift gates and doors, and on and on.
That would end up being a ton of switches, each of which is a mechanical part that’s more prone to breaking (and possibly requiring an expensive replacement or fix) than a regular touch screen. It becomes unwieldy. Stuff you access while driving should be tactile or voice controlled, but I don’t see how the other suites of features can be in a car without something like a touch screen without becoming a mess.
Most of the functions you list are unnecessary anyway...
So is 90% of modernity. I’m not sure what argument this is making. People have the features and, since we don’t live in the Soviet Union, there isn’t a central planner deciding what functions we ought to have.
The argument is that cars don’t need that many functions, and therefore don’t need such a cluttered digital interface.
Again though, people want the features and, since we don’t live in the Soviet Union, you don’t get to tell them what’s “necessary” or that they’re not allowed to have extravagances.
And many of the features I listed are safety functions, fuel economy functions, or parking aids, so good luck telling people stuff meant to prevent accidents, prolong the mechanical health of the car, or improve fuel economy are unnecessary.
How much of this is an actual rational look at what people need and how much is the old man yells at cloud meme in action?
I believe some functions currently on touchscreens might prove beneficial, but this is not true for the majority of them. Yes, a rearview camera is great for parking, but for the most time a complicated set of commands that require me to take the eyes off the road for two seconds or more is extremely dangerous. I'm not the one coming up with this data, this is not an opinion: this is the object of serious research. Two seconds off the road can be the difference between life or death. Touchscreens provide no tactile feedback, requiring constant bursts of attention that are most certainly longer than two seconds.
You overestimate the capacity of most drivers to actually use those tactile controls in a hands-free manner. I know people who have used computers for decades and are still hunt-and-peck typists somehow. Very few drivers are actually bothering to get habituated enough to do this sort of tuning without looking.
And computerized interfaces are more often automated, meaning you’re actually interacting with this stuff less. You are interacting with the touchscreen to configure preferences rather than trying to manage it while driving. Comfort features on seats mean you sit longer without fidgeting or losing focus because your shirt is bunching you behind your back.
Stuff you actually do while driving all have secondary controls on the steering wheel anyway.
In my experience both as a passenger and as a driver, it doesn't take long for one to get used to a limited and sensible set of tactile controls.
Since touchscreens require visual focus in all cases, the difficulty to manipulate tactile controls will tend to be less dangerous than the difficulty to manipulate touchscreens.
So, in one case (touchscreens), the added danger is mandatory, while in the other (tactile) it is merely a possibility.
And yet accidents per vehicle mile travelled have stayed fairly steady since the introduction of touchscreen dashes. So this doesn’t seem to be borne out. In fact, the addition of auto focused screens to the dash have likely reduced people’s likelihoods of using their phones in the car. The alternative to no touchscreens isn’t usually tactile controls. It’s people trying to achieve navigation and audio controls via their smartphones instead.
What safety concerns we have that are actually getting worse seem to be more a result of poor visibility and preference for cars with high ride-heights.
When you have a control panel of 40 buttons and knobs you’re not getting a meaningful tactile control experience for most people. If you want to argue that all cars should be frozen in state with the feature sets they had in the 90s that’s an argument to make. But unless you have a plausible alternative to modern feature sets that don’t involve having a literal keyboard’s worth of control panels on your console this world of tactile only interfaces you’re positing is pure fantasy.
Moreover “possibilities” that are so prevalent that they’re almost mandatory seems like a distinction without a difference to me.
I have an alternative to modern feature sets controlled by a touchscreen. Modern features controlled by a few well thought out physical controls and advanced features controlled by a well designed touchscreen. This is not an all or nothing decision we have to make.
For example, I drove a new Ford (I think) SUV that had adaptive cruise control. It works like normal cruise control but automatically slows you down to the speed of the car in front of you. It was quite a nice feature once I figured it out. It was activated with a single dedicated button that was with the cc controls. Advanced things, like following distance, were controlled with general use buttons on the steering wheel. An unfamiliar driver does not even need to know the following distance control exists to use this feature, they just need to press a physical button.
My dad's car has automatic headlights that are controlled by a daylight sensor (I assume). They are activated by a single extra twist click on the turn signal lever, along with all other headlight controls. New features don't need a paradigm shift of the control scheme. (side note, I still don't understand why all headlights aren't connected to a switch relay. There is zero reason that leaving your headlights on should be possible. Actually, there is no reason to have headlights off when the car is running at all. Why don't we just connect them directly to a switched relay and remove the controls completely?)
There are plenty more examples of this type of design if you look for it. I think this is sort of an extension of the "sensible defaults, but plenty of settings" type of design.
Everything you’re talking about has significant discoverability problems and, as you keep adding them on, makes the overall experience much more complicated than a textual interface with tooltips. What you’re talking about requires people to read user manuals, which they will not do.
Is that a rhetorical exaggeration? I'd hate to manipulate such a car. In fact, I'd prefer not having anything even resembling a "control panel".
I'm in the third-world, buddy. The dream of the 90s is alive in Brazil ;)
This is probably just due to lack of experience. In truth most of the items are automatic so the touchscreen is used to set preferences, not to use during actual operation. In that case it’s basically just flipping between navigation, which necessarily needs a screen, or the music/radio.
I don't generally use navigation - if by chance I do need to, I clip my phone to an air vent with one of those phone holders. It works well enough for me.
I understand that people like techy features in their cars and a complex computer interface is the only realistic way to manage these features. My issue is more with fact that you can use these interfaces while operating the vehicle.
My personal belief is that cars should be as simple and light as possible - if it isn't essential to the driving experience, I don't want it. Heated seats, multi-zone climate control, fancy internal lighting - they're all wasteful features to me; the trade off between weight and energy use versus actual utility is incredibly low.
I know I'm in the minority here though, must just be a bit old fashioned about this stuff.
This is less safe and more prone to distraction than a built in system though. The phones UX is designed to have you looking at it. Running it through Android Auto or CarPlay is much better.
I don't really see how it's more distracting - when it comes down to it it's a picture of a map with some arrows on it. I suppose it takes a bit more focus to look at a smaller screen though. Like I said, I generally know where I'm going so navigation isn't important to me.
The point I was trying to make is that there's a difference between a simple navigation display and a full featured in car computer. If someone is using navigation, they will input the destination before before they start their journey. They might glance at the screen a few times throughout the drive and listen to the audio prompts, but they are not required to put any input back into the screen.
I think a better way to deal with this sort of information is with a HUD projected onto the windshield.
[rant] The day advertising shows up on a car display will be the day I'm fumbling behind the dash with a pair of wire cutters. It's already bad enough that I get daily prompts to update (at an annual subscription cost) the data for a GPS product that's worse than what my phone provides. At a purely esthetic level, I loathe the insinuation of advertising into every aspect of life, down to the interior doors of public bathroom stalls; I don't need the further colonization of a vehicle I own.
As others have mentioned, the ergonomics on car displays are horrible. No one should have to look away from the road to perform basic actions like changing the radio station, or adjusting the screen brightness.
Driving is too damn dangerous under the best of conditions - current U.S. fatalities on the roads exceed 40,000/year. [Sidenote: the U.S. is exceptional in having double the road fatality rate per unit population of most developed nations - we drive more miles and have more fragmented regulation.] The U.S. National Highway Safety and Transportation Administration currently estimates that 10% of fatalities and 15% of traffic injuries are due to distracted driving.
There's a neat analysis here about the distraction potential and cognitive stress involved in interaction with touchscreen systems. Looking away from the road is fraught with peril at the best of times; the touchscreen locations in most current vehicles seem to be oriented to take your attention away from driving.
The one feature I find useful in a dash monitor, the backup camera display, wouldn't be necessary if cars still had adequate rear windows.
I don't know why the same investment isn't showing up as true HUD. Even then, HUD may not be a better option if it's still dependent on the closed-source, difficult to update, insecure, rapidly obsolescent operating systems in cars.
Most of the features like this are geared towards people with small children and have their hands full. Closing the lid is less of a thing than opening it automatically so you can do it with a handful of grocery bags and a car seat.
This whole line of argument is bizarre to me. I’m not a big fan of these interfaces either and I think it’s made designers lazy about interaction design. But these companies are doing plenty of market intelligence and research to figure out what people want. Most things aren’t doing to be geared towards you specifically, and stuff starts to make a lot more sense if you think about who a feature is for or why someone might think it’s handy.
Most companies to market research to convince themselves that people want what they want them to want. These also have a large helping of confirmation bias and other biases. Then they spend tons of money on advertising to convince people to want what the companies want them to want to increase sales. This is the stated goal of advertising.
Companies can’t “want” things. People in companies want things, and they muster various arguments based on various research or data points to support them.
From what I’ve seen most people in the auto industry don’t really like touchscreen stuff much as it is. They feel market pressure to do it.
This is where the annoying truths about economies of scale come in. Manufacturing benefits enormously from standardization and scale, so you end up with product lines that really start to average out to whatever the most “average” consumer wants. And with a lot of these technical features, the additional cost is really low, so once you put a computer in there, you might as well throw ALL the computer stuff in there.
Is it even possible to get a new car without a touchscreen in it any more? I haven't owned a car in many years, but every time I rent one I find myself wishing for a radio with two knobs and a few presets buttons on it.
I hope this isn't too off topic, but a few years ago, nearly the same thing happened with laptops. It was around maybe 2012-2013, and while shopping around, it seemed like every laptop in the midrange or higher had a touchscreen for some reason. Now I barely see it unless it's a 2-in-1 or something.
This is because Microsoft was pushing Windows 8 really hard at the time, and the recommended stats included touch screen support, and Windows RT, the ARM-based (!) tablet-oriented version of the operating system, required touch input as it only ran Windows Store apps using the touch-first Metro interface.
This didn't work out very well, and now Microsoft has mostly reverted to the traditional interaction paradigm with Windows 10. The touch interface is still there, as you see in the Surface line of products, but it's been deemphasized compared to Windows 8.
It was pretty bizarre to observe all of this as a Mac user.
I think it might have been more that, as a Mac user, it was weird to see Windows laptops seemingly go all-in on touchscreen laptops while Apple had zero interest in it. :p But yeah, it was a crummy position to be in, because I felt like I couldn't avoid a part of my laptop's cost going towards touchscreen hardware I was sure I would never use.
As for cars, I can see (some) place for touchscreens, but absolutely not in place of physical buttons and dials. It's great to have, say, a full keyboard pop up only when you need it for the GPS or media player, but I agree that anything you'd want to use while driving should be tactile. I see cars that just have one flat panel on the center console and think it's both unpleasant to use and a safety hazard.
I used to not like the idea of touch screens in cars. It was one of my big reservations of getting a Tesla. But after sitting down and using one, and then going for a test drive, I was sold. Most things you need are easily available with the buttons on the steering wheel or the stalks. Beyond the 2 buttons on the steering wheel, the only buttons in the car are the door release and the windows. That's it.
The minimalism is very attractive and it didn't take me long at all to adjust to using a touch screen from memory. How many of you can do everyday things on your smartphones without looking at the screen? At this point I can type comfortably without looking down. Using a well designed and functional touchscreen in a car feels the same way.
That last part is key, and frankly many automakers suck at making good touchscreens. But that doesn't seem to be the case with my Model 3 (or probably any Tesla vehicle, but I can't speak from experience on the X or S).
We heard the same things when smartphones started picking up traction, people liked to feel the buttons and would never get a touchscreen. Look where we are today. How many phones have physical buttons beyond power/volume control?
I actually think smartphones became way too reliant on touchscreens, and I want my buttons back.
I do want a touchscreen in my car, but all I want it to do is receive CarPlay and Android Auto, and show a backup camera. On top of that, I demand a good set of physical buttons on the steering wheel, including one that invokes Siri. The way cars these days are shoving tons of essential functionality like AC control into their infotainment systems is absurd. The head unit in your car should essentially just act as a dumb terminal for interfacing with your phone.
Navigating with CarPlay is such a dramatic improvement over any other system I've used. I will never go back to an OEM nav system or piping Siri directions through the AUX port.
I have one and it turns out I really really don't want a touchscreen in my car. It's noticably harder to locate virtual buttons than physical ones. I have to take my eye off the road, find the control on the screen, navigate my finger to it - which is far harder than not looking much and banging my hand into a physical control until I can grab it. I hit the wrong control on my screen all the time, I never press the wrong button for the AC or to skip music tracks or other things with physical controls.
It might sound like a small issue but I want to minimise the effort it takes to do anything in my car which might distract me from the business of driving. Fiddling about on a screen is dangerous compared to bashing a knob or button.
I use voice recognition where-ever possible because of this but Google never recognises the names of my playlists so that's super annoying. It's not bad at navigation though.
I would only want a touchscreen in my car if it is something I control. I was an early backer of Automatic because their product interfaced with my car’s built-in computer and my phone so that I could see error codes and track things like fuel consumption and the location of my car when the engine turned off (before phones started offering this functionality in their OS). This was all useful functionality because the car computers are normally treated like appliances which end-users rarely have any interface with nor control over. Automatic since moved to a subscription model that is too expensive IMO, but the idea is still nice in theory: give car owners more insight and control over the cars they’ve paid for.
If car manufacturers started adding touchscreen interfaces that the end-user could actually control and provide utility that smartphones cannot by directly interfacing with the internal computers built into the cars, then I’d be in favor of that. But I really doubt that is going to happen because most people do want to treat their car like a dumb appliance and not a compute platform where they have to manage the OS and software on top of it.