12mo ago

The media controls on my car. Previous and Next are Up and Down. Volume Up and Down are Right and Left.

139 comments

This layout makes sense if you have used an old school mp3 player or similar.
Volume is left and right because it’s an analog of the volume bar on the screen.
Up and down is previous and next because play was controlled by a list UI so you were moving a cursor up and down between songs.
It’s not how I personally would prefer it, but it’s not as outlandish as it seems.
- That makes a lot of sense. I still hate it, but i understand the justification for it now.
- Probably also matches to a visible screen with track visibility, so up and down is literally moving between tracks
- The up and down, in this case, also correspond with how the menus work on the HUD or Center control panel. Source, MINI owner since 2009.
- Thank you for making this make more sense.
- I still feel like this is sillt... I've owned a lot of mp3 players and none of them worked this way. Was this a zune thing or something?
  
  Every mp3 player I owned in the 2000’s worked this way. Screen above, controls below, list UI for tracks, usually volume rocker or dial on top.
  Sometimes the UI would be more complicated and would include a left/right button for navigating horizontal menus (like my all time favorite Zen Vision:M) but the basic playlist was still a vertical scrolling list UI.

Hey, at least it's not a touch screen :)
- Nailed it. Even the worst interface with buttons is miles away from the best touchscreen interface. You are like driving, you aren't supposed to look at the screen and tap things on it to switch a song or whatever. You navigate a missile that weights at least two tones and can undo a crowd of pedestrians or break a wall in a building. You are in no position to focus on this tiny LED that some insane idiot mounted there. Yet, it's there.
  
  I have done some research into cars, some Skoda Octavias now have the issue of the infotainment just freezing on you, now thats where you control all climate and stuff imagine getting into the car you set the AC to strong and then that shit freezes and you are stuck with your AC on max freezing you up, well actually you don't have to imagine that's exactly what happened, lol

My wife just reminded me that she was asked to take a survey about this car after she bought it.
She complained about these buttons being oriented stupidly, and the survey taker mentioned that this has been a common complaint for years. Nevertheless, BMW / Mini has stayed the course. Users be damned.
- Begs the question - what exactly is the survey for, then?
  
  probably crowd sourcing tests for more critical errors.
  "did your car suddenly stop while going at 90 mph?"

The speak-button looks like a farting stick-figure.

Ampersands on Lemmy, mildly infuriating
- &ampersands*
- For me they show correctly on Eternity, unless OP has edited them by now. The trick is to use &, in case anyone is interested.
- Fixed. It was appearing correctly in Voyager, but not in the OG web client.

I want to know why do many cars don't have a play/pause button on the wheel, but do have a source button.
I change my source from my phone exactly never. I want to pause the audio all the time.
- bro I swear whoever designs the interfaces in cars must be the CEO's nephew
- My Hundyai has a programmable star button on the steering wheel that can be tied to media on/off.
  
  Kia also.
  
  Fully remappable steering wheel buttons is a great idea.
- I've been wishing for play pause since audio books and podcasts came into the world. It's ridiculous that nobody has this button in 2024
  
  My Jeep has it and it's from 2018.
- I change the source regularly between my phone and the radio, but I don't use any of the wheel buttons, so I'm not even sure if my car has a source button on it.

Drove a Kia once and it was the same. Up went back a track, down went forwards. Opposite of my intuition.
- Those directions make sense to me. If I view a playlist on my phone or PC, it runs top to bottom and skipping a track goes down the list.
  If they're on a wheel with volume then volume should absolutely be up/down and next/back be right/left, though.
- Current Kia isn't like this
- Hyundai is the same, even on current models.
  
  I have a Hyundai and this is not the case. Maybe it's regional.

Yet one more item in an endless exhibit of how mankind is unable to standardize anything at all. Get TWO engineers together to agree on ONE standard plug and the assholes will come out with THREE separate plugs, completely non-compatible with each other, of course.
It's almost like a miracle that we got the world to agree on certain things like time and timezones, a system of coordinates, the metric system.
All of them received initial pushback, and some to this day. Noisy, noisy fucking humans.
Did you know that for a few decades, every town in the UK kept two different times on adjacent clocks? Back when their railway grid was expanding everywhere. Local time and London time.
- Funny enough, it's not the engineers that are doing it. Left to their own devices without ridiculous constraints like "someone else is doing it this way so we need you to do something that sets us apart" or "you can't look at what everyone else is doing", engineers will do it the laziest way they can..... By copying what others are doing and essentially making it standard.
  
  Yeah usually when engineers take extra effort to do something non-standard, it's at a specific request from a client or management
  
  Have you ever been to an oil and air filter warehouse?
  Some are more common than others, but there are hundreds of different types, and some of them vary by a millimeter in diameter from the more common ones.
  They couldn't design the inlet to fit a pre-existing filter already in circulation, no sir, instead of any sort of compatibility they felt compelled to make up their own fucking specification and parameters that varied by a tenth of a percentage point.
  That can only be the work of engineers, and from the looks of that oil filter warehouse, or from the different types of electrical sockets, the contrary bastards are everywhere, they REFUSE to meaningfully communicate with each other, and will NOT listen to reason.
  More recently, look at crypto. For every well-meaning and thoughtful endeavor like Bitcoin or Ethereum, there are ten thousand shitcoins. Many are just greedy con jobs, but many are also due to stubborn and petty, noisy squabbles over minutiae. Suddenly the whole damn space was a hive of useless noise and confusion.
- timezones
  I beg to differ on that one https://youtu.be/J1kOkoma_hM?si=f7bpphN7fGRk587B
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
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Wouldn't it be nice if an engineer had decision making power?
- Engineer here. It's like that because that's the way it's always been. To change it would mean retooling silk-screen printing on the D-pad, and changing the wiring underneath. And they probably use this D-pad everywhere, so someone like me will have to talk to someone else like me, and right now I have phone shyness (can't just be an email, have to call a meeting). I'll also have to talk to a supplier and get them to change the wiring, and Procurement won't let me just change anything, because it gives suppliers a chance to requote a job, and they'll ask for more money. And then I'll have to talk to Production, because they'll have to retrain the workers, make sure someone doesn't stop the line because this new part doesn't look exactly like the old part. Oh, and Quality of course, need to make sure the inspectors don't start rejecting the new parts (just kidding, they never look at parts). Then there's Marketing. Since this is a customer-facing part, definitely need their input. Might have to change catalogs and brochures with new pictures.
  No, they just got the good brand of gummy bears in the cafeteria, I'm going to go buy a bag of those, and then fill out these forms my new boss has been asking about. New boss, new forms, same old shit.
  
  Remapping gpio pins doesn't require changing wiring, but it might require tracking a unique firmware revision.
  
  Sounds like a proper project to me. No wonder companies keep the same stuff for way too long. If it’s not horribly broken and on fire, don’t fix it. Being slightly broken is apparently totally fine though.
  
  Nothing personal, but that's bullshit on the company. Rotate the entire assembly 90° to the direction where the next track arrow points right, and counter rotate the ok gel button so that it's properly up and down. I can't imagine a silk screen template is that engrained. There might be some mounting screw difference, but adjust that in manufacturing from your parts suppliers. No reengineering of the harness necessary. This is just pure laziness.
- You mean a designer right? Developers and engineers are the ones making these weird decisions
  
  Managers make weird decisions, engineers and developers just do what they're told when it comes to user facing experiences.

Same in my 2017 Toyota. Bought it new and trained my brain to use it. Someone finally released a replacement that's set up correctly, and now I'm relearning the control.
- Yeah that was one of the many things that annoyed me in pre-2020 Toyotas, along with the insane baked-in audio delay and the hilariously ridiculous manually-stored images for songs and artists.

Preach! When did you ever hear someone say "please turn the volume right" or "can you play the up track"? It drives (NPI) me crazy in my Toyotas!

My VW is this way and it’s infuriating. It drives me nuts that Down is Next, it’s so backwards.
Volume should be up/down, and track left/right.
I’m curious if the left/right would be language dependent? English is left to right, so Right would be Next. Would Hebrew and Arabic be the opposite since they’re right to left languages?
- It drives me nuts that Down is Next, it’s so backwards.
  How is that backwards? If you have music in a playlist in a media player app (or iPod or other MP3 player), the next song is underneath the one you're currently playing.
  
  Which direction do you move your finger to access the next song on your phone when. Looking at a play list.
  Your finger moves up then taps the one you want.
  You could just as easily say that next should be up.
  Both are wrong.
  Next should be left, volume should be up / down.
- Oof yes, my Kia ev6 too. Down is next. In my BMW up was next.
- I have my now old VW because their design was so intuitive. Sad how much worse they've become in the past 10 years in design and quality
  
  I have only had one car, a 2021 Seat Leon, qnd the media controls are great, but spread out on the steering wheeel...
  The volume control is located on the left side, it is a wheel, roll it up, volume goes up, roll it down, volume goes down, push the wheel, and the music is paused. Next/Previous buttons are located on the right side of the steering wheel, works great!
  Now, if only it didn't have touch controls for everything outside the steering wheel...
- Down is next because it's a list of songs with the first song at the top and the last at the bottom.
  Frankly it's the orientation that makes the most sense when you consider it given most people will be listening from a streaming service, but back when CDs were a thing the songs weren't considered a list but tracks numbered from 1 to n. The up button incremented the track number and so it made sense for up to be next.
  Going even further to tapes, fast forward and rewind literally moved the tape left to right/right to left, and so it made sense for them to be right and left respectively, however now it makes less sense other than being what older people are used to
  
  Having grown up in the tape era, the right button being next / fast forward just make sense.
  I can see on a screen that you'd scroll down to get to the bottom of a playlist, but isn't your finger moving up?
  This is the classic problem of inverted vertical controls or not?
  Just avoid it altogether and make the back / skip button left / right respectively, and volume be up / down which just makes obvious sense.

I drove this make of car for a while; there's an optional head up display where the up and down buttons here let you cycle through contacts/the song queue/radio stations. I'd imagine it's the same interface without it, just displayed somewhere in the car where you're not looking while driving.
Having it so that up/down moves you up/down through the list when there's a visual display is way more intuitive than up/down being volume - frankly the volume bar on Windows, Mac, many TVs etc. goes from left (quiet) to right (loud) anyway

Think of it like this. Up arrow is forward and the down arrow is back. The volume then increases from left to right like most linear scales (that aren’t up and down). Yes the buttons should be the other way but there was probably some (poor) reasoning to why they are this way.
- As someone mentioned in the comments, it might be because the media is displayed as a vertical list on the car’s display.

This is a Mini Cooper steering wheel.

Made by people that use a volume slider and swipe for next... Such a horrible design in cars.

Clearly you're meant to have the car on its side before playing any media
- True. On its left side.
  
  Well it is a Japanese car, and they drive on the left side in Japan

The up and down are used to go up and down in menus lists. It matches the animations as well. It would be infuriating if those buttons were on the horizontal.
- Hmmm but I think volume up and down, selection left and right are age old. And you shouldn't look at the screen anyway
  
  For sure, most screens in cars are dangerously implemented. My 2015 Mini has a transparent HUD so I don’t have to look away from the road. No touchscreen either. Long live tactile interfaces in cars.
- So what you’re saying is, drivers should take their eyes off the road to look at a list of songs on a screen? Sounds like another horrible design decision.
  
  You don't have to look at the car's main media screen. A simplified list UI is replicated onto a small window that temporarily shows up next to the speedometer.
  
  The expectation for everything is to only use the screen when you're stopped, plus how else would you navigate a menu? Memorize it?

So my question is, which is next: up or down?
- Down
- I was confused first too when my car had the same kind of control for media. It's completely logical when you take a look on the playlist on your phone.
  
  I believe my Prius is up for next, as in go to the next highest index song.
  Both make sense, so in a way neither do
  Gen 2 Prius had both left and right, with the volume clearly labeled as up to the right

Return the car, it's obviously built by morons.

My pet peeve has always been when media controls (like volume) are on the right side of the steering wheel rather than the left.
To me it makes a lot less sense to put them on the right when my right hand is already 10 inches away from another set of media controls (left-hand drive vehicle).
My 2004 Mazda, 2018 Mazda, and 2011 Kia all had it figured out and pretty much used the same layout for media controls and accessories like cruise control. My Ford, however, seems like no thought was put into it.
- On left hand drive I'm guessing?
  
  Sounds like.
  I wonder if left or right steering is more common, like if you were just going to give every car the same steering wheel.

Name and shame. What make and model?
- Mini Cooper S. Been a Mini thing for years. It’s infuriating.
  
  That is a bummer. BMW owns them now ans I LOVE the media controls on ours. Simple & straightforward.

If you're turning left, they'll be correct
- Volume will. Next and previous will be backward.

Fellow Mini owner. This is only one of the many questionable UI decisions made in my car. I literally had to get help to get it started the first time.
- What model do you have? My 2015 Cooper S is just a foot on the break, and tap start. Like most newer cars.
  
  I've got a 2018 mini cooper SE hybrid. It has a little switch to turn on. The switch has its light on when the car is turned off and it's light off when the car is turned on. It also has a third state after you get out of the car where it's not really on or off but you can't charge it or drive it until you turn it completely on or off. And you can't turn it on if you don't have it in neutral. And it doesn't really tell you if the parking break is on except a little light on the center console which you never see, so the car may be on but you won't be able to drive it because the parking brake is on. Sometimes it wont let you unplug it until you lock it and unlock it again for some reason.
  And don't even get me started on the CarPlay or the driver profiles or the park assist menu that overstays its welcome by about 3 minutes.
- This is so intensely annoying I would hack the shit out of the steering wheel to DIY a fix to this monstrosity. Or I'd just sell the damn car.
- Did you read manual as result?
  
  Fuck no. I handled it like a man and trial and errored it for weeks. I am ashamed to say that I had to ask the dealer for assistance to drive it off the lot because I was blocking people and they were getting pissed.

This is actually exactly how my telly remote works. Left and right are volume down and up respectively, up and down are next channel and previous channel respectively.

At least you have those ridges dividing the directions. My car has similar but oriented correctly and no ridges. All too often I skip to next when trying to increase volume. It’s really annoying

My folks had a Volvo where the radio had 2 knobs and two buttons with arrows. One knob was volume, makes sense. The other knob and arrow buttons controlled the radio tuner and the thing to switch inputs from radio to cd to usb or whatever.
So on one hand you've got radio channels with about a hundred different options (90.1, 90.3, 90.5, etc), and on the other hand you've got maybe 5 different inputs. Guess which thing the knob controlled.
- So you tell us what the knobs do, then ask us what the knobs do? Is that because you lied to us, or just want to make sure we're capable of remembering what we just read?
  
  The knob and buttons are separate controls. One controlled the frequency on the radio, one controlled the inputs.
  The question was: which one do you think the knob controlled, frequency or inputs?

Rotate the ~~controls~~ the whole car 90 degrees CCW.
- It's on the steering wheel. He can just steer and that solves the problem.
  
  Yep, steer perpetually to the left. Maybe play Beyonce in the background.

Is it a Japanese car?
- explain?
  
  I have a Mazda CX-5. The track seek buttons are counterintuitive IMO, and the Adaptive Cruise distance buttons are too.
  Next track is UP, previous track is DOWN. Not like going down a list.
  Adaptive Cruise control is UP to increase distance, DOWN to decrease. This seems like it would make sense, but I would prefer it the other way. UP to get closer, DOWN to pull back the distance

Makes perfect sense while you are holding a stick drift!

I would risk life and limb to crack that open and find a way to right this wrong.

I confirm that on a MINI Cooper the controls are also this way and the same as infuriating.

Fucking Christ that is stupid. That would drive me insane.
- ...drive me
  I see you

Same as my Toyota. It's a crazy indicator of how we expect things to be, but it's absolutely not a deal breaker.
- My Tacoma, as well. Recently, I modded that to function correctly (up/down vol, R/L track). Easily the best $50 I've spent on the vehicle.
  
  Does that screw up the controls for navigating the dashboard menu?

I'm lucky that my Subaru has it right. Left right are back forward and up down is volume. My only complaint is that the button in the middle is mute, rather than pause. I can pause CDs, bluetooth audio, and even live radio. Why in hell would I ever choose mute over pause?
- Why have a mute button when you could turn the radio off?
  
  Because resuming from mute or pause has less delay. Particularly if using a CD or bluetooth audio.
- yea Subaru does have it right. i was driving a Corolla and the buttons don't even control the touch screen at all i don't even know why they are there.

Cars should come with ✖️⭕🟪🔺

My VW is like this as well. I don't like it either.

People actually use the steering wheel controls??? I use the cruise buttons but that's it
- I mean... Yes? If there's a way to do something without having to take my hands off the steering wheel I'll use that
- I mean... that's what they're there for.

139 comments