Touchscreens Are Out, and Tactile Controls Are Back

It's in the works.

something, something, open source car.

Hahaha, that's cute.

Also the fact that touch screens are cheaper to build with how expensive battery tech has been in electric cars.

Touchscreens are great to have, controlling Android Auto or Apple Carplay with physical buttons like you have to do in a Mazda is a nightmare.

The problem is when the touchscreen is used as a replacement for physical controls, instead of an addition. Stuff like controlling your climate control should not be exclusively controlled through the touchscreen

And don't even get me started about VWs stupid decision to put touch controls on the steering wheel. At least they backpedaled on that decision pretty quickly

I love my touchscreen, it’s great for media control, map, etc.

Mind you that is all it does, every other feature is behind a physical button. Which I also love.

Touchscreen for some things, physical for the rest.

In my 2021 Seat Leon the controls for defogging the windscreen and the heated rear window (both essential in Sweden) are placed on a cluster of touch buttons below and to the left of the steering wheel.

It is insane, you have to take you eyes off the road and lean forward to press them.

Also, to activate the seat heater, you need to access the climate panel on the infotainment, so you loose the view of any CarPlay navigation.

The car has dedicated touch surfaces to change the AC temp, but the main ones are next to the power button touch area for the infotainment, and none of the areas are illuminated.

I like my car, it is fun and comfortable, but the overreliance of touch controls is infuriating at times.

Touchscreens are cheaper UI part too. It saved money and "looked cool"... Win-win for shareholders

Touch screens also seem like they would be easier to integrate with subscription services. Auto manufacturers are looking to make things like heated seats a subscription.

Cars have been getting steadily worse. There doesn’t seem to be any enforcement of recalls (has anyone satisfactorily had the Honda Civic 2016-2021 air conditioning resolved? How much did you spend?)

If they can take cars away from us entirely, and move to us renting self driving cars, that’s what they would really want to do. Pay for your radio, pay for heat and AC…

A screen is legally required for the backup camera in the US since 2016.

my issue isn't really with the brightness, it's the height. Don't get me wrong bright headlights are annoying as fuck, but a huge ass truck behind me with their headlights literally higher than my back window is insane.

I hope European-style adaptive headlights become the norm in the USA eventually. Some higher-end cars have a matrix of LEDs instead of one bulb per headlight, and they can programmatically dim just some of the LEDs. If you have your headlights on but there's a car in front of you (or on the other side of the road, whatever), the high beam will dim just the area the car is in. This happens automatically while you're driving.

This is an option in some European vehicles (or may be standard on high end ones) but they have to explicitly disable the feature when exporting to the USA.

The USA did approve something relating to this, but it must not be sufficient since the European manufacturers are still disabling the feature in the USA.

SHUT UP ABOUT THE SUN

That and buttons that are almost as flat as touchscreens.

I want my clickety-click Fallout and Star Wars rugged industrial feeling.

Its worse in the rain and even worse still in the snow.

Never had an issue with them but then I live in Europe, where auto-adjusting/adaptive lights aren't just legal it's a requirement if you want to make the headlights permanent high-beams.

That's true.

With a T9 phone, I used to be able to send a complete text message without ever taking my eyes off the road.

Now that I've got a touchscreen I'm swerving all over the place every time I try to text. It's way less safe.

One word. Tesla.

It became the Apple of automobiles and everyone was rushing to copy them. Then came the fall of Elon and everyone is realizing how full of shit the company is.

Cheap tech that looks expensive, that is why we have touch screens. Also harder to repair for the customer to do. A physcial button is easy to replace and quick.

There's a kind of people who think they don't need to know an industry to know where it's heading and where the progress is.

Mobile computers being thinner and replacing buttons with touchscreens are from that kind of delusions.

Now built-in chatbots with voice recognition and synthesis are all the rage. If you remember that "elevator in Scotland" sketch.

I recently learned that in my car the same light is used to indicate that the parking brake is on and that the brake fluid is low. Nothing bad happened, and it's getting worked on, but my first thought was that the sensor on the brake must be broken. It's poor design, seemingly without reason.

I asked a dealer for a dumb-car. No fucking auto 911 dialing, bluetooth enabled, GPS service horseshit, just a normal car and he shot me

Well, there are some strategies:

• data collection - remove/disable the antenna/broadcasting chip - in some cars it's as easy as removing a fuse, in others you need to take things apart to remove the TCU or modem
• subscription-based features - don't buy them and look for hacks to enabled them w/o buying
• death of sedans - buy sedans

Unfortunately, that's a drop in the bucket since it seems the market in general wants larger cars with more spyware, and aren't pushing back enough on subscription BS.

I'm actively looking for a car, and unfortunately the process is:

1. find models we want to try out
2. look up online about how to disable the spyware nonsense
3. actually go look at cars
4. repeat from 1 as necessary
5. play dealership games because the private used market is essentially gone
6. actually remove spyware

We're on step 3, and I'm not looking forward to step 5. I've actually never purchased from a dealer before, because I've bought everything before now from a private seller. Wish me luck...

Get any Infiniti with a 3g antenna. The network doesn’t exist anymore so it can’t phone home.

Here's my rule: Anything in my Chevy S10 that you control by turning a knob, moving a lever, or momentarily push a button? That needs to be a physical control in a car. Anything where you push and hold a button, or mash a button multiple times (like setting the clock or turning off the DRLs respectively) can be moved to a settings menu in a touch screen. These things shouldn't be done while moving.

And no, touch sensitive single-function panels like the climate controls in my father's Avalon are not good enough, it needs to be a mechanical control that you can feel for without activating.

10 years and counting

There's so much bullshit in new cars that's it's infuriating, especially considering the cars call home with all kinds of privacy violating bullshit.

Never mind that even 3-5 years down the line, some of these systems will fail to connect/ pair with the latest gadget in your pocket.

The other day I saw a mid-90s shitbox in the parking lot and it made me so hopeful for my 2008 car. Like, that's a sign my car has at least 10 more years in it.

I like my car safe, but dumb as rocks otherwise.

I always find that funny. I got my first car with radars and auto adjusting cruise control and so on and it's much safer than the 2 years older Jetta I was driving before. If I'm distracted it warns me if there's something on the road, it warns me if I act tired (swaying and going over the lines), if cruise is on it automatically slows down if the car in front of me slows down without braking...

You're like people complaining about ABS in the motorcycle world even though it brakes faster than the majority of riders in conditions where it turns on...

I've noticed this with modern standards. They just don't have the same experience because nothing is actually linked. It's all electronic. I miss the feeling of the linkage as I moved through the gears. Feeling the disc touch as you let out the clutch. There was a magic to that. Now it has the feeling of setting on your hand for too long.

The term is «affordance»

I don't know Don, I'm sure he's a fine guy, but I've read about all these kinds of rules (EDIT: emerging) much earlier - as early as 1940s, with airplanes and cars and other machines in production and in front lines that people had to operate for long hours under strain and make as few mistakes as possible.

Even USSR, not the Rome of ergonomics, had GOSTs for average ratio of errors an operator makes on a certain machine, machines had to be inside those numbers in tests involving people, or they wouldn't get adopted into wide usage.

Note how the criterion is defined. Not formalities like the shape of something or the layout conforming to some vague definition, but the results of an actual test on people. Of course, though, there were also a myriad GOSTs as to how the specific controls may look, a GOST for every detail one could use in a device.

Just because the technology is there and cheaper does not mean that humans can push aside their physiological limitations in a critical situation.

Have you considered the shareholders though?

You mean like the 1985 Subaru XT Coupe? God I love that cassette futurism look!

did 80s VCRs even have OSD? we went from a top loading National to a hi-fi so basically skipped the 80s. and 90s VRC UX would be perfectly acceptable as far as I'm concerned.

80s and early 90s designed the best dashboards. Change my mind mf.

Leading expert on buttons says to use buttons?

Mild shock

Seriously though they are needed for many features especially cars or eyes away

I’m just shocked that’s a cinema and media studies professor. I’d’ve expected human factors engineering or psychology, especially at such a psych school

Id settle just for a truck that isnt very clearly pandering "im a big boy!" energy. There all way too fucking big for no god damn reason other than validation of ego. Bunch of weak fucking man babies need some million ton 3 lane wide truck just so they can pretend theyre a big strong man to themselves and everyone else, despite never using the truck for what its purpose is supposed to be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax?wprov=sfla1

RIGHT?? I want an 8-foot bed, dammit!

You could make money from that. Trace the execs, get nice shiny photos to the tech, write some good copy, and publish "The Encyclopaedia of garbage tech" so that people in the future can ridicule and possibly learn from their stupidity.

Having worked with people in that industry they don't care. They always just want to shake things up then move to next thing to say they did something at their old job. Then forget all about it once they did the next thing.

Thank Tesla.

The book cover would be a photo of Musk 😆

woody_harrelson_wiping_tears_with_cash.jpg

Touch screens are cheaper, that's why they did it.

When I’m driving, it’s actually unsafe for my car to be operated in that way

being able to consistently and reliably operate the thing without taking your eyes off the road

Considering they'd just spent the previous few questions discussing the visual-first aspect of touchscreens and accessibility issues for the visually impaired, I think that's exactly what they were talking about.

The generalizations are about completely different devices. They talk about CT machines & automatic defibrillators later.

The worst is all the ones that cheaped out and put a resistive touchscreen. Making it 10 times worse.

And they dont work with gloves when it's cold.

What I care more about is making cars... cars. Visit a dealership in the US and it's 98% SUV/Truck and 2% sedans.

Modern cars are designed in wind tunnels. We'll never get the cool designs back.

Sounds like exactly the right way to talk about physical buttons to me.

they want to push a lot of buttons on those controls

LOL

Even with a lot of buttons available, good videogame controls are simple and narrow. Natural combinations add depth without overcomplicating things.

Because they are expensive. More importantly, how often does the function of a button is changed? Top right corner button on android is usually a back button (arrow/ x) or a profile icon. How often does a bottom navigation in an app change? Dashboard is an app that rarely changes.

I will do you one better. The screen in the button goes out. If the button changes the display based on the context, what does the button do? Is software responsible to recognize it cannot display an action and do something? What does it do? Should the user be responsible to remember what does the button do based on the context? This article is about return to physical buttons because they are reliable. Do you see any button on your cars dashboard that is unlabeled? Do you remember looking up in a manual what a weirdly iconed button does? On any piece of hardware.

This is from users perspecrtive alone.

Lets do the manufacturer. Imagine that screen buttons have SKUs. Dashboards have SKUs. Screen buttons have versioned drivers. Screen buttons need power delivery. Data lanes on pcbs. And fuck else.

Now imagine that you have a physical button. It costs cents. It closes one lane. Maybe needs power for a led.

Who the fuck wants screen buttons?

Finally. What the fuck multiple screen buttons solve that a single screen that can be any number of any buttons couldnt?

Because sure as fuck they wont solve for context, clarity and reliablity.

Because touch screens are cheap and put the onus of design onto the programmers of apps.

each function has its own independent metal toggle switch

one steering wheel to steer left, and one to steer to the right

I want switches on the headliner so I feel like a pilot

Yes, and we also need that for personal computers.

I mean, monochrome easy on the eyes displays being all you need to normally use it. All the fancy stuff on a separate hires color display that may even not be there.

We will have proper computing in our age.

Returning proper controls for most things is just the first step.

I drive a '91 Jeep Cherokee and it has a wattered down version of this, I have never felt more powerful turning on the rear wiper.

Vote with your wallet.

They can state all they want, if their clients don't pay for it they'd sell their firstborn son to get the numbers back up