Great move. Enough of frozen screens and unresponsive interfaces right in the middle of driving. Who ever thought this was a good idea?
Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles
91–100 of 974 posts
Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles
#92Praise to Mazda for making this decision. As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user's need for touch screens in cars. For years I have been working on product interfaces (not just apps). Many studies I conducted actually told me that people favored analog controls over digital touch screens controls. It gives you tactile feedback, making it accessible for anyone with sense of touch. >…
> As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user's need for touch screens in cars The flexibility to benefit from rapid product iteration. If you think of cars as mostly software products that receive updates over the air, a flexible interface makes a lot more sense (even though I agree that it makes for a pretty bad user interface).
If we extend this idea, why not do it for airplanes? It seems like a bad idea to be changing the layout of mission-critical systems. I'm sure it'd wreak havoc if the cockpit of a 787 was all touch screens, with UI changes pushed at the whim of developers.
I drive a car with analog controls. The buttons for controlling the radio, hazard lights, the A/C, etc are all static. I wouldn't want it to change. It gets the job done; it doesn't need iteration, and messing with it would reduce safety. I don't have to look at the controls, because the buttons are of various shapes/sizes that I know. Tactile feedback is value in keeping eyes on the road.
Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles
#93I hope they are right but I still think it depends on design.
My current citroen is mostly touch controlled, but I find it requires less attention to operate than the button/dial controls on my old nissan which were horrible.
But I think the real future is voice control.
Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles
#94Praise to Mazda for making this decision. As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user's need for touch screens in cars. For years I have been working on product interfaces (not just apps). Many studies I conducted actually told me that people favored analog controls over digital touch screens controls. It gives you tactile feedback, making it accessible for anyone with sense of touch. >…
All these tactile controls are going to be deleted in the next decade as self driving cars go mainstream. This is a foolish move.
Should there be an /s tag in there somewhere? I can't tell.
Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles
#95Finally we are back to Citroen CX design putting controls on the center console: https://photos.smugmug.com/Other/86-Citroen-DX-Prestige/i-Cv...
Aren't most of the controls on your picture not on the center console? The bloody hazards button is behind the driving wheel and inaccessible to the passenger. For what it's worth I've pretty much always known the controls to be over the center console. And the instruments being there as well has been happening for some time, at least for some vehicle classes e.g. on the C3 picasso anything but the purely driving-rel…
Look at the controls behind the gear shift stick - not much but still similar to what Mazda does with the audio controls.
BTW, I have never used the hazard button while the car is in motion or at least driving very slowly.
Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles
#96I'm curious, have you used Android Auto? You get in the car and it already knows where you want to go because it has access to your calendar. It has all of your contacts and your music. As a user these are the things that matter to me, not a car company trying to serve me a "branded interface."
For music and navigation, touchscreens are OK, as these are things you don't suddenly need to adjust if something happens. But for instance the defrost function on the AC can be something that you need to immediately control while driving 60 mph, e.g. if you enter a tunnel with moist microclimate (we have one of those nearby, it fogs up your windscreen in ~10sec at some conditions). Such things need to have physical buttons with logical placement.
Volvo is perhaps the ultimate example in good UI for the AC: the buttons are shaped like a human, and you press the part of your body where you want air:
http://www.carkhabri.com/Gallery/volvo/volvo-xc60/interior/l...
Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles
#97I'm curious, have you used Android Auto? You get in the car and it already knows where you want to go because it has access to your calendar. It has all of your contacts and your music. As a user these are the things that matter to me, not a car company trying to serve me a "branded interface."
But it does not. None of my trips are in calendar. None of my music is in Google Play or any stock music player. And the last thing I need in my car is phone interface.
Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Good. There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. But Mazda's cockpit isn't plane cockpit either. Please go for a test drive with new Mazda 3 and you will be surpised how stupid is this decision. If you want to volume up, change a song, yes, it is easy. But if you want for example turn on GPS navigation, you need to use this wheel near the gearbox to: - leave a radio interface (you must look…
The proper way to do this is by voice input.
Maybe that's a particular Swiss problem, but I suspect it's actually the case in many regions (as strong local accents are a thing): I've never seen voice input that works for place names. My current car has pretty recent technology and its voice input is great for calling someone from address book, it can even understand Japanese names. But Swiss place names? Forget it, it's impossible for the standard German interface to pick that stuff up correctly, and I'm trying to speak in the most accent-free way I can manage.
Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles
#99Good. There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. When safety or productivity matters, you need more feedback, more options accessible and faster. That's also why you don't program on a tablet, even with a bt keyboard. Task switching is way to slow, not enough info directly accessible and multi tasking sucks.
> Good. There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. But Mazda's cockpit isn't plane cockpit either. Please go for a test drive with new Mazda 3 and you will be surpised how stupid is this decision. If you want to volume up, change a song, yes, it is easy. But if you want for example turn on GPS navigation, you need to use this wheel near the gearbox to: - leave a radio interface (you must look…
Doing that with a touchscreen or physical controls while driving would be illegal in most jurisdictions, no?
Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles
#100Good. There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. When safety or productivity matters, you need more feedback, more options accessible and faster. That's also why you don't program on a tablet, even with a bt keyboard. Task switching is way to slow, not enough info directly accessible and multi tasking sucks.
Touchscreens became fashionable due to the iPhone and iPad hype. Welcome to IT, have a look at the upcoming fashions in the summer catalog.
Once something has been sold to nearly half the population of the planet for a decade or more, you can't sensibly call it a "fashion".
Apple were the first people to deploy high quality capacitive multi touch screens to the general public, with a gesture UI underneath for things like pinch zoom. This was an amazing improvement over previous handheld systems.