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Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

motorauthority.com

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Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#101

Post by petepete »

Arbalest wrote: post #66
petepete wrote: post #60

It's a case of picking the right tool for the job, touchscreens aren't entirely awful. But if I'm driving and I want to switch to Radio, the button should always be in the exact same place so I don't need to think. My car has buttons for all these operations and it's great. What is bad for is browsing the map when I'm parked; say I'm looking for a car park near my destination, by the time I've zoomed out with a scrol…

> the button should always be in the exact same place so I don't need to think. I don't think that thinking is the problem, the problem is looking to locate.

It is, because if you look at your touch screen controls and it's in another mode, you need to think about how you get out and back to radio.

When there's a button that says 'Radio' on it that never moves, you don't need to look _or_ think.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#102

Post by m_mueller »

cyxxon wrote: post #75

I was actually pondering buying a Mazda, but now I am not so sure. Generally I get the idea - please give me hardware buttons for radio/music volume, temperature control, or to toggle suspension modes or whatever. But I want to use e.g. the Spotify on my phone, and Google Maps. Someone further down commented that it seemed to him that car makers have given up on their own branded version if car software, and ohmygod…

That middle ground exists pretty much exactly the way you describe in recent VW group cars.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#103

Post by usrusr »

rapht wrote: post #22
diggan wrote: post #8

Recently switched from a Renault Captur (with touchscreen) to an Audi A3 (without touchscreen) and the amount of focus the touchscreen requires compared to a non-touchscreen with a radial button is amazingly scary. How did anyone thought it was a good idea in the first place? Can't imagine going back to having a touchscreen now, and hope they slowly disappear from everything cars.

Exactly ; I had a similar experience sometime back when I was lent a 2010 Audi A4 for a few months, there was a quite natural control knob placed much like in the article's pics. It really is night and day compared to my brand new Peugeot where you have to look at the screen -and wait for the interface to update on each action- to do basically anything that is not taking a call / moving the volume / changing the trac…

And yet the article cites Audi to be giving in to pressure from the fearless (and from Tesla?), moving from the established rotary to touchscreens in future models.

I guess that when you already had touchscreens, it's much easier to sell haptic interfaces as an improvement than when you avoided touchscreen from the beginning. "Still no touchscreens" vs "already beyond touchscreens", even when they have the exact same controls.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#104

Post by seszett »

comboy wrote: post #17
karavelov wrote: post #6

Finally we are back to Citroen CX design putting controls on the center console: https://photos.smugmug.com/Other/86-Citroen-DX-Prestige/i-Cv...

I can't imagine reaching those without "applying torque to the steering wheel" (or straight blocking it which is much worse).

They're very easy to reach with you right hand while holding the wheel with your left hand.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#105

Post by TeMPOraL »

quakenul wrote: post #88
marapuru wrote: post #47

Praise 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).

> having a flexible interface makes a lot more sense

For business, not the user.

And honestly I expect the answer is simpler: this enables them to subcontract out the UI part and run it in parallel with the development of the rest of the car, because the UI can no longer affect anything else in the car design.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#107

Post by Angostura »

quakenul wrote: post #88
marapuru wrote: post #47

Praise 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).

Because who know when the volume control might get iterated out of existence

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#108

Post by jillesvangurp »

lisper wrote: post #36
mevile wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. Have you seen photos of a 737 Max cockpit... https://www.google.com/search?q=737+max+cockpit&tbm=isch Compare it with a 737-200 cockpit: https://www.google.com/search?q=737-200+cockpit&tbm=isch

I'm pretty sure [1] none of those are touch screens. However, there are aircraft avionics with touch screens, for example: https://www.avidyne.com/products/ifd/index.html [1] I'm a private pilot so I'm pretty familiar with the state of the art in aircraft avionics, but I don't fly a 737.

It takes a while for things to trickle down to certified jets and touchscreens are still relatively new. It will come: https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/airbus-aims-for-a...

If recent business jets are an indication, it's all touch based at the high end already. Also, Ipads are getting pretty popular for pilots. My understanding is that most pilots would bring one by default (two plus extra batteries typically) and that especially for GA, there is a lot of equipment and software that integrates with them. One odd thing is that some pilots use ipads to control equipment in the plane because of UI and UX issues. E.g. you can control a garmin 530 with an ipad and it seems like pilots prefer doing that because it is just easier.

I think both in cars and in the aviation industry there is the notion that the companies manufacturing UIs there are not necessarily that good at it because historically their focus was more hardware oriented. The UX of especially older equipment can be kind of clunky. E.g. many planes have an fms (flight management system) with a non qwerty keyboard that looks like it was designed in the nineteen sixties and just never updated. You still find the same design in relatively new planes like the A319.

I agree that it is nice to have physical controls for some thing. E.g. I love volume dials. But overall, touch is great when hardware designs result in very complex UX.

So, I suspect that Mazda getting rid of touchscreens is more their own inability to do good UI than any inherent problems with touch screens. The rest of the industry seems to be trying to catch up to Tesla. I recently sat in a very new Renault with Android Car and a big touch screen. It's a very nice upgrade from the previous generation which was very clunky to use and had lots of annoying bugs. Renault outsourcing the UI to a company that has a clue was a big improvement for them they were just hopelessly out of their depth.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#109

Post by TeMPOraL »

lobotryas wrote: post #76
kkarpkkarp wrote: post #56

Earlier 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…

Your argument doesn’t make sense to me. Why would you do any of that WHILE DRIVING?? That’s both dangerous and foolish. As for key presses to navigate a menu you would be surprised how quickly a human memorized exactly how many times to press what buttons to get to where they want to go. In my current car I know that if I press Home, down x3, and OK I will end up in the Media menu. I can do all this without taking mu…

Incidentally, that was the aspect of old feature phones I most miss today. I could operate them without looking by muscle memory - and it worked because the UI was fixed, but more importantly, it was soft-real time: the delays were predictable and you could learn them too. Today's touch devices tend to lag completely randomly.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#110

Post by ehnto »

kkarpkkarp wrote: post #56
sametmax wrote: post #10

Good. 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…

You shouldn't be doing anything like that while driving. Also if it's physical in any way you can build accurate muscle memory and know without looking that you have gone to the right spot. This is almost never the case with touch screens interfaces.

There is no safe way to interface with a screen while driving. You are taking your eyes off the road, and your focus goes with it necessarily. The safest option is no screens. It's the only reason I would never get a Tesla. If it's mission critical it needs to be physical.

It's different in a plane, because you can safely take your eyes off the sky. In fact flying by instruments only is routinely the only choice; night time, weather. So a glass cockpit/touch screen controls make sense there. But even then the key controls are still physical.

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