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Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

motorauthority.com

131–140 of 974 posts

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#131

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. >…

In my Mazda, above 5MPH the touchscreen doesn't respond to touch any more and you need to use the rotary controller (which is good as muscle memory allows you to use it effectively)

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#132

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…

People do, because they can. It doesn't matter whether they should or not.

When you design something, you don't design for ideal use, you design to eliminate risky misuse. This is a core axiom of user interface design. It's not good enough to just slap a warning disclaimer on it, as the designer, you're still liable.

I would have my engineering licence revoked if I ignored possible avenues of misuse, could design them out but didn't, and then ended up in court because they misused it and someone died. This isn't a hypothetical, this is how it works in the non-software world where engineering decisions can routinely kill people.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#134

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. >…

All these tactile controls are going to be deleted in the next decade as self driving cars go mainstream. This is a foolish move.

Last time I was in a cab it had controls in the back for the AC, a light, the windows etc. - just because I'm not driving doesn't mean I don't want to interact with the car at all.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#135

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…

Did they change this on the new Mazda3? I had a CX-5 and you have buttons that took you to those places (audio, gps, and two more I don't remember) around the wheel thingy.

I am thinking on their new (soon) CX-30 as a possible new car as I loved the CX-5 and was told it would be mostly be based on the Mazda3.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#136

I'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."

Android Auto works just fine on Mazdas without touchscreen :)

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#137

I'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."

I can say the same for Apple CarPlay. Having tactile controls is nice but completely removing the touch screen is not a good thing. If there's one thing that most car manufacturers aren't great at, it's with their car infotainment system UX UI and functionality. The only reason GM’s is best is because they’ve finally acquiesced and admitted that Apple and Google do it better and their UX reflects that

As mentioned, Apple CarPlay works just fine on Mazdas without touchscreen so I'm not sure why do you think these two are exclusive. There are even pictures of CarPlay running on new Mazda 2019 in the article you're commenting on.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#138
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sc…

Just don't use navigation guy, memorize the paper map! /s

Set your destination before you set off? Or if you really need to do it after that point just pull over to the side of the road for a minute.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#139
post #86
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you use a connected smartphone for HVAC controls and switching songs? The controls on steering wheel and near gear shifter are way more convenient.

changing to a different album would be easier to a touchscreen.

What are you basing that on? It's pretty easy using Android Auto or Mazda CMU using the rotary controller. Easier than grabbing the phone while driving.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#140
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sc…

Just don't use navigation guy, memorize the paper map! /s

Pull over to adjust the map. Does anyone really believe that adjusting GPS while in a moving vehicle is safe?
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