151–160 of 974 posts
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. >…
I don't even think you have to be defensive about it. Touchscreens can make sense for things where you need to have a flexible interface and cannot afford your physical interface to look like the cockpit of an airplane. But for everything that is even a tiny bit critical you usually want to avoid it if possible. This is why even 50k€ cinema cameras like the Arri Alexa swear on knobs and buttons. The things with butto…
Yamaha DX7, one of the best-selling synths of all time, didn't have any knobs or sliders to edit its sounds. People loved the sounds, but editing them was so hard that few musicians did - that's why you can hear many DX7 stock presets in 80's music.
The 90's were the dark ages of the synth. Even the buttons went away, everything was in a menu now.
The synths thrived as virtual instruments, where adding knobs and sliders was cheap.
Fast forward to 2010's. Arturia, a big virtual synth maker, said: you know what? People love knobs, let's give them knobs. They made Minubrute and Microbute - and it was a smash hit.
Today, there are a plethora of synths out there, and you can program them all with knobs and sliders. For some (like Mini/Microbrute), there is no screen; for others (like Korg Mini/Monologue) it's non-essential, and you do everything with knobs and sliders anyway.
Modern professional gear no only does away with touchscreens, it pretty much does away with screens to a large extent. And where the screens are used, the menu-diving with minimal.
Because when you make things done, you want to interface in your muscle memory. And you don't want to be looking at things - screens in particular - to interact with them.
So if the maker of my $300 can figure this out and put over a dozen knobs on the device to control every single thing it does, I hope that the maker of a $30,000 car can do the same thing as well.
Tesla is probably only company with proper software engineering team that managed to create smart car platform. Others trying to imitate its screens are shooting themselves into foot. If you are not able to implement continuous delivery, you should stick to hardware toggles. It's that simple. The problem of screen being screen still stands in Tesla's cars, but much bigger problem is shipping crappy screens.
>you should stick to hardware toggles
There we go, nothing to add now :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You are not the target audience for this feature, but that audience exists and it's gigantic.
I don't even think you have to be defensive about it. Touchscreens can make sense for things where you need to have a flexible interface and cannot afford your physical interface to look like the cockpit of an airplane. But for everything that is even a tiny bit critical you usually want to avoid it if possible. This is why even 50k€ cinema cameras like the Arri Alexa swear on knobs and buttons. The things with butto…
Perfect example: I have a pair of noise-cancelling headphones which let you change volume and switch tracks by swiping on a touch-sensitive earpiece. It's mind-boggling to me that this was chosen over knobs and buttons: first of all it's really easy to accidentally trigger the controls when adjusting the headset. Also, since it's situated in such a way that you can't see it while you're operating it, it's exactly the type of interface which would benefit most from tactile feedback.
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…