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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

#201

Post by Fnoord »

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. For years I have been working on product interfaces (not just apps).

How does this relate to Apple Magic Trackpad with Force Touch?

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#202

Post by oblio »

pjc50 wrote: post #100
ahartmetz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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".

While I don't disagree with your main point, I have to say that this is wrong.

That's what fashion literally is. Everybody wears clothes and so clothes are sold to the entire population of the planet. Yet we don't dress like in the 60's anymore. Maybe some do, but you definitely can't find big masses of people dressing like in the early 1800's, for example.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#204

Post by Aser »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #92
quakenul wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Have you seen the F-35 cockpit? It's just one giant touchscreen.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#205

Post by Shivetya »

Phillipharryt wrote: post #191
Shivetya wrote: post #182

Well after owning a Tesla Model 3 I am of the opinion, why in the hell do we need forty plus buttons in cars? Seriously! (Go count your buttons, some cars are higher than that) First off with regards to the touch screen in the Tesla. In the vast majority of drives I never ever touch it. Not once. Why not? Well I have my temperature preference set, I usually play the music that is coming off my phone, and well, what e…

Do you often get into new and different cars and drive them? Your last paragraph is an odd argument. The buttons in my car stay in the same place and don't change with context. If I want to turn the radio down I reach over and rotate the knob to the left, muscle memory and tactile response. That knob will never do anything except the radio volume. Far safer because I don't even need to glance at it. Edit. Your top pa…

Okay, so how does any of this conflict with what I stated. Most vehicles with screens, touch or not, usually have audio controls copied to the steering wheel. How many buttons it takes is dependent on brand and even model. Plus you will take your focus off driving while reaching, muscle memory or not. Let alone a good driver is always looking around which includes glances left and right so as long as the task you are trying to do, buttons or touch screen, is simple you are fine.

I did not declare that settings were the property of touch screens, I simply stated that the vast majority of settings that exist are never modified. This goes for cars with buttons too.

The discussion is that touch screens are bad. My point is for those touch screens which are not placed correctly or have a bad UI, then yes they can be bad. There are some atrocious implementations out there however the Tesla is certainly not one of them.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#206

Post by Shivetya »

bigiain wrote: post #167
rmrfchik wrote: post #97

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.

Let me guess. Motorcycle rider? (_Fellow_ motorcycle rider...)

many large touring motorcycles have built in navigation and music, Harley and Honda even support Apple car play now. Harley had good voice control as well. Indian has a large panel on their bikes with navigation and split screen.

It all comes down to being a responsible rider/driver

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#208

Post by smdyc1 »

afarrell wrote: post #113
TeMPOraL wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Which allows them to have the UI for controlling the car be done by a team without strong communication links with the team designing the rest of the car's UX. Is that a genuine benefit, or one that shows up more early in planning and who's downsides show up late?

That sounds awfully like Boeing's 737-MAX MCAS debacle.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#209

Post by Aser »

Phillipharryt wrote: post #195
Isinlor wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about spacecraft with touchscreens: https://www.spacex.com/crew-dragon ? Compare to the cockpit of Space Shuttle: https://i.redd.it/9mj5bcbnzsx21.jpg

I hope you're arguing in favour of the space shuttle there. It has no contextual buttons. I'll always argue that contextual controls do not belong in critical systems. Every button on that shuttle will do the same thing every time you press it. A touch screen looks nice but isn't safe. Mission control is telling you to press X button, but X button isn't actually on your display right now?? That's a big problem.

The crew dragon is designed to be completely autonomous. 99% of the time, the astronaut is just a passenger, so there is less requirement for physical controls.

In terms of mission control telling you to press X button, it is almost certain that mission control would have a simulation of the cockpit running that would show them exactly what the astronaut is seeing on their display. So they will always be able to direct the astronaut correctly.

I definitely think a touch screen in this situation can be safer, because it can display information in a way that makes it quicker for the astronaut to understand the situation. It in theory requires less training because there is less requirement to remember the position and function of every single switch.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#210

Post by ballooney »

Isinlor wrote: post #144
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How about spacecraft with touchscreens: https://www.spacex.com/crew-dragon ? Compare to the cockpit of Space Shuttle: https://i.redd.it/9mj5bcbnzsx21.jpg

I know from people inside SpaceX that they have covers for the essential switch panels which they put on when Musk is around, because he objects to them for confused silly reasons (like tesla cross-marketing). The astronauts and capsule engineers know better, of course, so this is the compromise.
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