Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles • Hacker News Board

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#211

Post by JulianMorrison » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:28 AM UTC

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. >…

Everyone wanted to be Star Trek The Next Generation and/or Minority Report. That is the reality of it. Shiny futurist magic finger-wavy interfaces. Which were designed to look as cool as possible in movies and not on the basis of practical affordance.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#212

Post by Ntrails » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:30 AM UTC

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…

I don't have automatic lights. So lights on/dip around corners etc. Indicators every drive. Regularly switch airflow. Turn on reflow when allergy season. Turn knob for hotter/colder air. Emergency blinkers if traffic looks to be stopping suddenly. Wipers/speedcc, screenwash etc all manual. Heated read window in the cold etc.

That's before we get onto the whole music thing, where I concede my cassette tape player is less fancy than your phone integrated whatever - but hey I can do volume without needing to look at anything. Similarly picking one of my 6 preset radio stations is trivial by touch with a glance for orientation.

Now, as you say Tesla has automated away a lot of the above. Some of that is a legitimate improvement, and truly effortless voice control seems like a proper upgrade. Touch screens? I suspect I'd only be convinced by trying, my prior is that they're terrible idea for the same reason typing on my touch screen is practically impossble without looking in a way that wasn't true back in the Nokia 3210 days. I could write whole texts without needing to look because I knew by feel what I was touching.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#213

Post by dash2 » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:33 AM UTC

Car manufacturers' touchscreen UI is hilariously bad, like a website from 1998. Interfacing with phones is equally unreliable. They really don't know what they're doing.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#214

Post by de_watcher » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:33 AM UTC

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…

The climate control is through the touchscreen?

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#215

Post by wycy » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:35 AM UTC

I liked the use of the Mazda touch screen for the purpose of entering an address (while stopped) into the Nav system--so much easier than using a wheel to scroll across a keyboard--but otherwise it wasn't necessary. They could obviate the need for a touch screen for this function by allowing you to send an address to the car via your phone.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#216

Post by sudhirj » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:35 AM UTC

dzhiurgis wrote: post #170

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…

You drive car with pedals and steering wheel. Everything else that is ternary (music, climate, nav) is on touch screen. So yes, you can have cabin light and temperature controls on touchscreen on an airplane.

Think I have seen flight attendants use a touch screen on the intercom and the cabin lights / infotainment. I’d assume everything on the cockpit is life of death for ~300 people, so different rules apply. Imagine what a sick joke it would be if the recent Boeing crashes were caused by pilots fiddling with a touchscreen while the plane went into a dive. It’s difficult enough to work all the controls accessible without tabbing or scrolling.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#217

Post by lloeki » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:36 AM UTC

blattimwind wrote: post #194

It's funny how the dashboard UI of lower-end cars tends to be consistently better than higher-end cars, because low end cars simply have a bunch of buttons that you can use without taking your eyes of the road. Sometimes even the location of controls is much better in low end cars; the VW up! comes to mind with all important controls located directly next to the steering wheel. Beautiful. In other cars just switching…

My current and favorite car is a '08 Euro Civic (Type-R). The whole design and layout of things there is pure genius, thoroughly designed from first principles. It takes many people aback but the hierarchy of information is very well thought out: critical up the wheel†† that you can read without taking eyes off the road (speed, turn signals, RPM limit, live cam profile (from ECU cam phasing/VTEC as an eco progress bar† or VTEC led depending on engine)), secondary behind the wheel (RPM dial, fuel, cooling liquid temp), tertiary left/right hand side (depending if you're brit/jap or the rest of the world; clock, head unit AC) of the driver, all angled properly towards the driver and minimising glare, all knobs and buttons can be actioned upon either without leaving the hands off the wheel or only leaving them for the shorter amount of time, Fitt's law everywhere, with big knobs/buttons for big things, small ones for small things. No gorilla arm effect anywhere, even the window controls on door armrests fall naturally under the hand and "dangerous" things are purposely made easy-but-difficult to reach (VSA switch, dashboard backlight). Oh, and the UI of that little screen is so well thought out, well-laid-out information and navigation across various more detailed info, with a notification system that pops an (i) in the critical area and actual info front and center (low fuel, low oil pressure, freezing conditions...). Even the various beeps have sensible meaning conveyed.

It's so good I wanted to write an actual article just about it. Touchscreen dashboards just make zero sense when you thoughtfully experienced that.

(The same-year US market one (which is a completely different car) for that same generation is similar but really not as good. Sadly They later moved to a more traditional design on the new ones)

But it's unusual and scares people, like OMG there are so many buttons, this looks like an airplane cockpit.

https://s3.caradvice.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Honda...

(if you get the GPS option the screen takes place of the clock/head unit display)

† not a gamified tally like they did with the Insight and CR-Z, but a real-time thing.

†† not a ridiculously small heads-up air fighter thing like Peugeot does that gets unreadable depending on light conditions

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#218

Post by dwighttk » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:39 AM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #171

haberman wrote: post #72

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."

>You get in the car and it already knows where you want to go because it has access to your calendar. Do I need a book a time slot in my calendar for going to the hardware store?

Reminds me of this old dilbert https://dilbert.com/strip/1996-04-26

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#219

Post by xvector » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:39 AM UTC

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

Elon Musk's fascination with touchscreens is absurd and dangerous.

Even in the future world where everything is autonomous, knobs and buttons will always be needed for mission-critical interactions, whether it be driving in dangerous conditions or having to perform emergency maneuvers on your "autonomous" aircraft.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#220

Post by majewsky » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 10:41 AM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #205

Phillipharryt wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You will take your focus off driving while reaching, muscle memory or not.

The whole point of muscle memory is that it doesn't require you to focus on it. By the same logic, you would take your focus off driving whenever you have to breathe.