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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

#311

Post by GrumpyNl »

gingabriska wrote: post #294
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. >…

Whole windshield should a screen and we should be able to just wave at it to perform operation or simply talk to it.

You cant wave at it, two hands on the wheel:)

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#312

Post by Tade0 »

iamtheworstdev wrote: post #291
dirktheman wrote: post #282

Some of the higher end luxury cars have little touchscreens that look like buttons on the same place where you'd expect the button, with tactile feedback to mimic a physical button. Good luck with that in 20 years or so...

no one owns a car for 20 years anymore so it's probably not a concern.

I wouldn't be so sure about that - both my father and his sister independently of each other bought their cars new over 20 years ago - I'm planning on keeping my 2017 Toyota as long as possible, because the savings are immense.

Maybe it's something specific to my country overall my parents' generation keeps their vehicles as long as possible.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#314

Post by rsynnott »

marvin wrote: post #181

When cars eventually go self-driving, not having a touchscreen will be a big competitive disadvantage. Over-the-air updates of car software will be essential to adapt the driving/transportation experience, also for the existing fleet of cars, as the product matures and manufacturers can use people's experiences to make improvements. This does require part of the car's user interface to be software driven, and touchsc…

That seems fairly irrelevant to _current_ cars, tho. If self-driving cars are a thing in a couple of decades (I'm somewhat skeptical, but whatever), then I'm sure that'll factor into the design of cars then. It shouldn't factor into the design of cars now.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#315

Post by Yhippa »

If you think about, anything that 100% requires a driver to remove their eyes off the road for extended periods of time is a bad thing waiting to happen. I guess a lot of cars don't have touchscreens though and you don't see a lot of news or analysis on how these touchscreens are killing people. I still see people driving 70 MPH on major Interstates with their heads literally down staring at their phones.

At any rate I still think this is a great idea. Mazda came close with the generation of their infotainment systems before their current ones. You could mostly use the rotary dial and do things if you memorized how many clicks of rotation of the wheel it took and which button to press in the gutter on top of the transmission.

I think the next best thing is a voice UI to control HVAC and entertainment. The one on my 2015 Mazda 6 is pretty bad but this might force them to invest in that which would give them a competitive edge.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#316

Post by vanderZwan »

Bret Victor's "A Brief Rant On The Future Of Interaction Design" is just as relevant now as it was back in 2011:

> There's a reason that our fingertips have some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body. This is how we experience the world close-up. This is how our tools talk to us. The sense of touch is essential to everything that humans have called "work" for millions of years.

> Now, take out your favorite Magical And Revolutionary Technology Device. Use it for a bit.

> What did you feel? Did it feel glassy? Did it have no connection whatsoever with the task you were performing? I call this technology Pictures Under Glass. Pictures Under Glass sacrifice all the tactile richness of working with our hands, offering instead a hokey visual facade.

> Is that so bad, to dump the tactile for the visual? Try this: close your eyes and tie your shoelaces. No problem at all, right? Now, how well do you think you could tie your shoes if your arm was asleep? Or even if your fingers were numb? When working with our hands, touch does the driving, and vision helps out from the back seat.

> Pictures Under Glass is an interaction paradigm of permanent numbness. It's a Novocaine drip to the wrist. It denies our hands what they do best. And yet, it's the star player in every Vision Of The Future.

http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...

(that second-to-last paragraph is surprisingly on the nose with the car metaphor)

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#317

Post by MH15 »

coleca wrote: post #283

Not ready to give Mazda any praise for their infotainment systems. I leased a 2019 CX-5 Grand Touring Reserve a couple months ago. Had I known how bad Mazda’s UX was I would have leased something else. First off their system takes an eternity to cold boot. If I’m making a quick run to the store or dropping the kids off at a friends house the system isn’t available for most of the ride. While it’s booting, the radio r…

My Vizio "smart" TV does this... turn it on during the day and mildly inappropriate content is still playing, volume locked for up to a minute.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#318

Post by moftz »

agumonkey wrote: post #244
lostjohnny wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renault have had controls on the steering wheel for at least 20 years now and it's still one of the best interfaces I've ever tried. The first car I bought with my own money was a Clio and the ability to control the integrated radio system without looking at it or having to take away the hands from the wheel made that car my favourite place to listen to music. As a matter of fact I miss it so much that nowadays I alm…

There should be a company selling ergonomics improvement kits for cars.

You can buy little bluetooth remote controls that strap onto your steering wheel. They don't look great and you have to charge them. The charge thing is really annoying now that many cars turn off the power outlets when the car is off. I remember never really having a dead battery in my devices because they could just charge while I was parked either at work or running errands.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#319

Post by zaroth »

The real reason Mazda is purging touchscreens from their vehicles is because their screens are terrible, laggy, hard to use junk and they have no way to fix it because they lack the vertical integration and expertise to bring it in house.

I would guess this is a technical failure wrapped in PR messaging.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#320

Post by Shivetya »

de_watcher wrote: post #214
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?

but like many cars with automatic climate control you set it and forget it.

plus in some cars HVAC controls are low on the center stack, six of one....

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