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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

#321

Post by ceocoder »

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?

You can control climate through steering wheel controls as well. I can and do control most things - music, temperature, calls, headlights, cruise control - with either voice or using steering wheel controls. Tesla UX is pretty amazing. Compared to that when I’m in my 328i from 2011 it feels outdated.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#322

Post by jodrellblank »

rco8786 wrote: post #305
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 counter point - we’re already seeing the role of the driver fading away from car travel. lane holding tech is readily available in your average car now. Tesla’s can drive themselves a large portion of the time. Etc. Concerns about tactile feedback and such don’t really matter if you don’t have to pay attention to the road anymore. As we’ve seen play out with phones, people vastly prefer touch screens and vastly…

people vastly prefer touch screens

Do they?

A car's dashboard doesn't have to be small enough to fit in your pocket; it doesn't have a screen you want to look at constantly where there's a direct trade-off between screen space and physical keyboard space; a car's dashboard doesn't have limits of where buttons can be because you have to hold it around the edges without pressing the buttons accidentally.

I still hate typing with on-screen keyboards, I just grudgingly accept that for a given small phone size, I'd prefer more of it to be screen than keyboard. That doesn't at all mean I want my car to turn into an Android tablet because I prefer a touchscreen in the constraints of a pocket size device.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#324

Post by dreamcompiler »

romwell wrote: post #152
atoav wrote: post #74

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…

The world of musical instruments went through this decades ago. 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 sy…

I learned synths back in the 80s with wall-sized panels of knobs, switches, and patch cords. I loved it. It was Direct Manipulation. I could do anything to anything directly and instantly.

I hated synths in the 90s. All interaction was funneled through a tiny screen. I called it "building a ship in a bottle."

Now several manufacturers have brought back knobs (and even patch cords!) and it's a much better situation.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#325

Post by jodrellblank »

sizzle wrote: post #196
WalterBright wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the AC: the buttons are shaped like a human, and you press the part of your body where you want air I was driving a friend's newer car down the freeway once, and had to call him to find out how to turn on the godam defroster. There were so many knobs, switches, and dials that influence this, all labelled with icons so I had no idea what they did. Turns out that you had to push two buttons, toggle a toggle, and turn…

I want to speak to the car with my hands on the steering wheel and tell it to defrost the windows like I'm talking to an Alexa device. I can't wait for this day to come...

Why wouldn't you want it to defrost automatically without a spyware microphone and neural network and a ton of problems with accents and background noise?

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#326

Post by CelestialTeapot »

rco8786 wrote: post #305
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 counter point - we’re already seeing the role of the driver fading away from car travel. lane holding tech is readily available in your average car now. Tesla’s can drive themselves a large portion of the time. Etc. Concerns about tactile feedback and such don’t really matter if you don’t have to pay attention to the road anymore. As we’ve seen play out with phones, people vastly prefer touch screens and vastly…

"Tesla’s can drive themselves a large portion of the time. Etc. Concerns about tactile feedback and such don’t really matter if you don’t have to pay attention to the road anymore. "

And Teslas ALMOST never kill their driver or innocent bystanders when the driver is negligently ignoring -- or bored and not paying attention to -- the road. There have been low speed accidents where the operator is tasked with taking over for the vehicle and they couldn't respond in time. Real life is neither a video game nor a perfect simulation. Limitations of the technology and the human operator as well as conditions of the road, lighting, and weather will always be a problem.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/01/business/insi...

2. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/behind-the-ub...

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#327

Post by FraaJad »

zaroth wrote: post #319

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.

eh.. I had a 2016 mazda that I replaced with a 2015 lexus. The mazda's rotary knob based interface is soo much better than the the "mouse" based lexus one.

My mazda had the touchscreen, but I hardly ever used it.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#328

Post by throw0101a »

dingaling wrote: post #302
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."

That's the optimum best-case. On the contrary I recently plugged my phone into the USB port of a hired Peugeot 207. All I wanted to do was charge it. But every few seconds the phone and in-car functions were interrupted by native pop-ups stating "No Android Auto compatible apps found". Constantly for the whole journey when I was trying to use my phone for navigation.

> On the contrary I recently plugged my phone into the USB port of a hired Peugeot 207.

This can be privacy-violating, as if any kind of syncing happens, a whole bunch of your personal data is now in the car:

* https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/01/30/car-ren... * https://www.privacy4cars.com/home/default.aspx

If you rent cars somewhat regularly, than a USB car charger may be a worth considering:

* https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-usb-car-charger/

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#329

Post by Shivetya »

pessimizer wrote: post #275
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…

> 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 else do I need to adjust in my car? I can do music volume, do next or previous song, and pause music, from the left steering wheel button. Wipers and headlamps are automatic. N…

I promise you both work just fine it designed properly and placed properly.

Example, 2017 Chevrolet Volt. Center stack UI was nice to look at it but many options required multi level drill downs to change. HVAC controls were at the bottom of the center stack. Forty plus buttons between steering wheel and center console and this does not count all functions on stalks. Z4 I had had three stalks and forty plus buttons with heated seats at bottom of center stack and under.

Touch screens like anything else in the car that a user interact with can be bad or good.I found Apple Car Play when used on the Volt to be obnoxious and far more requiring me to take my eyes off the road.

I keep emphasizing one thing that people keep ignoring. You rarely if ever have to use the touchscreen at all. Almost every setting is set and forget. You catch glimpses of the navigation and such from normal eye movement. let alone, lets get real silly here, the TM3 can drive itself in traffic just fine if I wanted to get stupid and take my eyes off the road.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#330

Post by baybal2 »

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.

The market already exists: car improvement stuff on taobao is sold by tonnes: from the same independent DC-DC, and ECU interfaces to projection huds, and complete dashboard revamps

I still think the bash car dashboard was that of Honda Beat or Suzuki Cara — no dashboard, with just a motorcycle style gauge, and non-driving related controls almost wholely on steering wheel levers.

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