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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

#521

Post by mbesto »

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. >…

> It gives you tactile feedback, making it accessible for anyone with sense of touch.

Tactile feedback is also a huge security benefit. This is what really doesn't make sense to me about the desire for touchscreens in cars - they're inherently dangerous.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#522

Post by zaroth »

antocv wrote: post #505
zaroth wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla indeed has a night mode. Color pallet of the whole UI changes. Day: https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/201... Night: https://cdn-vox--cdn-com.cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/cdn.vox-cdn....

That is not "automotive level" night mode. The touchscreen is still brighting up the interior and shows too much useless information. The Saab 9-3 had a "Night" button, which when pressed, turned off _every_ light-source except for speed-odometer. There should be no information visible, no glow on anything, other than speedometer, and even it lowers its brightness. Why though? Try it, if you get the chance, the fatig…

That’s the camera effect, not the real life experience.

Sorry, I just picked the first image I found on Google images.

To be sure, driving the TM3 at night is sheer joy. There’s no screen at all in front of your face. Just the road and a dark steering wheel. I find night vision much improved without having any indicators behind the steering wheel at night.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#523

Post by TurkTurkleton »

gerbilly wrote: post #464
judge2020 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you can use your preferred maps app in your car, so you can choose music using your favorite music app, so you can send and receive text messages without taking your eyes off the road. Without it, people would just be looking at their phones anyways. Guess we should go back to paper maps and listening to AM radio.

Thanks, you're just making my point for me. I mean you said app twice in it. Ten years ago, nothing was mediated via an app, somehow we managed to survive. Now almost everyone has been turned into a phone zombie. You're wasting your lives people! FOMO is entirely backwards, you shouldn't be afraid of missing out on something in your phone, you should be afraid of missing out on your entire life.

Ten years ago was 2009, dude. I definitely had an Android phone and used apps for navigation and music back then. In my car, even! Just via an aux cable instead of Bluetooth and Android Auto. (Of course, now I have a Mazda 3 and an iPhone and I use CarPlay...)

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#524

Post by g00s3_caLL_x2 »

One of the major drawbacks of touchscreens is the amount of controls that are being integrated with them. Most folks mash the screens harder than they need to, and they wear out too fast. Once the screen it kaput, half you car is useless. I can deal with rolling the windows down, but taking my tunes away...no bueno.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#525

Post by coryfklein »

namdnay wrote: post #520
coryfklein wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just had my first experience with CarPlay this weekend and it was not positive. What I want? An empty shelf just to the right of the steering wheel where I can charge my phone and connect it to car audio. I don't want to hand-off my navigation or music selection to the vehicle, just allow me to put my phone in a prominent visible location.

I'm a huge fan of Carplay. Instead of having to listen to FM radio or fiddle with a phone screen on a silly dashboard sticker things, I get a massive screen with my phone on it. I can listen to podcasts and Spotify, follow Waze, dictate messages, all without fiddling

Maybe I don't switch back and forth between stuff while I'm driving as much as you do? I set everything up before I need to focus on the road, and then I just drive. If I need to change to a different playlist, or switch from music to the news, I pull over, make the switch, then start driving again.

If CarPlay makes it more tempting or productive for me to do non-driving things while I am driving, then it is not a good driving UX.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#526

Post by [deleted] »

jasonsync wrote: post #274

The worst is the touchscreens on some Honda models (eg. 2016 Fit EX). 1. They removed the volume knob in favour of a volume slider on the touch screen. Very difficult to use, and even after a couple of years I have not been able to get used to it, and keep reaching for a physical input. 2. There's many UI quirks (bugs and ill conceived design flows) that make menu navigation, managing saved stations, switching from A…

[deleted]

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#527

Post by zaroth »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #516
zaroth wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla indeed has a night mode. Color pallet of the whole UI changes. Day: https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/201... Night: https://cdn-vox--cdn-com.cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/cdn.vox-cdn....

The second link doesn't work at all on my computer. It downloads a 56kb .webp file which doesn't open. I tried to extract the non-AMP url here: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/55955575/... . In my opinion, this screen still looks excessively bright, distracting, and the night-time photo really showcases the screen's inability to accurately display dark colors (black still looks washed-out or gray).

Thanks for the updated link. Copying and pasting on mobile over here.

The screen is quite high quality in my opinion, and not washed out at all. You’re seeing the effect from the camera washing out from the street lights.

See how dark the steering wheel is? No screen behind the wheel makes for sublime night time driving. It’s just you and the road, and silence.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#528

Post by potta_coffee »

toyg wrote: post #428
lostjohnny wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing that might not be obvious - this controller is just below the steering wheel and you press it from the back side. It's almost invisible and it feels very natural. True. Another thing that might not be obvious is that they are fixed on the steering wheel, so they are always in the same position relative the your hands, just like the gear levers in a modern Formula 1 car.

The steering wheel is where most of this stuff should be all the time. The second you force me to reposition my hand, security levels drop off a cliff, since you get involuntary movement on the other side (as proven by this post) and likely take your eyes off the road, which is bad even for a split second. I know this for a fact, having crashed a car on a motorway as I was turning down the fan (controlled by an analo…

Have you ever driven a stick shift?

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#529

Post by deepakhj »

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…

Turn off contacts syncing and it boots up much faster.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#530

Post by RandallBrown »

narimiran wrote: post #507
judge2020 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you can use your preferred maps app in your car, so you can choose music using your favorite music app, so you can send and receive text messages without taking your eyes off the road. Without it, people would just be looking at their phones anyways. Guess we should go back to paper maps and listening to AM radio.

> so you can send and receive text messages How about not reading messages while you're driving? And why do you have to write messages while in traffic? Can't this wait?

You're not reading them with CarPlay or Android Auto. The car reads them to you. Also, speech to text writes them. There's no keyboard.
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