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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

#641

Post by Yhippa »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #636
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. >…

The stakes are much lower, but the same complaints apply to media center remote controls. Recently my Logitech Harmony ONE died, and I replaced it with their current high-end device. I HATE it. I want to be looking at the TV when using it, not shifting attention to the remote's touch screen. Worse, the remote wants to support lots of controls, which it implements by allowing a swipe between pages. But it's way too ea…

Related to my other comment on this article here, I bought the new device which came with the Harmony Hub. Once I connected it to my Google Assistant, I haven't looked back.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#642

Post by lloeki »

speeder wrote: post #371
lloeki wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ba…

I am a designer, have a degree even... Yet you used lots of jargon I never saw before. Can you point me some books and reading? I really need to fix my sorry education...

Not a designer by a long shot but I admit to be very interested in the matter. Here are a few books I found quite fascinating.

Designed for Use by Lukas Mathis

Design for Hackers by David Kadavy

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#643

Post by vchak1 »

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. >…

From a user experience perspective, it seems strange to me that one would only consider the driver experience and not include the passenger. I 100% agree with you about the need for tactile non distracting controls for the driver. At the same time carplay controlled by the passengers phone has a lot of value in terms of value add to passengers.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#644

Post by Reedx »

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. >…

Agree with this for now, but what about when we're no longer driving the car?

When that happens a touchscreen and the ability to play games/etc makes a lot of sense. I think what Tesla and others are doing is designing and preparing for the future. Although not ideal right now, they'll be far ahead of Mazda when we transition to self-driving cars.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#645

Post by filoleg »

This whole thing honestly reminds of the pushback against touch-screen only smartphones, along with the infamous "mixing the input and output on the same surface" quote (I cannot recall the exact quote, but my bastardized version provides a pretty good gist of it). People will scream, people will kick, but it will eventually happen.

sidenote: I was initially in the "bring the keyboards on smartphones back" camp as well, but given how well it all worked out 10 years later, I foresee the same happening with touchscreens in cars.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#646

Post by RankingMember »

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #493

Removing touch screens from the driver is a good one but there are so many distracting UI patterns for drivers. The scary thing is that I would bet people have died because of poor patterns that exist. These are some that I have: 1. Using Apple iPhone for navigation. Phone rings. I pick it up using car controls. The navigation screen is now gone and is replaced with the phone screen. [scramble to swipe bottom of phon…

I'll gladly be a co-pilot on that project. I feel the same way. There's so many edge cases that can become show-stoppers (accidents) in driving interfaces.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#648

Post by blattimwind »

potta_coffee wrote: post #528
toyg wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No one looks at the shifter.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#649

Post by ThePirateofOz »

JangoSteve wrote: post #633
smackay wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of wires and connectors that come with mechanical controls. Everything need to be certified to make sure you don't have a recall of a million or two vehicles because the air-conditioning dials break after 6 months. All that must be crazy expensive compared to solid state electronics.

None of this is untrue with touchscreens. They also have wires and connectors and must be certified.

And every single application loaded and installed, software library, SDK and license has to be rolled up into the BOM for every headunit sold/installed.
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