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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

#691

Post by Johnny555 »

The touchscreen isn't the problem, having a screen at all is the problem.

I have a Mazda and hate their scroll wheel interface, with a touchscreen I can just press the "AM Radio" icon, with a scroll wheel, I need to turn the wheel then keep looking at the screen to see where the cursor is so I can click the right icon so it takes more attention -- both cognitive processing (how many clicks do I need to turn to get down to the button I want), as well as visual (is it on the right one yet?)

Voice recognition is even worse, I often end up having a conversation with the car "Call George" "There is more than one George, which one do you want to call" "George Modaline" "Ok, Calling George Smith - mobile".

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#692

Post by laughinghan »

rco8786 wrote: post #419
bumby wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people really do vastly prefer touch screens, I would expect to see different control mechanisms moving in this direction (steering, shifting, etc.) The fact that they aren't going this way in the systems that __really__ matter seems to indicate that people don't really prefer touch screens.

Come on. My iPhone still has some tactile mechanisms also. But 99% of my interactions with it are via touch screen. That's what you're describing.

Yeah, and that sucks, but we live with it because that's the only way for it to fit in our pocket.

Why would we port one of the compromises of the smartphone interface over to our car interface?

And yes, I know, dynamic is a trump card. It still sucks. Have you ever read Bret Victor's rant on it? http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#693

Post by blacksmith_tb »

celticmusic wrote: post #620
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. >…

a thousand times this. A year or two ago I considered buying another car after I had a fedex semi hit me (turning left from a stop, not dangerous). I drive a 2004 corolla and love toyota, but the guy looked at me like I had grown frog legs when I asked if they had any models without the touchscreen. It was actually a major decision in me keeping my vehicle. I do NOT like the touchscreen, to me it's a complete no-brai…

The giant but not very useful 11in touchscreen in my 2017 Toyota Prius Prime can just be turned off. No really vital functions live in there, it's mostly the (iffy) GPS and settings like the audio source, which I don't need to change much. Almost all the normal things, like temp, lights, cruise etc. are still accessible via physical controls.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#695

Post by chaostheory »

izacus wrote: post #137
chaostheory wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can say the same for Apple CarPlay. Having tactile controls is nice but completely removing the touch screen is not a good thing. If there's one thing that most car manufacturers aren't great at, it's with their car infotainment system UX UI and functionality. The only reason GM’s is best is because they’ve finally acquiesced and admitted that Apple and Google do it better and their UX reflects that

As mentioned, Apple CarPlay works just fine on Mazdas without touchscreen so I'm not sure why do you think these two are exclusive. There are even pictures of CarPlay running on new Mazda 2019 in the article you're commenting on.

My thinking was that if you have CarPlay you will still have to look at the screen regardless of whether or not you have tactile controls.

I missed reading this part of the article:

"The head-up display that top trims of the Mazda 3 get is now projected onto the windshield. The amount of time it takes the eyes to focus on the head-up display is greatly reduced because it’s now focused on a point 7.5 feet ahead of the driver."

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#696

Post by masklinn »

seszett wrote: post #280
masklinn wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look at the controls behind the gear shift stick - not much but still similar to what Mazda does with the audio controls. I don't think I've ever seen a car where these weren't on the center console. > BTW, I have never used the hazard button while the car is in motion or at least driving very slowly. 'round here it's common to use the hazards when in sight of or at the tail of a highway / freeway traffic jam.

The controls there are definitely not in the same place as most cars. Here they are to the right of the driver, between the gear shift stick and the handbrake. Apart from some modern cars with a single dial and maybe a couple buttons there, most only have storage space there and the controls are in the front, not between the driver and passenger.

Oh I see, you're talking about the entertainment system of the DX having its controls in the center isle, next to the handbrake.

I was looking at the car system controls below the air vents, hence my wondering what the difference was.

FWIW BMW's idrive and Audi's MMI physical control are in roughly the same spot (idrive's been both below and besides the gear selector, MMI's usually been above or below though both have basically surrounded the stick: https://www.picclickimg.com/00/s/MTE1MFgxNjAw/z/xvEAAOSwll1W...).

And though recent generation MMIs are apparently touchscreen-only, BMW has retained physical controls next to the shifter: https://cdn.bmwblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/BMW-6-Ser...

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#697

Post by yellowapple »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #211
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.

At least in TNG the voice recognition software (more-or-less) reliably understood what the user was saying.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#698

Post by madrox »

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. >…

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I have no problem with touch screens in cars. My problem with is with the horrible UI those touch screens provide. They're slow to respond and don't seem well reasoned for the functions it has.

It's why I love Carplay. It expands the function of the car in a needed way. Maybe analog controls are better, but interface matters less to me than function.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#699

Post by laughinghan »

zaroth wrote: post #333
vanderZwan wrote: post #316

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 favori…

And yet, every single phone today is nothing but a “picture under glass” and, far from a paradigm of permanent numbness, humans are intimately connected to these devices they carry with them everywhere. Rant is the right way to describe this. Do you remember the first time you used a map on a smooth multi-touch screen? The joy of panning and zooming around, tapping to learn more about any particular point! I remember…

You're misunderstanding the rant.

There are some interfaces which are absolutely superior when provided as picture under multi-touch glass.

Superior to what? I think you mean superior to mouse + keyboard, and superior to a physical map. The author agrees with you, as he clarified in a followup [1] to the rant:

> [Do I think the iPad is bad?] No! iPad good! For now!

Do you remember the first time you used a map on a smooth multi-touch screen?

He goes on:

> In 1900, Eastman's new Kodak camera was good! The film was black-and-white, but everyone loved it anyway. It was genuinely revolutionary! But it was also obvious that something was missing, and research continued. Practical color film was released thirty years later, and gradually took over.

> [...]

> Today, iPad good. It's flat and glassy and everyone loves it anyway. It's genuinely revolutionary. But if all we have in twenty years is an iPad with a few haptic gimmicks, that'll be bad.

The first time you used a map on a smooth multi-touch screen, it was genuinely revolutionary—hopefully, you'll be similarly impressed the first time you use a map with purpose-built physical controls (not mouse + keyboard), but that is also dynamic (like a computer/tablet/smartphone). Maybe it'll be something like this: https://rsnous.com/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/

[1]: http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#700

Post by ceejayoz »

leonroy wrote: post #689
pwg wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user's need for touch screens in cars. You are viewing the 'need' from the end user perspective. That is likely not the driving force that is causing touch screen proliferation. The likely driving force that is causing it is the manufacturers BOM costs. A single, rectangular, touch screen, that can swallow up a bunch of different knobs and button…

> The likely driving force that is causing it is the manufacturers BOM costs. Whilst I think this is part of it's about more than just reducing the BOM. There's a trend to move all interfaces from knobs and switches to touch screens even when money isn't the problem. For example the SpaceX Dragon capsule also takes this approach which you can see from the images below: https://www.spacex.com/crew-dragon A heavily vib…

> A heavily vibrating vehicle which needs to be operated quickly and with 100% reliability by a human operator really should not be operated via a proliferation of touch screens and touch buttons as the images above show.

In fairness to SpaceX, Dragon largely isn't designed to be operated by a human. There's a reason that page calls out stuff like "how warm should the cabin be" as the sort of decisions being made with these touchscreens.

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