Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles • Hacker News Board

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#711

Post by Rebelgecko » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

celticmusic wrote: post #703

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the big one for me would be radio and temp. I assume no one in their right mind would put lights or cruise control behind a touch screen, but I could be wrong there. And maybe part of it is me being set in my old man ways, but I don't want a touch screen for any of that. Probably the only 2 things I can see being useful on that screen are the reverse camera and GPS that talks to you and you can glance at it o…

I think Teslas make you use the touchscreen for adjusting the cruise control speed

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#712

Post by xedeon » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

frosted-flakes wrote: post #638

xedeon wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're alluding to here is personal preference. If the Blackberry form factor is truly the best, people would still be buying them today. One of Steve Jobs's famous argument on this is that you can make the UI better over time on touchscreen interfaces compared to QWERTY based ones.

> What you're alluding to here is personal preference. I wasn't alluding to anything. I said so explicitly that it was my personal opinion. > If the Blackberry form factor is truly the best, people would still be buying them today. People are buying them. They're not as popular as Apple's iPhone, but that says more about Apple's marketing than anything else. > you can make the UI better over time on touchscreen inter…

> And a hardware keyboard doesn't mean you can't make the user interface better.

How can you do this when the device has already been shipped with the keyboard? Unless you're suggesting that Blackberry offers an unrealistic replacement program to change the keys and their function. Also tactile keyboard takes away a significant screen real estate. The market has also proven that people want bigger screens. There is no disputing that.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#713

Post by filoleg » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 6:59 PM UTC

m52go wrote: post #651

filoleg wrote: post #645

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 we…

They are completely different situations. People are intently focused on their smartphones, whereas they're distracted when using car controls.

Oh, I realize that, not trying to draw a direct analogy. Just expressing my feeling that the whole debate over touch screens in cars will end up the same way.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#714

Post by gonehome » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 6:59 PM UTC

frosted-flakes wrote: post #638

xedeon wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're alluding to here is personal preference. If the Blackberry form factor is truly the best, people would still be buying them today. One of Steve Jobs's famous argument on this is that you can make the UI better over time on touchscreen interfaces compared to QWERTY based ones.

> What you're alluding to here is personal preference. I wasn't alluding to anything. I said so explicitly that it was my personal opinion. > If the Blackberry form factor is truly the best, people would still be buying them today. People are buying them. They're not as popular as Apple's iPhone, but that says more about Apple's marketing than anything else. > you can make the UI better over time on touchscreen inter…

I'm not the person you responded to, but are people buying them?

I'd actually be curious how many people are buying them - it wasn't enough to save RIM. I think not as popular as the iPhone is a pretty big understatement and thinking that's mostly about Apple's marketing comes across as pretty clueless to me.

Some people still prefer horses to cars, but it'd be a generally bad idea for someone getting into the transportation business to focus on horse drawn carriages.

Popular doesn't necessarily mean better, but when you're an extreme outlier compared to what's dominant in the market and what's dominant in the market directly out-competed your preference when it had dominant market advantage, there's probably a reason.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#715

Post by spookthesunset » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 6:59 PM UTC

Fins wrote: post #555

jbigelow76 wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Audi, for instance has said that part of the reason it’s discontinuing its rotary controller is that a touchscreen better supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. This to me is insane reasoning. That is no way user centric. This decision is 100% business driven and has nothing to do with the end user. That statement isn't true, Car Play support for me was a non-negotiable for the car I purchased two years ago. Anot…

But you can do CarPlay/AAuto without the touchscreen idiocy.

Yes. At least with CarPlay you can use the knob thing on our Mazda and not use the touchscreen at all (which is disabled when the vehicle is in motion).

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#716

Post by bradlys » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

noitsnot wrote: post #382

mszkoda wrote: post #373

My Alfa Romeo (and all recent Alfa Romeos in the US) don't have touchscreens. The screens are in touch range and they have CarPlay and Android Auto, but you have to use the wheel with them. I got used to it pretty quickly and after a week or two I don't really have to look at the screen to do 99% of things I need to do. It seems much safer to me, though it was annoying at first.

My Rolls doesn't have a touch screen, which is nice because it helps from distracting my driver during trips to the yacht club or the occasional polo match.

This comment seems so weird - it's just a European brand - not a rich one. Alfa Romeo is nowhere near the price of a Rolls.

The most expensive Alfa (their halo car) is a third of the price of the cheapest Rolls without any options. Ford makes a more expensive car than Alfa.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#717

Post by josefresco » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

ronsor wrote: post #597

josefresco wrote: post #534

How is a heads up display "accessible" for people with limited vision? In the web industry, we kill ourselves to make every color combination fully ADA compliant (in the US) and this involves a limited set of combinations. Not being familiar with the auto industry regulations (does ADA even apply?), I wonder how they (heads up displays) or even touchscreens could be considered accessible. Anyone have insight into how…

>In the web industry, we kill ourselves to make every color combination fully ADA compliant (in the US) I've never found that to be true.

What exactly? Have you ever dealt with a designer, or old websites with no concept of ADA/WCAG? Because I do, daily and it's ...difficult (to put it lightly) I don't work for Facebook, or Google, I work for small businesses, many of which are still battling to become PCI compliant, or GDPR compliant, or even getting a privacy policy posted. The pain is real.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#718

Post by randiantech » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

Definitely makes sense for me. With physical buttons i can keep watching at the road all time. kudos.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#719

Post by glaurung_ » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

blattimwind wrote: post #194

It's funny how the dashboard UI of lower-end cars tends to be consistently better than higher-end cars, because low end cars simply have a bunch of buttons that you can use without taking your eyes of the road. Sometimes even the location of controls is much better in low end cars; the VW up! comes to mind with all important controls located directly next to the steering wheel. Beautiful. In other cars just switching…

> somewhere between the not-ashtray and the backside of the moon.

This makes me crazy. I used to drive a '99 Mazda b2500 (basically a Ford Ranger). I could reach any of the controls without even leaning forward. In a newer f150 that I used to drive for work the reach for the volume knob seems to be about the same distance as the reach to the passenger window crank in my old truck.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#720

Post by gregmac » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

jforman wrote: post #358

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 basically means they have given up on developing a good branded interface between the driver and the car. The one piece of feedback I gave Toyota in their post-purchase survey is: please replace the hot mess that is Entune with CarPlay. They absolutely should give up. You can't compete with an OS and ecosystem into which billions of dollars have been sunk. I agree, for what it's worth, that analog controls are s…

> They absolutely should give up. You can't compete with an OS and ecosystem into which billions of dollars have been sunk.

I agree, but I think the people building these systems are working under basically impossible conditions.

I am just speculating here, but in a car company I would think the people are mostly going to be passionate about "car stuff" (engine, driving experience, aesthetics, drive train, etc), and so the infotainment system considerations are going to take a back seat to all the things car enthusiasts care more about. This doesn't necessarily mean the people in the infotainment team themselves, but would definitely be whoever they report to, up the chain to whatever the 'product owner' equivalent is for the entire car (eg: responsible for allocating the budget). I would expect to find an attitude less like "let's make sure people buy this car because of the infotainment system" than "infotainment is tolerated as a necessary feature to sell the car to the masses".

On top of that, they have to build software that is going to be around for a couple decades with (ideally) no updates, and that basically doesn't ever crash. This means extensive testing -- maybe for over a year. For sake of discussion let's say it takes only another year to build the software: this means by the time the car is released, the platform (both hardware and any underlying software/frameworks) it's built on is basically already two years old -- and there's a good chance when the platform was picked it already wasn't cutting-edge.

This isn't meant to be a defense of bad infotainment software -- it's still bad. Give up, and focus your time on making a great CarPlay/Android Auto experience (at probably a fraction of the time currently spent). Make the FM radio and maybe bluetooth audio work standalone, then just rely on the phone integration for everything else (maps, text messages, phone dialing, contacts, etc).