Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

autocar.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 770 posts

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#21

Post by beat »

My spouse has a 2019 Honda HRV and I hate dealing with the touchscreen while driving. It's cognitively very difficult to do the degree of fine motor control and visual attention the touchscreen requires while also driving safely. It's actually a little terrifying.

I remember reading an article a while back about some manufacturer, can't remember which one, adding a clickable knob to control the "smart" functions. Since so much of what we use a touchscreen for is actually menu selection, that could cover most of what we need to "touch".

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#22

Post by nannal »

Robotbeat wrote: post #18
samizdis wrote: post #8

Eminently sensible call by Honda. Knobs, dials and switches work well and do not demand that a driver takes their eyes off the road. I suppose that voice controls would be a reasonably safe tech option, but probably not cost-effective.

Is taking your hands off the steering wheel much better? Ideally, all controls would be available on the steering wheel without removing either hand. Or, as you say, voice controls.

When it comes to it, I don't think it's as bad. In a manual car one hand is often off the steering wheel and that's not detrimental.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#23

Post by woozyolliew »

Always seemed like a cargo cult: iphone good; touch good; buttons bad (steve said).

Let’s hope it’s a new trend! I love that my Audi still has tactile buttons and wheels, and was a big factor in choosing it. My previous car had a touch screen and it was so dangerous having to brace my hand for accuracy and stare at my fingers while driving.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#24

Post by 2bitencryption »

Unrelated, but this line stood out, and now I have a question:

> Honda’s decision to return to physical controls will be popular with some - including, no doubt, its ageing owner base in the UK

Ageing? Is there some stat showing Honda owners are older than owners of other models? Or that young people aren't buying Hondas?

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#25

Post by jermaustin1 »

dron57 wrote: post #7

Funny coming from Honda. My parents own a 2017 (I think) Civic and the only way to adjust volume is by tapping +/- on the touchscreen. It's the most unusable volume adjustment I've ever experienced. It was completely unusable with a glove in the winter. So while most other companies only implemented touchscreen controls for secondary features Honda did it for the most widely used one. Now they are backtracking 100%,…

I have a 2015 Fit (Jazz in the not US), and it has the +/- on the touch screen, but also physical buttons on the steering wheel. I guess the compromise is that the driver doesn't need to use the touch buttons because they have the ones on the wheel, and the passenger can take their eyes off the road.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#27

Post by dijit »

Robotbeat wrote: post #18
samizdis wrote: post #8

Eminently sensible call by Honda. Knobs, dials and switches work well and do not demand that a driver takes their eyes off the road. I suppose that voice controls would be a reasonably safe tech option, but probably not cost-effective.

Is taking your hands off the steering wheel much better? Ideally, all controls would be available on the steering wheel without removing either hand. Or, as you say, voice controls.

This is a great example of when "perfect is the enemy of good".

Humans have pretty good spatial reasoning (proprioception); the notion that touch controls should replace tactile well-spaced controls is dependent on the fact that both senses (sight, spatial awareness) are uncontested.

I would argue the point that sight is already in-use and must not be interfered with, if there's an alternative that does not use the same resources.

I think of it like hardware acceleration and parrelelisation; the brain has a hardware accelerator for sight, but only one, and has a bunch of cores ready for other tasks, and those other tasks can happen in parallel.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#28

Post by isaacaggrey »

> Honda has done what no other car maker is doing,

Huh? The author is not familiar with Mazda - their latest models of the CX line (possibly others) have full control of the interface with a very functional physical knob / dial along with other tactile controls.

Also, the headline is a bit misleading - they aren't removing touchscreen controls entirely - only removing them from "some" controls as their preface text indicates, which to be clear is solely A/C controls.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#30

Post by sneak »

jetrink wrote: post #15

I will never understand how this trend started in the first place. If you look at e.g. digital cameras, they all have touch screens these days, but they also still have buttons and dials everywhere. The one in front of me has eight physical buttons, seven dials and a power switch. The reason is obvious: when you're taking photos, you don't want to be looking down at a screen; you want to be focused on the task at han…

I can only conclude from the situation you describe, as well as the fact that most cameras (as cameras, not phones) still lack GPS and sometimes Wi-Fi, that a great many industrial designers are trend-following, uncreative bores.

Most modern car interior controls are horrible (Tesla’s giant laggy touchscreen included).

Post reply on HN