61–70 of 770 posts
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've said it before, I'll say it again. Touchscreens CAN BE DONE RIGHT. (or at least better) I have an aftermarket JVC headunit in my 2003 VW. It has one button, that's the "Menu" button on single press, or Power button when held. The screen itself is relatively intuitive to control without looking because of a gesture feature it has as well as button placement being useful. If I want more volume I put one finger on…
Or you know, knobs and buttons which don't require any user on-boarding or discovery process.
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.
When first capacitive touch devices appeared around 2005-2006, everybody immediately noticed that you only need a single digitizer for the whole front panel of the device, or dirt cheap cap sens circuits for point sensors.
For as long as the sensor is just a piece of polyimide pcb you can glue to anything, but a metal surface, things get really cheap without mechanical buttons, holes in the case to cut, and PCB to hold the buttons.
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…
Most people who drive would prefer to be insulated from the activity as much as is legally possible. Fly-by-wire everything, touch interfaces, etc. This is how you achieve that objective. These "innovations" are obviously the antithesis of safe. But, we all know money is more important than safety, and most consumers are attracted exclusively to this kind of shiny bullshit.
What I'd give for hardware input source buttons. This is a ridiculous UX:
1. Touch button to open menu
2. Select "Input Source"
3. Click up/down (possibly multiple times) to find your source
4. Click OK
...when your monitor has TWO sources. Just give me 2 buttons: HDMI and DisplayPort.
I don't care that this would be marginally more expensive. I'd pay it.
Touch screen controls strike me as not being about cost but being about incredibly lazy UI and a good example of worrying about problems you'll never have like "what if you have 10 input sources? That'd mean 10 buttons". But YOU DON"T. You can't add an input source with software after the fact.
/rant
Touch screens make complete sense for phones. You're looking at it. There is limited screen real estate. The second is why hardware keyboards died. It's even why the Home button on iPhones died, which makes me sad because I loathe Face ID with a passion (compared to Touch ID).
Touch screens require you to look at them. This seems bad when driving. Physical controls are tactile and you can learn to use them without looking. People seem to forget how important this is.
It's also why I prefer keyboards that split function keys into groups of 4 over the terrible design of putting them all together. Function keys are really too far to touch type effectively so you need a non-visual cue of which is which.
Beyond that, every touch interface I've seen in a car is objectively terrible.
Kudos to Honda for bucking this stupid trend.
Any monitor manufacturers want to follow suit? What I'd give for hardware input source buttons. This is a ridiculous UX: 1. Touch button to open menu 2. Select "Input Source" 3. Click up/down (possibly multiple times) to find your source 4. Click OK ...when your monitor has TWO sources. Just give me 2 buttons: HDMI and DisplayPort. I don't care that this would be marginally more expensive. I'd pay it. Touch screen co…
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).
> 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 i…
A/C controls are completely manual. Mazda got it right from the beginning.
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…
Touch screens are cheap and very easy to develop for. They also de-couple the software development from the device development. It also allows updates and changes after the car is in production.