The only touch screen in any car should be a dumb terminal for CarPlay/Android Auto. Everything else should be dials and buttons.
Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls
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Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
You (or maybe the market) are misinterpreting Steve Jobs. In a phone context, he is correct.
Still loved all my physical buttons which made input a breeze and didnt require constantly correcting my dang text, in a phone context, nah, he's still wrong; maybe a hybrid is even better, but amorphous movement and inferring intent is not a great user experience as things get more complex.
Agree, now it is very difficult to find a phone that has physical keyboard, sdcard, phone jack and is current.
I really hate those trends.
Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls
#353Look at the cockpit of any modern airliner and you will see screens, but they are never interactive. There are hardware buttons, dials and lights all over the place. A tactile interface is both more obvious, sturdy and more stable, and therefore safer. The problem that touch interfaces solve, ever since the advent of the first smart phone, is that the interface is now dynamic. You can change it without having to repl…
> The problem that touch interfaces solve, ever since the advent of the first smart phone, is that the interface is now dynamic. You can change it without having to replace the hardware. I mean, the other point of a dynamic interface is that you can now have more controls than would fit on a static interface. Touchscreen fit-to-purpose controls might suck more than hardware fit-to-purpose controls, but either option…
There's always the possibility for hybrid UIs. Something with physical inputs with a dynamic display based on context, like a screen above a series of buttons and maybe a dial at the end ( think ATMs) or even buttons with OLED displays.
It's the best or worst of both worlds depending on your perspective, but they do offer superior hands-free operation over a pure touch device, but at the sacrifice of interface flexibility.
Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
It possibly could be done in real-time using Bluetooth but I doubt it would be reliable and remember that higher end cameras might be writing out images at maybe 6+ frames/second. Alternatively you can make a point of recording a track on your phone (which tends to be hard on the battery life) and then syncing them up later. But, as someone who has done this, it's a pain in the neck.
Geotagging on my X-T3 with the Camera remote Android app is very reliable to be honest. And you don't have to query the phone at the same rate as you're taking pictures, it's perfectly sane to assume the same location for 5-10 seconds during a burst.
Fair enough. Though I'm not sure I'm convinced that, today, you're not just better off putting a GPS receiver in the camera. GPS is a bit hard on battery life but with the bigger batteries in these cameras, I'm not sure that's much of an issue. (And of course you can turn it off.)
Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls
#355Although I do not drive around much, fully hardware buttons + Siri voice controls(maps, music) does not sound bad.
Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls
#356Eminently 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.
> I suppose that voice controls would be a reasonably safe tech option, but probably not cost-effective. They all suck and they’re literally not workable for rentals. Nobody will waste an hour configuring a rental car’s VA on departure.
I always hunt down and hit the “factory reset” menu option on every car I rent, though. If you don’t, you never know what weird settings the previous users have changed.
I also un-pair all the hundreds of paired bluetooth phones, if the reset hasn’t already done that. I often rent cars where the address book is full of names and numbers from previously paired phones.
Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls
#357Eminently 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.
Having actually used voice controls in a car, it is worse than taking one hand off the steering wheel. It is also worse than a touch screen interface. It really is the worst of all options.
Because they suck at recognition.
I've noticed the mental effort I spend in trying to formulate a voice command that the car (or even phone) will understand is significant - and that almost none of my brain is being used for driving. The likelihood of it not recognizing what I said is not low. With tactile buttons, it's almost automatic. I don't spend any time thinking. I know where the buttons are, and my finger is good at finding it.
On the few occasions where I'm not sure where my finger landed, I can still slowly move my finger to an edge and start counting. I can do this over several seconds. Often while doing this I have to attend to an event on the road, and it's trivial to do so: I pause my finger search, attend to the event on the road, and then resume. So even if it takes 10-30s to find my button (very rare), it can be done with almost no loss of attention on the road. The same goes if I need to pause to listen/respond to what someone else in the car is saying.
Contrast that with voice recognition: If I have to pause to attend to anything on the road, the recognition system assumes I'm done talking. This adds more mental stress (maybe it will execute the wrong command? In any case I'll have to start over).
Now I'll go further and make an even stronger claim: Even if voice recognition becomes almost perfect (better than humans), it will still be a greater cognitive load to use voice recognition. For me, changing stations on the radio or adjusting the volume or adjusting the climate control is pretty automatic. The cognitive load of finding the preset station is virtually none. Whereas just formulating the command verbally - even to another human where I wouldn't worry about voice recognition - takes more effort. Perhaps verbal skills are tied to the vision in the brain and tactile senses are not? I wonder if any studies have been done on this.
Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Somewhat" is not really good enough given the stakes. You cannot "feel" your way through a touchscreen interface and you cannot rely on muscle memory. You will take your eyes off the road to see where the button is and "aim" at it. And a bumpy road just makes it worse because it only takes an accidental light touch to trigger some random function close by. Even a 17" screen or great UI won't fix the problems, they w…
I have a Tesla and previously owned a Lexus, I find that in practice it's pretty much identical with respect to taking eyes off the road. The only on-screen setting I ever adjust while driving the Tesla is the AC and in my Lexus I also make a quick glance down at the console because the row of buttons controlling AC functionality all feel the same.
After a few weeks of using any car I owned I basically stopped needing to look at the buttons. Even when there's a row of 4-5 identical physical buttons I just run my fingers across the row, this is where muscle memory comes in (like blind typing). The huge advantage being I can touch every button without triggering the function until I press.
I mean I'm not against huge screens in the car, as long as I can turn them off or dim them to the point where I consider they don't impede my driving. But I'd still very much like to see basic functions of the car tied (also?) to physical buttons. Whether the manufacturer also wants to put them on a screen that's fine but I see no good reason a handful or buttons and knobs can't fit in a car. The minor savings or the wow effect don't really offset the downsides of distracting attention.
Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls
#359Look at the cockpit of any modern airliner and you will see screens, but they are never interactive. There are hardware buttons, dials and lights all over the place. A tactile interface is both more obvious, sturdy and more stable, and therefore safer. The problem that touch interfaces solve, ever since the advent of the first smart phone, is that the interface is now dynamic. You can change it without having to repl…
An airplane cockpit has two pilots and literally several hundred physical buttons. No one wants to drive that car. In cars we're mainly talking about the volume and fan speed. Personally I much prefer knobs for those. But I wouldn't call those critical safety systems.
Someone already mentioned this: climate control becomes safety critical when your windshield fogs up. Good luck finding that goddamn touch button then... Additionally, I sometimes hear radio ads that have honk or siren sounds in them that immensely piss me off and cause me to immediately turn the radio off just to be able to hear if something's actually happening or not.
Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls
#360Look at the cockpit of any modern airliner and you will see screens, but they are never interactive. There are hardware buttons, dials and lights all over the place. A tactile interface is both more obvious, sturdy and more stable, and therefore safer. The problem that touch interfaces solve, ever since the advent of the first smart phone, is that the interface is now dynamic. You can change it without having to repl…
The f35 has a large touch screen that pilots use. Maybe the $1m helmet has a way to interact without touching.
For some more info: https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/cmypjd/the_finger... It's fun thread. You can catch some actual military pilots there.