Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls • Hacker News Board

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#371

Post by vel0city » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

squarefoot wrote: post #346

CivBase wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for an avionics manufacturer and I can assure you most of our upcoming comercial systems (and even a healthy portion of government ones) feature touch screen inputs.

Touch screens add multiple points of failure to a device that, if properly built, would last decades. A single glitch in a software driving a screen could render useless all touch inputs displayed on it, information loss aside. I'm all for mechanical switches everywhere. As for potentiometers, sliders etc, we already have optical and mechanical encoders that hardly fail, or if/when they do, it happens gracefully leav…

In many of the newer systems, all those physical dials and switches are just inputs to the computer system which ultimately decides to do what the user is requesting. A bug which would prevent inputs from working right on a touchscreen could also happen on reading inputs on other systems. Not that I'm arguing for touchscreen controls, just that these days having a physical knob does not mean you're directly manipulating things. Software glitches can still muck up physical controls.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#372

Post by the_jeremy » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

user-asdfgh wrote: post #319

arcticfox wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP was making an appeal to authority, that avionics manufacturers know what they're doing and decided against touchscreens. So IMO it does strongly refute OP's argument. (That's not to say that OP is wrong, of course, just that their argument isn't really a valid one. My belief is that touch screens would suck for flying a plane, but I'm not a pilot.)

Appeal to authority is an informal fallacy of logic. It can/should never be used to prove an argument.

Sure, if everyone is an expert on the subject, or is willing to spend the time to become one, you should never appeal to authority.

That's not most people on most subjects. If someone appeals to authority and says "climate change is real, here's 100 scientists with PhDs who agree" I accept that. I am not willing to become an expert on the subject to be able to spend the time to review the facts for myself. Citing sources in a paper is essentially appealing to authority (I understand I could read those papers and the ones they cite, all the way down, but for most things, I'm not going to do that).

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#373

Post by kowbell » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

raisedbyninjas wrote: post #192

cameronh90 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost never drive by myself. Things that lock out my girlfriend from using them are very annoying to me. Android Auto does this on some features. It's not like it stops people from just using their phones anyway.

If people routinely wore capacitive clothing, the screen could determine which seat the finger's owner was sitting in.

I know this is comment in jest, but could you actually identify who touched a screen? Do people have different physical characteristics that would give them a detectable capacitive "fingerprint?"

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#374

Post by BrandonMarc » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

cmckn wrote: post #294

vwcx wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. There are many moments during the operation of an aircraft where full attention is paramount. Yes, you see a pilot leaving the cockpit to use the lavatory while the co-pilot is monitoring the autopilot, but the margins are just as small as operating a motor vehicle.

My partner is a first officer, and frequently describes his job as being a glorified babysitter outside of takeoff and landing. Worth noting that a significant amount of the information pilots use in the cockpit (at major US carriers, at least), things like flight plans, are on an iPad.

... until something goes wrong. Then a touch screen is the last thing you want. An airliner moving uncontrollably is no time to try touching just the right spot of the screen, and avoid touching the wrong spot.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#375

Post by mywittyname » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

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.

I do not like button on steering wheels. I drive at 10-and-2 so unless I know where the damn button I'm looking for is, I have to move my hands to look under them on the steering wheel. I have a Ford where all the buttons are mostly the same.

If you forced me to have them, I'd prefer something like a d-pad on each side because they are easy to locate without looking and intuitive to select. Critical controls should be stalks, IMHO. I can't use cruise control in the car I've owned for six years without looking at the steering wheel, but I test drove a Subaru, which I haven't owned for like 9 years, and immediately remembered how to operate the cruise stalk.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#376

Post by mywittyname » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

eyegor wrote: post #331

huffmsa wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now would be a good time, there are very few of us who use the engine disconnect pedal these days.

What is an "engine disconnect pedal"? You rewire the ignition or something?

OP is being a smartass. He means a clutch pedal.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#377

Post by clSTophEjUdRanu » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

hnarn wrote: post #138

Look 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…

I'd argue that humans have evolved to physically manipulate their environment. Safety critical systems are the last place you want UI variation. Things need to be predictable and tactile to build muscle memory.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#378

Post by sethammons » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

> We changed it from touchscreen to dial operation, as we received customer feedback that it was difficult to operate intuitively. You had to look at the screen to change the heater seating, therefore, we changed it so one can operate it without looking, giving more confidence while driving.

Finally, logic, reason, and listening to customers.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#379

Post by clSTophEjUdRanu » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

xt00 wrote: post #336

CivBase wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for an avionics manufacturer and I can assure you most of our upcoming comercial systems (and even a healthy portion of government ones) feature touch screen inputs.

The sad but real reason a ton of this is happening is one very big word that is typically not present in things like car / airplane design: flexibility... flexibility to change the user controls, flexibility to fix problems, flexibility to let the SW team work up until the last minute to get stuff working, and the second part that goes with this is cost. Touchscreens mean increased flexibility for the design and bett…

You'll often see screens surrounded on all sides by physical buttons. The screen can be updated and changed over time but the interaction is still physical.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#380

Post by ragebol » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

Funny anecdote: when I was working on the Ultimaker S5 touch screen interface, there were lots of tests done with new users. Many people had trouble figuring out that the previous version did not have a touch screen but a tiny, tiny OLED display that was controlled by a rotating button. People poking their finger at this tiny OLED which was not giving a damn about what they did there. Really funny to look at, but made it very clear customers expected us to have a touch screen.

That allowed for a much nicer interface (we won some award with it), but the only thing that was not better with a touchscreen (IMO) was manual bed leveling, where you look at the print head and not the screen. We did our best on that and to make it as unneeded as possible. I don't have a such an S5 3D-printer and I don't work for Ultimaker anymore, so I'd be glad if anyone here could tell me how they like the bed leveling UI, if they ever used it :-)