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Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

autocar.co.uk

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Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#511

Post by perl4ever »

stevehawk wrote: post #408
TheKarateKid wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is not with the technology - it's from the people implementing it. Instead of leaving the design and software to tech companies, we have car companies trying to do it on their own. The result is terribly designed software that looks like it's from 2000.

The arrogance of that statement is amazing. I recently bought an iPad for the first time in 5+(?) years.. before multi touch and pressure sensitive screens. I have no f'n clue what I'm doing anymore. I accidentally had Safari running two windows side by side with no idea how to stop that. I'm still not sure what I did to make it go back to one window.. My friends and I decided to try out a (new to us) game which requ…

While working from home, I was trying to figure out how to mute my Android phone on a conference call the other day. I eventually did, but the sequence of actions to get to the menu was very strange. I'm pretty sure it was more intuitive just a few years ago, but of course, you don't control whether you update software anymore. Interface design is accelerating downhill, and it's amazing how things have regressed since Apple and Microsoft published guidelines for good design in the 80s and 90s.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#512

Post by perl4ever »

Dahoon wrote: post #469
throwanem wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My car has onboard voice controls, but, unlike Siri via the car's audio system, they suck. Recognition is slow and unreliable enough that I never bother, and if I did, the cognitive overhead would be unacceptably high anyway. They'd have done better not to bother implementing them at all and instead just offload that work to the driver's paired smartphone, which for a sedan that listed $32k new, it's very reasonable…

>My car has onboard voice controls, but, unlike Siri via the car's audio system, they suck Using Siri is more dangerous than driving and texting: "Undistracted drivers typically showed a one-second reaction time. Those who used the voice-controlled Apple CarPlay saw a 36% increase in their reaction time, which rose to 57% when they used the touch interface." https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/03/20/new-study-shows-…

Yeah, well, people are selective in their concerns. How much does it affect reaction time to have passengers in the car who you may talk to, or may be doing all sorts of things that distract you?

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#513

Post by mcguire »

sudosysgen wrote: post #441
saiya-jin wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think major difference is commercial airliner vs say fighter jet. As a layman it still seems pretty wrong to make most of the screen highly dynamic. Maybe designated one on the side. Back to the topic - in car, unless specifically intended for other passengers, driver should never stare on some stupid screen in a place way off the line of sight for driving. Whenever I do that even for a split second in my 15-year o…

Fighter jets are starting to use touchscreens, too.

Because fancy, advanced UIs work so well for Navy ships.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#514

Post by mattmanser »

twomoretime wrote: post #507
vel0city wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 manipulat…

Is this a good place for redundant microservices? Each service handles data from a handful of physical of physical knobs. At least that way you don't have the UI as a single point of failure.

There is no good point for "redundant" microservices.

They are, by very definition, an additional point of failure as you're always adding an additional interface. They're good for scaling, not for redundancy, and even that's wishful thinking for most applications.

EDIT: You could argue that microservices might free up the UI thread from locking mistakes, but if your team is going to make locking mistakes, you're also going to make mistakes in the microservice interfaces, so what's the point?

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#515

Post by robocat »

JensRex wrote: post #442
robocat wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple physical knobs and buttons add multiple points of failure: moving parts fail and even worse, they often fail intermittently. We all have that experience. Even optical encoders fail (I’ve had one fail on an engine, and obviously consumer mice, or the connectors fail). A modern touch screen is superbly reliable because it has no moving parts, and it can be tested. The (consumer grade) iPad touchscreen is very…

A mechanical switch is easy and cheap to fix or replace. A touch screen is the opposite. It cannot be repaired, only replaced. A switch can usually be cleaned easily, to restore its function. And proper quality switches can be actuated millions of times before failure.

> A mechanical switch is easy and cheap to fix or replace.

Not if it is in an airplane. Think of all the QC steps required to track the production, storage, shipping, installation, testing, etcetera for the replacement of a single switch. If a switch has failed it needs to be inspected to understand the reason for failure (no switch should fail; tracked to understand if it is a batch failure, plus other steps). I am only making an educated guess here.

> A switch can usually be cleaned easily, to restore its function.

Ummm, you think they put known failed parts back in planes? I think not. They do fix major parts, but the QC for that would be insane. You would make a switch to be hermetic and add anti-tampering - a manufacturer of any safety related device doesn’t want it to be “fixed”. Items are designed to be maintained (with proper schedules), or replaced.

> And proper quality switches can be actuated millions of times before failure.

On average? Or does it have a bathtub curve? Yes, quality switches are insanely reliable, but so are touchscreens.

If you have a variety of 50 switches and knobs, then the reliability is worse than 50x worse, because every item has it’s own reliability curve, and it only takes one failure to muck up your day.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#516

Post by andrewg »

GuB-42 wrote: post #481
pc86 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fly recreationally and all the higher end gear has touch screens. Some of them are redundant with paths using hardware controls or not. But that's definitely the minority. There are a slew of critical operations that I simply cannot complete without interacting with a touch screen. Not saying it's right or wrong but your original post is 100% incorrect.

Are these things certified? Many recreational pilots fly with uncertified gear (GPS in particular), and even regular smartphone/tablet apps. They also have the required paper documentation and certified instrument but that's just to cover themselves, and as a backup.

Garmin has quite a few certified touchscreens these days, some intended for panel upgrades (e.g. https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/67886) and even some in new light jets (e.g. https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/66916).

Also, some airlines now have officially certified iPads as EFBs, meaning pilots no longer need to carry paper backups.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#517

Post by tikiman163 »

All they did was put the analogue A/C controls back. I don't see this as a big deal and I kind of like that some of the basic controls don't require digging through menus. One of the drawbacks of touchscreen controls is you have limited screen space to cram everything that used to cover the whole dashboard.

New features like navigation and music makes sense when moved to the touch screen, but adding things you don't need to just means I have to switch away from navigation or music controls just to change the A/C.

I think Honda is making a good choice in terms of User Interface design.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#518

Post by frosted-flakes »

close04 wrote: post #358
root_axis wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

> 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.

This is an excellent point. Screens always emit more light than analogue gauges and buttons. When driving at night, dashboard lights annoy me so much that I avoid turning on the high-beams because the blue alert cluster light is so bright. I went so far as to wire up the dash lights to a toggle switch so I can shut them off independently of the headlights. This is on a 2003 VW Jetta, which has no back-lit screens.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#519

Post by jacquesm »

CivBase wrote: post #162
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 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.

Big mistake, imnsho. It will work fantastic right up to the point where you actually need that control in an emergency and then it will fail you because it is impossible to hit the right area consistently in a bucking aircraft. It also requires visual confirmation rather than tactile confirmation, which requires you to take away your attention from the surroundings, something you do at your peril in aircraft.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#520

Post by andrecarini »

hiram112 wrote: post #433
cmckn wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just out of curiosity, do pilots still manually take off and land fully, or does auto-pilot / computer do this too nowadays?

The technology exists, but autoland functionality depends on the plane model and the airport. Usually, most of the approach is done with ILS with the final moments being manual.
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