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

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#541

Post by flamtap » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 11:28 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #181

closeparen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about the MMI scroll wheel? I don’t feel safe using that either; it still requires eyes on the screen to see what you’re selecting. Even my passengers, who can give it their full attention, are routinely stymied by the process of pairing their phones for Bluetooth audio playback. At least I can get the volume and temperature knobs by feel.

Whats interesting about Honda going with a dial, is that they designed, what I thought, was a pretty brilliant absolutely positioned touchpad for Acura. Have peopled used these, what is there feedback. It seems much more natural, intuitive, and fast compared to a dial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScWOFtlLCyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcKa9apjOX8

Lexus also has a touchpad, and an interesting "tactile joystick" type of solution. Takes some getting used to but the tactile feedback goes a long way to reducing the need to look at the screen.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#542

Post by cwkoss » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 11:28 PM UTC

I'm hoping to get an EV or hybrid for my next car - probably a sedan. My biggest apprehension with most of the ones I've seen is the excessive dependency on software/touchscreen based controls.

Does anyone have experience with Honda EV or hybrids? Would you recommend?

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#543

Post by frosted-flakes » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 11:30 PM UTC

bluetomcat wrote: post #160

The best "driver UX" I've ever had is on a 1995 Rover Coupe, with its dashboard and switchgear carried over from a 1988 Honda Concerto: https://imgur.com/a/YvpSUFa Just 3 knobs for regulating blower fan speed, blown-in heat level, and flow direction. One switch for letting/stopping incoming air flow, another for recirculating/capturing cabin air. A single on/off button for the AC. Left steering column switch is entir…

That is very similar to early-2000s Volkswagens (mk4) except for the addition of a radio and seat heater dials, and cruise control on the left stalk (or the steering wheel):

https://justdrivethere.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/dscf1441....

The only (IMO) necessary features these cars lack compared to modern cars are audio Bluetooth/line in, and navigation. But both are easily added: audio bluetooth/line in with a module that plugs into the CD changer port on the back of the OEM radio, and navigation using a separate GPS unit (such as the ones Garmin make). Maybe a backup camera too, but you can buy a wireless one that works with a Garmin GPS screen.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#544

Post by zoom6628 » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 11:31 PM UTC

IMHO the physical controls invoke muscle memory and haptic feedback which enables driver to keep attention on the road. Touchscreen does not give this to same/any degree. I should not have to take eyes, or attention, off the road for longer than it takes my hand to find the right control. Physical controls current significant advantage over digital is "no interpretation required" - feel or microsecond glance tells you the state. Digital, other than big dials and flashing colors, needs you to think. Those thoughts take focus away from the act of driving.

Im summary i think Honda is right - digital controls for things with no time and attention pressure (like music channel), and physical for those that need near immediate action (like defogging a window or wipers).

FTR been driving cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles for nearly 50 years - 2 accidents, no hospital trips, and that includes plenty of 'hooning about' well into danger-zone for conditions/environment (wont say more or might get a visit from authorities :-p )

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#545

Post by lukevp » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 11:39 PM UTC

travisgriggs wrote: post #540

im3w1l wrote: post #530

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. Even so, a program for processing a switch or dial can be really short and simple. You can print it out on a sheet and check and double check every line of code for to make sure it's correct and all possibilities are accounted for. A program handling…

You've done a lot of programming for hardware switches and such then? I do some. And the last device we built, we still fight with a simple rotary switch. You have to do things like debounce inputs that seem like obvious binary switches. Getting the debounce windowing right can be just as "guessy". And guess what the highest point of failure on said device is. That selector switch. Had similar experience with buttons…

Yeah processing switch and button and encoder data manually is terrible. Once you install a library to wrap this hardware device in a sane process, how different is that than getting an x/y pixel coordinate from a touchscreen? Touch technology is incredibly reliable. I touch my phone probably 5k times a day or more and I don’t have touch failures, and I carry it around with me and get debris on it and drop it off of tables and all that too. I would argue that a touch interface is one of the most reliable from a hardware standpoint despite not being tactile.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#546

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 11:40 PM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #530

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…

> 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. Even so, a program for processing a switch or dial can be really short and simple. You can print it out on a sheet and check and double check every line of code for to make sure it's correct and all possibilities are accounted for. A program handling…

[deleted]

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#547

Post by Talanes » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 11:41 PM UTC

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-…

It's a little unfair to say that it's worse than texting. The increase to reaction time for texting was 34.7%, while Android Auto only showed an increase of 30% on voice. The 36% increase for Siri also was specifically for voice navigation, with voice media control showing no statistically significant increase in reaction time.

You're likely keeping your eyes on the road more with voice control over texting, though this one is hard to compare as the studies didn't measure it quite the same. Voice controls all came in under the NHTSA 12 second recommendation. The texting study showed an increase in time spent looking away from the road from a baseline of 10% to 40%.

Original Studies: https://iamwebsite.blob.core.windows.net/media/docs/default-...

https://www.racfoundation.org/assets/rac_foundation/content/...

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#548

Post by api » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 11:42 PM UTC

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.

The big driver for this is reducing the number of components and thus manufacturing cost, and secondarily being trendy.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#549

Post by TheKarateKid » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 11:48 PM UTC

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…

So because you had a bad experience on one Microsoft product, all of the tech industry has poor user interface design?

Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, etc. all have some of the best user designs created for technology. They have teams of researchers, psychologists, and designers working together to do this.

Have you heard of the auto industry doing anything remotely similar on this scale? Instead, they push away much better alternatives offered by Apple and Google for their own proprietary solution no customers asked for.

The arrogance of your comment is almost greater than your ignorance.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#550

Post by ben-schaaf » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 11:49 PM UTC

lazyjones wrote: post #326

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.

Voice control sucks IMO, even though a lot of people now grow up with Alexa and similar and adapt to the technology. Why does it suck, just like some "smart" buttons? Because it's not obvious what it can do. You have to learn the vocabulary it understands and its other limitations (tone etc.). For example, I tried to get my Tesla to text one of my contacts recently and failed. I didn't know whether it just didn't und…

Voice control is like trying to use a command line interface that comes without any documentation or completions.