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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

#551

Post by pbreit »

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…

It's not useful to compare cars to planes since cars can easily pull over to the side of the road.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#552

Post by twomoretime »

mattmanser wrote: post #514
twomoretime wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 als…

It's not about minimizing points of failure, it's about removing singular points of failure. Perhaps "redundant" was the wrong word but the point is instead of having a single UI component (touchscreen/UI thread) which can cause the whole system to fail, if you group buttons/knobs into individual microservices they are unlikely to all go down simultaneously.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#553

Post by tbyehl »

solatic wrote: post #111

Last year I bought a motorcycle (Honda CB300R) and it was a revelation. No touch screens. No stereo. No GPS. No Bluetooth. No automatic transmission. No cupholders. Basically no "modern car features". And it's a much, much better road experience than any car I've ever been able to afford to drive. Get rid of all the distractions at a price point under $30k with an engine that doesn't feel sluggish and maybe I'll cons…

The latest-gen Goldwing has a fancy non-touch screen, stereo, CarPlay, GPS, Bluetooth, dual-clutch transmission w/ automatic mode. Screens are invading all segments of motorcycles with varying degrees of functionality.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#554

Post by cletus »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #161
cletus wrote: post #66

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…

> Touch screen controls strike me as not being about cost but being about incredibly lazy UI It's almost always about cost. Touch screens are shocking cheap thanks to smartphones driving the prices down and physical controls can be shockingly expensive per control.

I should probably elaborate on what I mean about "lazy UI". For a touchscreen UI, the thinking seems to be that they view this is something they can fix later with an update because a touch screen is an updatable blank canvas. The effect of that is you end up skimping on UI design because it's "optional".

Hard buttons force your hand more. You have to think about what buttons you want and how they're going to work in a way you just don't have to with touch screens. So you're forced to do a level of UI/UX design that you're not with touch screens.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#555

Post by gjs278 »

gkfasdfasdf wrote: post #402
sneak wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Laggy? The Tesla Model 3 touchscreen is anything but. I had many reservations about the touchscreen prior to ownership, however I don't really have any complaints now. You get used to it, Tesla's specifically is not laggy, and most critical stuff is on the steering wheel/stalk anyway.

older tesla’s pre 2017 have extremely laggy screens

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#556

Post by storyinmemo »

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…

Check out all the latest Garmin aviation equipment. Touch is here for critical systems including GPS systems used on instrument approaches. Super fun to reprogram in turbulence.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#557

Post by nojvek »

This is #1 reason why I still love my Toyota over Tesla. Physical buttons make a huge difference in driving experience.

If only someone invented a tactile touchscreen, i.e it would bulge where user can interact. like dynamic braille. Material design where different elevation levels are literally popping out of screen at different levels.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#558

Post by pacetherace »

jetrink wrote: post #15

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…

In the 90s and 2000s, cars had too many buttons and knobs. And car reviewers started using that as a criterion to judge the dashboard. So less became better. OCD!

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#559

Post by storyinmemo »

dewey wrote: post #286
ciconia wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pilots already use iPads for checklists.

That's a different ballpark though as you can fall back to the paper version at any time.

More often than not, navigation charts are now on iPads and there is no paper backup carried anymore.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#560

Post by avianlyric »

mcsb4 wrote: post #521
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…

I had a smartphone that at some point started to randomly create touch events. Kind of like if you put it in your pocket while the screen is unlocked. I don't remember any physical light switch that ever switch on or off by itself. In an aircraft flying through turbulences I'd feel a lot more comfortable knowing that all switches are pyhsical. Try to use your smartphone while jogging...

Comparing a light switch to the switches and dials found in an aircraft is a it like comparing a light switch to a keyboard key.

Yeah they’re both switches, but size is incredibly important, and small mechanical devices are finicky and don’t produce nice clean digital output (that’s a lie that electronic engineers tell software engineers to keep things simple).

So yeah I’m sure you’ve never seen a light switch fail, but I bet you’ve seen a keyboard fail (especially if you’ve spent any time around a recent MacBook).

But I do agree with your point on using a touchscreen in turbulence. A counter point is that there are probably hundreds of controls or settings on a plane that you never touch during turbulence, possibly that you never touch in flight (like telling the flight computer how much cargo you’re carrying). Stuff like that is ideal for a touchscreen.

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