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

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#581

Post by mattmanser » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 1:31 AM UTC

twomoretime wrote: post #552

mattmanser wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't get how we can explain it in a simpler way? If you add a microservice, you're adding another point of failure. You add another interaction, you add more code. Add more code, you add more bugs.

It's pretty much the only empirical thing we have in software engineering, more code = more bugs.

Lots of little microservices means lots of extra code means lots of extra bugs.

Plus you've got to manage how they all interact. Which microservice has priotity? Did you even think of that? The breaking microservice? Or the volume microservice? Did you even think of that or try and test that? Your breaks get disabled every time you turn up the volume?

Whoops, you just killed a thousand people with your "redundant" microservices.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#582

Post by kristopolous » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 1:44 AM UTC

I've long wanted to create an after market midi style controller that people can put on their dash to give their car the spatial, tactile control again.

Integrating it with the vehicle though... Somewhat dubious if you're just CAN writing

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#583

Post by bl0b » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 1:44 AM UTC

Judgmentality wrote: post #572

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…

> A program handling a touchscreen will be complicated. Millions of lines of code. Maybe even billions. I think you're off by a few orders of magnitude. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/millions-lines-of-code/

Interesting link. Can anyone explain why a car needs so much code?

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#584

Post by kristopolous » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

vijucat wrote: post #579

Now let's go back from this flat UI nonsense everywhere to the kind of solid look that Windows '95 had and make my decade, not just day! https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-9...

Hardware graphics acceleration on High quality, high resolution displays are to blame. And then designers started pretending computers was like paper, they used the same design principles

Interfaces became flat well, because paper design isn't interactive.

I know this sounds stupid, who'd make such a mistake! Look at where the trendsetters cribbed their design inspirations from, and you'll find a classic 2d printed world.

If we relimit ourselves to EGA16/640x480 thinking, at least in thought as an exercise, we'd be good.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#585

Post by jacobwilliamroy » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 1:50 AM 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.

Murderers!

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#586

Post by stevehawk » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 1:54 AM UTC

TheKarateKid wrote: post #549

stevehawk wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Honestly, if you told me that moving forward I could only have CarPlay or Android Auto then I would quit buying new cars. I dislike both of them. I also don’t want my car tied to a company that has a reputation for canceling products more than I change shoes. And if you think the auto industry doesn’t employ people to try and improve their user experience then you’re as daft as you think I am.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#587

Post by paulyg » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 2:05 AM 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…

If something needs that much flexibility in it's UI that people are messing with it at the last minute it doesn't belong as something people should be messing with while driving. The OP talks about HVAC controls. How much flexibility do you really need for that? The interface has been standardized for a long time. It's a known quantity both from a design perspective and user perspective. Ditto for common audio controls like volume, pause/play, skip.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#588

Post by mkhpalm » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 2:05 AM 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…

> Touch screens will hopefully never make it into any critical pilot systems, because safety and stability matters to airline manufacturers, current ongoing scandals notwithstanding.

You might want to take a look at garmin's general aviation product lineup. They're pretty popular.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#589

Post by ak217 » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 2:08 AM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #353

derefr wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 flexib…

Also known as an MFD, and used for many decades in the aviation industry.

MFDs were pioneered in fighter jets, where the cockpit physical space is extremely limited while the amount of information the pilot has to deal with is far beyond any civilian pilot workload.

MFDs combine the durability of physical controls with the configurability and flexibility of screens, and it's completely beyond me why they are not standard equipment in all cars.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#590

Post by balnaphone » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

Judgmentality wrote: post #572

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…

> A program handling a touchscreen will be complicated. Millions of lines of code. Maybe even billions. I think you're off by a few orders of magnitude. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/millions-lines-of-code/

The phone switch for Nortel's Meridian PBX system circa 1994, which supported SONET and IP, had about 16 million lines of code. The complexity of a touchscreen is less than 1%, maybe less than 0.1% of that. Lines of code, however an absurd metric, in this case does say something. I'm just not sure exactly what, though.