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

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#721

Post by munificent » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

KineticLensman wrote: post #412

munificent wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So on my seven year old Nikon D3s I can use buttons to focus and change the shutter speed, aperture, ISO, WB, focusing mode and focus selection point all the while keeping my eye to the viewfinder. Sure, and you could do that with an SLR from the 90s too, as I recall. Camera manufacturers are very innovative when it comes to capabilities and new features, but incredibly conservative when it comes to user experience…

Totally agree but the broader point stands that buttons have some very useful affordances

But that's not the original point, though. jetrink's claim was:

> they also still have buttons and dials everywhere. ... The reason is obvious: when you're taking photos, you don't want to be looking down at a screen

I agree that physical affordances are very useful. But I don't think the cause of DSLRs having them is because current manufacturers believe buttons have superior usability. It's because SLRs have had those same controls since before touchscreens existed and today's self-selected DSLR camera audience specifically wants products with that "vintage" user experience.

My evidence is that today's cameras generally only have hardware controls for features that existed since before the digital revolution. Purely new capabilities (like file management) have not included corresponding new hardware controls. Likewise, hardware controls that are no longer that useful, like mode selectors, are still present.

To me, this implies that camera manufacturers are not just trying to provide a "hardware control" UX, they are specifically providing "the hardware control UX of 90s SLRs".

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#722

Post by fluidcruft » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

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 controls are a living hell with kids in the car.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#723

Post by tills13 » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 6:07 PM UTC

dpedu wrote: post #494

tills13 wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Repairability and features as software instead of hardware. For example, Tesla was able to enable Spotify in all its cars with an OTA update. Hell, you can enable rear heated seats in the Model 3 SR+ via an OTA.

Tesla also takes away features via OTA updates. It's a double-edged sword.

You're referring to the AP / FSD situation?

I believe that was a misstep and was rectified. The "features" I'm talking about are different.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#724

Post by natch » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

imperialdrive wrote: post #718

Wistar wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This past January, I rented an Audi Q7. It was brand new and had the Audi Virtual Cockpit which took me a full two days to grasp to the point where I could use it safely and required me to pull over several times to figure something out. Worse, the rental agency had removed the owner's manuals so I was without reference. One of the goofiest things was that the navigation moving map would mysteriously stop moving--all…

You just gave me flashbacks to renting my first Audi and not being able to leave the lot for a good 15 minutes before I could figure out what the hell was going on. Audi sponsored the whole thing but it backfired because I would NEVER drive one again after that, or recommend to anyone - what happened to cars? Newer Suburus are almost as bad. Tesla is too but at least it's all located on one panel.

Most everything on the Tesla screen is non-essential other than the current speed (which while driving is always displayed prominently in a large font and in the closest place) and possibly some alerts that rarely happen, such as “tire pressure low” in actual words, not just a cryptic glowing red icon on the dashboard.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#725

Post by chongli » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 6:56 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…

I had a microwave that used a digital knob that was completely screwed up, from a debouncing perspective. You would turn the knob to try and add 30 seconds to the time and it would stutter between 5-10 seconds for a bit and then shoot up to 3 minutes and then you’d try to drop it down to 30 seconds and end up stuck between 1-2 minutes. It was infuriating! The old mechanical microwave dials were way more reliable than that piece of junk!

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#726

Post by smsm42 » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 7:00 PM UTC

Hallelujah, at least one auto maker is willing to publicly come out against this insane trend of making car controls visual only. I mean, one would think that when you are inside a ton of metal speeding along the road at 60 mph, you would insist on controls that allow you to have 100% of your visual attention on the road and rely on your other senses to change the channel on the radio or adjust the AC. But somehow people think driving a car should be something like playing candy crush on your tablet. That means going forward I'll always have a car manufacturer I can rely on to not sacrifice my safety for a marketing coolness. Too bad makers like Tesla (who have a lot of leadership in other areas) completely drop the ball in this regard.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#727

Post by smsm42 » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

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 controls are nice. Except when you get a sore throat. I'm not talking about disabled people, people with funny accents (everybody speaks English of course and if they don't, they at least speak one of the five other languages we proudly support) and people with non-standard timbre of voice, also.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#728

Post by omilu » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 8:22 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…

A wet finger makes my device go ballistic.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#729

Post by mastre_ » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 8:28 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #688

nswest23 wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Touchscreens on phones are great for usability! There are so many things that are enabled by touchscreens that you couldn't do with an array of physical buttons or whatever. OP's comment was specifically for mission critical hardware where safety is paramount.

For making a phonecall they are crap in comparison to buttons.

One could argue that, despite still being called "phones," their primary purpose is not making phone calls anymore. I personally use my device for making phone calls less than 1% of the time I use it (and this includes talk time).

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#730

Post by astrodust » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 8:35 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #625

astrodust wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's logical? It's absurd. You can usually pull over a car and get out in the case of a critical hardware failure. There is rarely such a luxury in a plane.

Anything critical on a plane will be duplicated, including power systems. Sometimes triplicated.

You say that like the 737-Max incident didn't just happen.