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Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

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Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#271

Post by strawhatguy »

PreInternet01 wrote: post #17

I would love to see some EU legislation about car dashboards. As an occasional driver of many different brands and types of vehicles, I continue to be amazed at the usability crimes being committed in the name of 'looking cool' (stated reason) as well as 'cost savings' (most likely the real reason). Any function that needs to be invoked or setting that needs to be changed by a reasonable person while driving should h…

I agree using the touchscreen is annoying on occasion; but more legislation I’m totally opposed. We’d get much worse results over time as bad practices are enforced by the largest of car companies to further prevent new stuff from being tried.

Honestly having the m3 dash clear of the clutter and most features on automatic gives me personally more focus on road and those around me. But yeah hitting the rear defroster is more inconvenient.

Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#272

Post by acdha »

TekMol wrote: post #165
acdha wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they were talking about requires FSD. Car manufacturers have been adding various assistive features but none of them are at the level where it’s safe to direct your attention away from the road.

In Germany, Mercedes has a license to sell full self driving cars (the driver can write emails, watch movies, do whatever they like) that are allowed to enable FSD mode while on the highway and driving up to 60 km/h.

They have L3 on the easiest road environment possible and even that’s limited in speed and requires good weather and nothing like tunnels or construction zones. That is a far cry from saying that their cars no longer need good controls for drivers — L3 is predicated on the driver being available to take over at any time.

My position is that cars should be optimized for safe driving until they hit L5 and we’re comfortable saying they don’t need a human driver. It’s one of the most dangerous things we do and should be treated that way.

Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#273

Post by ndneighbor »

I am a proud car enthusiast and I daily drive one of the latest Volkswagen models with the latest infotainment, they have removed all the physical buttons from the car.

VW's have always had reliability issues with their radio buttons for some reason. It was common for Mk6 or Mk7 GTIs radio power buttons to suddenly not work after a year or two. I am sure this is what caused the edict from on high to transition to their new disastrous infotainment. The thing is, nearly every company who went all in on touch, always had to backtrack at some point. (Like Honda in 2015)

Friend of mine who used to work as a SWE in an automotive company mentioned that one of the pesky issues when it came to developing a new car was the long pole of waiting on your vendor to give you test units of your interior hardware. I assume the push there is primarily coming from that issue as well as the cost savings they get.

The touch issues don't bother me insofar as how slow nearly all the units and interactions are within the car. Delays of 500ms after interaction are frankly unacceptable when it comes to operating anything at high speeds.

I would hate for the automotive industry to just completely focusing on iPadifing your commute rather than focusing on driver/passenger experience, but I assume thats the direction where we are headed regardless.

Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#275

Post by bonzini »

phpisthebest wrote: post #170
messe wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazingly bad takes. > Ironic since safety laws is what put the screens in the cars in the first place Screens themselves aren't the issue. They didn't mandate touch screens, or the removal of non-touch controls. (EDIT: in fact, the removal of non-touch controls in place of touch controls is a perfect example of the market resulting in a race-to-the-bottom cost-saving measure that you're in denial of in your other co…

Talk about Amazingly bad takes. >They didn't mandate touch screens ofcourse... they just mandated a large expensive screen that naturally the automakers and consumers would love to have right up front visible to the driver for about 10secs per use of the vehicle and be used for nothing else ever. This is the kind of "forethought" that makes for terrible regulation, and unintended consequences, I bet you would make fo…

> No one is toss out their iPhone because it has a lighting cable, and most are not even tossing the chargers as for less than $5 you can get any adapter to any other port...

You must have forgotten the days where all chargers had a molded cable instead of the USB-A socket that is standard these days, and the plug was different for each and every brand. So each phone came with both a custom cable and a custom charger.

Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#276

Post by HellDunkel »

jasmer wrote: post #156
PreInternet01 wrote: post #17

I would love to see some EU legislation about car dashboards. As an occasional driver of many different brands and types of vehicles, I continue to be amazed at the usability crimes being committed in the name of 'looking cool' (stated reason) as well as 'cost savings' (most likely the real reason). Any function that needs to be invoked or setting that needs to be changed by a reasonable person while driving should h…

Oh, it's the worst. And it's definitely not even cool. The car industry spends so much money on supposedly relevant things and yet it's a disaster. App Store and Google Play consoles are also utterly insanely bad. I think what happens is there is nobody responsible for the experience, just for the function. It does A, B and C, it looks 'cool' and so that's that.

This is quite accurate. I have been working in the field for the last decade.

Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#278

Post by mysterydip »

PreInternet01 wrote: post #17

I would love to see some EU legislation about car dashboards. As an occasional driver of many different brands and types of vehicles, I continue to be amazed at the usability crimes being committed in the name of 'looking cool' (stated reason) as well as 'cost savings' (most likely the real reason). Any function that needs to be invoked or setting that needs to be changed by a reasonable person while driving should h…

Given their plans seem to be headed towards making every feature a subscription plan, the only "logical" (from a business perspective) way to do that is an interface that can be updated for minimal cost at any time.

Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#279

Post by strawhatguy »

Eh, this test is timing how long it took to complete a defined set of tasks in a certain way as fast as possible. While taking longer to do a secondary task indirectly may indicate safety concerns, I’m a little skeptical that it is necessarily so, or that safety was what the test was actually testing

The test did require the drivers to be moving at the same time. I often change things when I want to at natural stopping points anyway.

Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#280

Post by moistly »

phpisthebest wrote: post #104
PreInternet01 wrote: post #17

I would love to see some EU legislation about car dashboards. As an occasional driver of many different brands and types of vehicles, I continue to be amazed at the usability crimes being committed in the name of 'looking cool' (stated reason) as well as 'cost savings' (most likely the real reason). Any function that needs to be invoked or setting that needs to be changed by a reasonable person while driving should h…

>>I would love to see some EU legislation Why does the EU believe every facet of life needs to be ordered and control by government regulation, is there any area of life at all in the EU that should be free from government interference? That is an honest question because every time anything comes up the first response from citizens of the EU is to declare government should be the right and proper resolution to the pr…

Because “Best Practices“ and “Interface Ergonomics“ guidelines provide excellent parameters for legislation. Why would we want anything other than the best functional design/interface for something as important as our vehicle controls?
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