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Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

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Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#61

Saw the Impreza’s 2024 redesign, apparently Subaru missed the memo. https://www.carscoops.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2024-Su... I recently test drove a Mazda, and while I’ve seen people online complain about their “commander knob” and lack of touch screen, I liked it pretty well. Screen up further on the dashboard is nice for glancing at maps.

It's why I left Subaru and skipped on Toyota to get my CX-5. It does take a little too much attention sometimes, but it's definitely better than the touchscreen systems overall

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#62

I’m apparently unique in this, but I prefer touch screens. Not because I fail to realize the value of buttons, but I don’t find sitting in an airplane cockpit with a few hundred buttons that much better than a screen that is contextual. I like having a few buttons for common tasks like audio controls, and voice control for most else. The rest of the stuff can be on a touch screen for all I care. I get others prefer b…

Voice control is a bit of a nonstarter as the speech recognition (perhaps combined with the weird acoustics of a moving vehicle) has never worked for everyone; eg my father's accent never seems to work in his Honda. My car is from 2014 and definitely has more buttons than necessary. I don't mind infrequently used controls behind a touchscreen, like do the controls to set the time on the clock really need dedicated bu…

Speech recognition has mostly gotten over the accent hump, and with LLMs you can bridge the gap.

For fun I tried an experiment, in one context I told GPT to mangle sentences in a way that a speech-to-text might, and in another I told GPT to transform sentences into commands for a car's various ECUs.

Results:

"Torn the hair conditioning gown to 65 decrees." => works

"Can yew plays make it warmer in hear" => works

"It's weigh two, uh how due yew say, it's way to frayed in hear!" => works (!)

It actually understood a mis-transcribed French word in the middle of a series of English commands:

> I apologize for the confusion. I interpreted "frayed" as an incorrect transcription of "froid" (which means "cold" in French) considering the context of the sentence and the surrounding phrase "how do you say." Thus, I replaced "frayed" with "cold.""

It even realized that someone inserting filler like "how do you say" indicated they may be looking for a word in another language:

> The phrase "how do you say" is often used by someone who is trying to recall a word or phrase in another language, or when they are unsure about the correct term to use in the current language. In this context, it signaled that there might be a language-related issue, leading me to consider that "frayed" might be an incorrect transcription of a word in another language, such as "froid" for "cold" in French.

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And And in case you think it just guessed on past commands, I was able to replicate this in a fresh context window with no hints about what commands it should accept.

Voice is really about to stop sucking for the first time in the history of tech: It can go from "I'm tired of this shit man" to knowing it should change the current song.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#63
post #19

"Although they look fancy, Farah said that carmakers can purchase screens for less than $50, making them significantly less expensive than tactile controls."

That surprises me. I seem to recall having read something about the difficulty Tesla had in getting their fancy screens and how much they cost. $50 for a tiny one maybe.

That probably was years ago. Model s had that screen in 2012

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#64

Pro Tip: So do ER Doctors and Insurance Companies. What would be best is something along the lines of a hybrid aircraft controls. See F/A-18 Hornet cockpit. Basically tactile buttons around the perimeter (maybe just side or bottom for consumer), but the options can change. Also for consumers, touchscreen should be a value-add to tactile controls, with hardware buttons as primary. So you could touch-scroll with a fing…

Touch screens are also pretty terrible for older people. Vision and fine motor skills both degenerate. Without tactile feedback, it is hard for older people to determine if they've successfully clicked on something. Gestures can be tough to teach and successfully implement without error.

> Touch screens are also pretty terrible for older people. Vision and fine motor skills both degenerate. Without tactile feedback, it is hard for older people to determine if they've successfully clicked on something. Gestures can be tough to teach and successfully implement without error.

And I've seen that when people are holding their phones in a living room. The cars are vibrating (normally), and the user is trying to drive, with one hand on the wheel, etc.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Touch screens are also pretty terrible for older people. Vision and fine motor skills both degenerate. Without tactile feedback, it is hard for older people to determine if they've successfully clicked on something. Gestures can be tough to teach and successfully implement without error.

Worse than touch screens are those touch buttons (you know, where the thing is just printed on the outside of the TV). I have no idea why, I'm fluent with touchscreens in the usual way but something in my brain just.... I don't know. Theoretically it should be the same, right? Except it feels horrible and wrong and I even have trouble trying to find the button. Probably because I'm vision-impaired and an actual touch…

It's not just you. Most touch screens will have some sort of feedback (visual, tactile or auditory) to let you know when you've pressed a button. Those touch buttons on screens and monitors don't.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#66

I’m apparently unique in this, but I prefer touch screens. Not because I fail to realize the value of buttons, but I don’t find sitting in an airplane cockpit with a few hundred buttons that much better than a screen that is contextual. I like having a few buttons for common tasks like audio controls, and voice control for most else. The rest of the stuff can be on a touch screen for all I care. I get others prefer b…

I'm disappointed that your comment has gotten downvoted. Hard to see why it should be, since it's just your opinion, and you even backed it up with a reason.

I think it's because they talk about "hundreds of buttons" and then mention they don't actually use the touch screen, they use voice.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#67

I think this mostly applies to bad or cheap touch screens, which most cars today have. I used to be strongly in the anti touch screen camp, but after getting a car where the touch screen is basically an iPad in terms of display quality and touch input quality and size, I surprisingly don’t really mind it. Good voice control also helps a ton.

The question isn't whether you mind it, the question is whether you're more likely to get in an accident because of it.

Without the tactile feedback of a physical button or dial, and especially in cases where button position varies based on which mode you're in, it's hard to imagine even a high-quality touchscreen being safe.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice control is a bit of a nonstarter as the speech recognition (perhaps combined with the weird acoustics of a moving vehicle) has never worked for everyone; eg my father's accent never seems to work in his Honda. My car is from 2014 and definitely has more buttons than necessary. I don't mind infrequently used controls behind a touchscreen, like do the controls to set the time on the clock really need dedicated bu…

> Once you get out of the category of obviously frequently controlled things (gear selector, climate control, media controls), you really have to start making judgement calls and picking and choosing who you're going to make uncomfortable. User-assignable buttons might mitigate that. With profiles for individual drivers. But perhaps those features would confuse some users even more

To me this is always a really interesting line of thinking. We customize the heck out of our phones but the car is off limits!?

I want my doors to lock every night at 10pm in case I forget.

I want to bring up my favorite temperature and fan settings.

I want to lock just some doors.

I want the windows down just the right amount.

When do we get to take advantage that this is all software?

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#69
For the life of me I can't find the link, but there was an awesome HN or Reddit post a few years back where a designer tried to design a touchscreen experience that might work for cars that takes into account that drivers can't focus on the screen.

It's been years since I've seen it so I probably don't remember the exact details, but I think it worked by the system working based on gestures wherever the drivers' hand touched the screen so you didn't need to touch a specific tiny target in a moving car.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#70
post #7

I’m apparently unique in this, but I prefer touch screens. Not because I fail to realize the value of buttons, but I don’t find sitting in an airplane cockpit with a few hundred buttons that much better than a screen that is contextual. I like having a few buttons for common tasks like audio controls, and voice control for most else. The rest of the stuff can be on a touch screen for all I care. I get others prefer b…

I’ve never seen any car dash with more than a few dozen buttons.

Its not just the dash. The center console. The steering wheel. Door panel. On the headliner.
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