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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

#171

Post by Rebelgecko »

HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #127
exabrial wrote: post #17

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…

It would be best not to change what the buttons do very much. It could add unnecessary levels of confusion. "OK, I think I hit the wrong button, and now I'm not sure what mode the system is in... better look down at the controls while I drive along at 60 MPH." Maybe I'm biased. My old car has a great UI. No touchscreen, just a panel of physical knobs and buttons for media and climate control. The phone integration co…

Hyundai I'm looking at has 2 customizable buttons. It's a cool idea, except they really limit what you can make the buttons do (I was hoping it would be possible to use them for climate controls but that's not an option)

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#172

Post by sroussey »

zamnos wrote: post #34
stevage wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Teslas have 17" screens, and no one made an automotive-grade one at that size, so it's no wonder they had problems sourcing it. But at scale, I could see the 7" properly automotive-grade screens being available for $50 when there are some availabile for less than that on Amazon.

They have double OLED (dual-layer it’s called sometimes) which is required for brightness?

They are so expensive, they aren’t used anywhere else but automotive (rumors swirl about iPads using this some day).

The LCDs with high nits are cheaper but only rectangular.

One of the big issues is it working in 120 heat in the desert while sitting in the sun (particularly for convertibles).

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#173

Post by uzername »

DecoPerson wrote: post #153

Spinny-dial-based input, with the dial located just behind the shifter (just in front of where the cupholders usually are), is the best input method developed for cars so far. The forces the UI to be a flat list in terms of navigation (rather than a 2d-space-filling UX mess). And being a flat 1d list, it encourages the list be short, which means more submenus, which is good! If menus are consistent, you can mostly co…

This is how Mazda handles the screen. The knob has a satisfying tick on rotation and rebound when pressed. The car's a little older now and the screen os is a bit slow, but usually keeps up with input. Radio and navigation have hard button shortcuts. It's just a good system.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#174

Post by emmelaich »

rdiddly wrote: post #128
snow_mac wrote: post #113

I like a big display with buttons on the side. I like getting to see the song name, the station and some of that digital info, I like Apple Maps on Apple car play. Those are nice features. I love the back up camera display. But I have to have a button or knob to adjust temp, audio, next track, etc... because while those things are helpful, when I'm going down the highway and I need to adjust while paying attention ju…

Yeah seems like physical controls for input, screen for output is the sweet spot.

On the Tesla3, I use the on-wheel buttons for everything I need while driving.

If I really need to i.e. hunt for a particular radio station I'll do it when stopped.

I expected to dislike the screen but it's fine.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#175

Post by fnordpiglet »

BoorishBears wrote: post #62
CoolestBeans wrote: post #9

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…

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'…

100% agree. While they can’t do partial differential equations, they are very good at discerning intent in even very noisy language. Taking a free form language instruction and encoding in a structured form is specifically a powerful capability here. I have a feeling voice assistants are about to become extraordinarily powerful.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#176

Post by defrost »

midoridensha wrote: post #158
derefr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine an iPod-like scrubwheel positioned so that your thumb can scroll while your hands are at 10 and 2.

Which is useless when you put your hands at 9 and 3 like you're supposed to.

... with the caveat that

> 10 and 2 o’clock is no longer recommended because it can be dangerous in vehicles with smaller steering wheels and equipped with airbags.

(Source: https://driving-tests.org/beginner-drivers/how-to-hold-a-ste...)

and the implication that otherwise the trad 10 and 2 position recommended for decades is still 100% A-OK.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#177

Post by FridayoLeary »

exabrial wrote: post #17

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…

That sounds like an excellent idea. Operating a fighter aircraft (flying is just one of the tasks the pilot does) is very complicated. So i'm assuming the manufacturers optimise for the ideal combination of versatility and accessiblity while leaving little margin for error. In the middle of a dogfight and flying at mach 2.5 a pilot has very little time to glance at the screen and press the correct button and cannot afford to make a mistake.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#178

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

wlesieutre wrote: post #95
post_break wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a new miata, the touch screen is disabled above a certain speed. It's the worse of both worlds. Touch screen sometimes, jog wheel other times. The cursor on the screen lags so you're looking at the screen trying to figure out what is highlighted vs taking 1 second to touch the button you want. It's so bad I ripped out the screen and installed a 3rd party wireless carplay screen before the first car payment. It…

Their new models allow you to enable it all the time (CX-50, I assume CX-90 and the upcoming CX-70), which I do think is a good idea. Not even just for the driver to be touching it, but if you have a passenger you can let them deal with putting in directions or managing your audio and the wheel is a lot less obvious than a touchscreen to someone who isn't familiar with it. And as a driver, it felt like there were som…

Let's say like the FAA now, if an auto has a distracting touchscreen interface, a navigator in the passenger seat is mandatory, and must be well-trained on the user interface. That legislation should go over like a lead balloon!

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#179

Post by tnzk »

DJBunnies wrote: post #159
JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can go more detailed on that and say physical controls for common, quick inputs especially ones people use while they are driving and you don't want them to look down for. Touch screen is fine for setup screens, extra info, fine tuning stuff etc. Point is when I'm driving down the road I should be able to muscle memory/tactily skip song, change volume, change air-conditioning settings etc... But Bluetooth…

Just to offer a different opinion, I prefer inferior controls to a touchscreen for settings. Wheels and buttons respond faster, it forces vendors to be concise, and it doesn’t gunk up my screen. Muscle memory forms quickly for anything that’s a “one and done” setting.

But I hate "push the volumn knob N times to intiate BT pairing, read carefully the alnum code displayed in 7 segment LED" ...

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#180

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

wolpoli wrote: post #109
hinkley wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were other groups that were looking at how piezoelectrics in a surface could create vibrational patterns that the finger interprets as texture. Apple even through some money at this avenue at one point but I haven't heard anything in ages. Part of the problem of textured screens is that you have to be able to touch the interface without activating anything. That's newer enough tech that the prices are probably…

Apple had that 3d touch screen that got depreciated. Perhaps people never got used to it.

Well, I'm glad it costs less now - how much would I spend to pick up a used model?
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