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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

#281

Post by fasthands9 »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #221
mtrpcic wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit of buttons isn't in the response time, it's in the tactile feedback that makes it so you don't need 16ms response time. I heard it click, I felt it click, it clicked. If the thing I wanted to happen doesn't, it's because it's broken and not because I can't tell if I clicked the right spot on my iPad. Not having to take your eyes off the road in these cases is the benefit of buttons, and no improvement to…

This isn't how tactile buttons in modern cars work. You're doing the same thing as pushing keys on a keyboard. The software can still be slow. Turn the physical volume dial on a car with a slow Apple CarPlay interface and tell me how that works out for you. Oh, it's too loud? But it takes 2 seconds for the software to respond due to lag and now you're fiddling with the volume button trying to not make it worse? A phy…

It does fix that because I dont have to look at it while I wait the 2 seconds. On a touch screen my finger will be slipping as the car is moving and have to constantly divert my eyes as I wait for the lag - even if its the same lag as a physical button.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#282

Post by frosted-flakes »

tnzk wrote: post #179
DJBunnies wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" ...

You hate modal interfaces then. A non-modal interface would initiate pairing with a fixed button, this button would do the same thing every time, and it wouldn't require other inputs. Perhaps A, B, C buttons for three connections, where pressing once auto-connects to the previously saved device and holding initiates pairing (like a radio favourites button).

A non-modal interface for controlling audio settings (volume, bass, treble, etc.) would be one knob for each function—not one knob which changes function when you click it, or having to dig seven layers deep through in a touch screen menu. I change audio settings all the time on my car depending on what I'm listening to, because there are 6 knobs for this (big volume knob, small knobs for bass/mid/treble/balance/fader.[1]

Modal interfaces in cars are bad because their results are unpredictable. Touch screens are bad because they allow for non-modal interfaces, and also because they're not tactile.

[1] https://d3inagkmqs1m6q.cloudfront.net/1517/media-photos/cp04...

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#283

Post by modeless »

linkjuice4all wrote: post #4

There was a company (Tactus Technology - now defunct) that had a "morphing" touch screen wherein the surface of the screen could be raised up to provide tactile feedback about "where" your fingers are on the screen (e.g. 'raised' keys for a keyboard [0]). I recall this being "the next big thing" in touch screens about 10 years ago but the tech didn't seem to go anywhere. For small screens such as your phone it was pr…

I think morphing screens are impractical. But that doesn't mean we have to give up on tactile affordances altogether. I think there's a real missed opportunity for Tesla, with their floating touchscreen. The natural way to adjust the temperature and other controls in the bottom bar is to put your fingers behind the screen to hold your hand steady and use your thumb to press the buttons. The back of the screen is currently a featureless flat surface, but it could easily have tactile features for your fingers to find. If you could feel where your fingers are relative to the screen then you could hit the bottom bar controls without looking. And it wouldn't ruin the minimalist aesthetic because it's all hidden from view behind the screen.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#284

Post by bushbaba »

overgard wrote: post #223
munificent wrote: post #214

I'm surprised the article didn't mention one of the key regulations that led to this as an unintended consequence: By law, cars in the US must now have a back-up camera. That means every car must have a screen. Given that, automakers figured they may as well use the damn thing for everything else too and cut costs. It wasn't just that they wanted to take away tactile controls to save money. It was that they had to ma…

Eh, those backup cameras are super useful though, and the screen can be small. My 2013 Kia has mostly physical buttons and like an 8 inch or so touchscreen (that I never touch). I would hate losing that camera. Plus those screens can be useful for safety. I much prefer the screen on my dashboard for maps compared to having it on my phone (even with a mount it's bouncy and small)

But a small screen feels 'cheap' and for many ruins that car's experience.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#285

Post by Vespasian »

randerson wrote: post #249
sircastor wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it was written by under-experienced software "engineers." I used to be an infotainment software engineer for an Auto maker. There’s this idea in the software industry that because the software behaves poorly on your car’s system, it must’ve been written poorly by someone who didn’t know what they were doing. In my experience it was almost always a matter of the hardware being stretched way past its limits.…

Even if the infotainment has been in development for 15 years, all new cars I've played with seem less responsive than a 1st-generation iPhone despite having a UI that is no more capable. Either the engineers aren't making the most of the hardware or the hardware is underpowered by a few decades.

I can imagine that customers are annoyed by laggy UIs but don't weigh that very highly when deciding to buy a new car.

Especially if the competition is roughly equally slow, the costs to engineer a responsive solution might be to high for its impact on sales.

Consumers, being used to feature rich phones, may indeed value feature count over quality (for the entertainment System). Despite what OEMs claim a car is first and foremost a means of transportation and a "software Plattform" only after that.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#287

Post by vonnieda »

yellowapple wrote: post #147
robocat wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neat. Jog control knobs are great when you want fine control over a large dynamic range. They can feel wrong when used for for controlling a limited range that only needs coarse tuning. My microwave has a rotary encoder for the power level (10% to 100%) and it just feels so wrong that it doesn’t have a limit but can just keep turning (actually a slider would be a lovely UI for power level, however the knob is multi-f…

I feel like it should be feasible to add a motor that gives tactile feedback by resisting turning by a little bit (e.g. for discrete power/volume level values within the allowed range) or a lotta bit (e.g. for the boundaries of said range). Re: multi-functional sliders, I do know that motorized sliders exist in the pro audio space (e.g. to be able to program presets on mixers and such); shouldn't be too hard to adapt…

Just FYI what you’ve described is exactly what the GPs video shows. I only mention it cause that knob and video are absolutely amazing and deserves a watch.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#288

Post by midoridensha »

yellowapple wrote: post #121
flyinghamster wrote: post #39

I think one of the most frustrating aspects of this whole kerfluffle is the automakers' longstanding willingness to ignore customers and double down at any pushback. It's downright stupid that it has taken this level of screaming from customers to roll back a design choice that should never have been made.

It ain't just cars. I can't think of very many people who genuinely enjoy the "smart" aspect of "smart TVs", for example; nearly everyone I know who owns a TV also owns some device that not only does everything the TV's "smarts" can do but does them consistently better and can be trivially replaced should that ever change.

>I can't think of very many people who genuinely enjoy the "smart" aspect of "smart TVs", for example

Count me in the camp that does. My TV runs GoogleOS (Android), and it's great, because I don't need some other device plugged in to do what I want to do with it. There's only 2 things I want from this thing:

1. Playing external media. It has a USB port, so I can plug in thumb drives and play video files from them. The built-in OS works fine for this, and seems to handle any media file or codec I throw at it.

2. Playing YouTube with a good player. Since it's Android, I can load APKs from wherever I want, and so I installed "SmartTubeNext", which blocks ads and sponsor segments automatically. It works almost too well.

I think the mistake most other people make with smart TVs is that they get ones with crappy proprietary OSes, so with those you have no control over anything and can't run any 3rd-party software like SmartTubeNext. Of course, eventually this model could lose support from the mfgr, causing security issues or not being compatible with the apps I want, but for now it's quite nice.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#289

Post by thepasswordis »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #15

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

“Fancy” is absolutely the last word that comes to mind when I see one of these touchscreens.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#290

Post by thepasswordis »

stevage wrote: post #19
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #15

"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.

The Tesla screen is incompatible to almost everything else.

It’s fast, its huge, and it looks nice.

The latest design changes have been annoying, but Tesla is far and away the closest to anybody has come to a good touchscreen in a car.

It’s more like using an iPad than using an infotainment system in a car.

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