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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

#311

Post by 1-6 »

I like tactile buttons when I'm focusing on the road. Looking away from the road to see if I have my finger in the correct place on a screen is much more costly from an attention standpoint.

I thought this was obvious. Why are we stating it?

Here's where things can get interesting. If you've ever used a fancy audio mixer before, they pack a lot of features into a board with a few buttons and sliders. Cars can do similarly with controls for rolling, sliding, and pressing but dynamically adjust based on what's on the display.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#312

Post by the_overseer »

prng2021 wrote: post #291
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.…

It's great to get your perspective on this. Aside from the GPS/navigation features, aren't car infotainment systems extremely basic? We've been controlling heating, cooling, audio source, and audio volume since the dawn of time. How are technical requirements related to these basic functions changing such that their UIs haven't been absolutely perfected by now? Is the entire infotainment code being rewritten all the…

Yes. The infotainment code is rewritten every time. By different devs. Because that is how automotive industry works. This time BMW wants infotainment and a third party wins the contract (because it's the cheapest usually). For the next BMW car another company wins the contract. Everything is rebuilt from scratch.

The components that make up the infotainment a lot of times are actually developed by different companies. So navigation is one company, media player another etc.

Also, the deadlines usually make no sense and there is zero time for any optimization work. It's not the devs, it's the way the automotive industry works outsourcing every little button on the dash to another (cheapest) company. They just don't understand that that mentality doesn't work with software. Most of them are mechanical engineers not software people.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#314

Post by Transfinity »

ISO-morphism wrote: post #308
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.…

I believe that the engineers are competent at developing software, and think that a lot of the quality issues are due to engineers abdicating authority over the software to managers and never saying "No, adding in that feature at this point in the timeline is going to make this a steaming pile of shit and I refuse to do it and still call myself a software engineer." I get that we have families to feed, but I've seen…

There's no incentive for an engineer to do that. Saying yes and delivering crap gets you a bonus, hard truths get you shuffled around or made redundant. There's no real consequence for delivering crap, so that's what happens.

Contrast this with other engineering fields, where the engineer is truly responsible for the decisions they make. My civil engineer friends face losing their licenses, fines or jail time if they are found professionally negligent. The same is true of other high stakes professions - think doctors, lawyers, even accountants. It's probably not appropriate for most software engineering roles, but for safety critical systems it doesn't seem far-fetched to me.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#315

Post by kccqzy »

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…

My car has a screen. But it isn't a touch screen. It displays the imagery from the back-up camera when reversing, and displays what's currently playing when not reversing. Everything has tactile controls.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#316

Post by sundvor »

morkalork wrote: post #228
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…

Did back up cameras save that many lives?

Start paying attention to driveway deaths involving little children, and you might wish a retrofit mandate of existing cars was already in place.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#317

Post by klodolph »

amluto wrote: post #252
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.…

I'm willing to credit this type of feature creep for some of the problem, but only some. Decades ago, we had hardware that was so much less capable than anything anyone has put in a car in ten years that the comparison is absurd. Nonetheless, those old systems were often very capable of doing useful things, and the UIs were often very, very fast by modern standards. And a lot of this was that the software stack was t…

The kind of development you’re describing happens in aerospace. I know some people who work in aerospace. They’re not any smarter than the people who work in automotive, but the people in aerospace have a much higher tolerance for dealing with bureaucracy, and management is much happier to get something less impressive but reliable.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#318

Post by sundvor »

sroussey wrote: post #172
zamnos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The Tesla screens' responsiveness and clarity is just amazing, at least on Ryzen.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#319

Post by the_overseer »

ISO-morphism wrote: post #308
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.…

I believe that the engineers are competent at developing software, and think that a lot of the quality issues are due to engineers abdicating authority over the software to managers and never saying "No, adding in that feature at this point in the timeline is going to make this a steaming pile of shit and I refuse to do it and still call myself a software engineer." I get that we have families to feed, but I've seen…

The industry works as follows: the OEM (Daimler, Toyota etc.) says they want a software spec implemented. Other companies (Tier 1 suppliers) bid to win the contract. The cheapest usually wins.

If you have a company and refuse to take the crazy deadlines and low quality and low pay then don't worry, there is another Tier 1 supplier across the street who will do it for you. OEMs know that you need them more than they need you.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#320

Post by kaetemi »

ISO-morphism wrote: post #308
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.…

I believe that the engineers are competent at developing software, and think that a lot of the quality issues are due to engineers abdicating authority over the software to managers and never saying "No, adding in that feature at this point in the timeline is going to make this a steaming pile of shit and I refuse to do it and still call myself a software engineer." I get that we have families to feed, but I've seen…

Yep. It's part of your job to tell managers "yes, it's possible, but it'll negatively affect performance in a significant way because of such and such hardware limitations, so it's not the most valuable feature to implement at this time".
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