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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

#321

Post by Dalewyn »

berkle4455 wrote: post #241
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.…

Dude Winamp was a clean, simple and wickedly responsive UI that allowed a multitude of real-time audio tweaks and supported playlists with thousands of files. This was in the late 90’s running on 166Mhz processors with maybe 16MB of system ram. Are you saying modern car infotainment systems have fewer resources allocated to the UI?

>Are you saying modern car infotainment systems have fewer resources allocated to the UI?

Relatively speaking: Yes.

Response lag is always because the hardware is chugging to process all the bits in time (they're not in time). Between underprovisioned hardware and shittily written software, hell yeah fewer resources are allocated to the UI.

We need a small supercomputer's worth of resources allocated to bring the software of today up to snap like it was the 90s.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#322

Post by icedistilled »

jojobas wrote: post #272
naikrovek wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You still have to look to find where to press. With real buttons, you can find the right button purely with tactile feedback, as well. that's not a given at all. maybe for computer keyboards I guess, but not for cars. car makers always seem to want buttons to be flush with their surroundings and have no bumps or dips on them to help you find the button you're after. I always have to look for the button if it isn't…

I just checked and I could reach and operate aircon knobs (3x), radio volume and phone answer/hangup buttons without looking, fast. Granted most of these are on the wheel, but even aircon controls would be a no go on a touchscreen.

turning on and adjusting the defroster on a ford edge rental is insanely dangerous. turning on the defroster to full blast takes one touch screen yes, but no one leaves it on full blast. Adjusting the fan speed requires poking a small icon in order to get a slider to pop up and then poking the narrow slider in just the right place.

It's crazy that's replaced physical controls. Poking a large physical button and then turning a large knob can be done blind folded in half a second.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#323

Post by hikawaii »

switchbak wrote: post #299
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still just sounds like people not knowing what they're doing. In no world would automakers say, "Hey you know, we just did all of this tire engineering with this rubber, but let's change the composition at the last minute and not retest all of its physical properties." So, why should it be any different with software? Because some sucker PM didn't have the brains to say, "We can't actually do that."?

I know you're getting a lot of pushback here, but you're totally right. Qt (among others) has been a thing in the embedded space for decades, and we've had snappy UIs on sub gigahertz CPUs for decades. I just don't buy that's it's a matter of under specced hardware. I'd actually buy that it's more a matter of the corporate sausage making machine that turns ok hardware and talented developers with good intentions into…

The corporate sausage making machine is merely only doing what it's customers want, for the price they'll pay, nothing more, nothing less.

A lot of these are good impulses but also feel like an unfunded mandate, like rear back up cameras being mandatory - obligating everyone pay a thousand dollars more every year.

The feel good comes from the DOT, the cost gets paid by the customer.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#324

Post by taeric »

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.

Seem is doing a lot of lifting there. For one, there is no generation of iPhone that is safe to use while driving. Such that you have a ton more tolerance for a phone than you would a car system. Mostly for good reasons.

It doesn't help that iphones from that time frame aren't really in use today. Car systems are.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#325

Post by nyanpasu64 »

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…

Even as someone who believes in the indefensible bloat of modern software, I'd say TI-OS on my 84+ (from using it in high school and college several years ago) is not exactly the fastest to use:

- Graphing a plot was slow due to slow CPU and high-precision math libraries (could take 3-10 seconds depending on function complexity and detail)

- MathPrint mode slows down printing expressions to an extent, IIRC even moving the cursor through history felt sluggish.

- The B&W LCD screen with slow color transitions adds more latency than a compositor does.

- Garbage collecting the flash memory could take dozens (IIRC) of seconds, and would happen unannounced when manipulating saved programs (IIRC not in regular calculations).

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#326

Post by irrational »

I recently drove a 2020 rental with a touchscreen 3,500 miles. The touchscreen was okay because the car had physical controls for all the things you might want to fiddle with while driving, like A/C. I had the touchscreen set to navigation the whole time, so I didn’t really fiddle with it.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#327

Post by avereveard »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #258
jkarneges wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That physical button that takes 500ms to respond is still as dangerous. My Volt's physical mute button seems to be software controlled. Normally it is very responsive, except when the car is starting up. It kills me whenever I start the car and the volume happened to be cranked up from earlier, music blasts, and the mute button is ineffective. Fortunately the volume knob seems to be hardware controlled and can be u…

Yeah, it's just poorly thought out engineering. There's really no excuse. I owned a B7 Audi A4 which simply limited the volume level to a user-defined setting when you turned on the car. That concept is roughly 20 years old.

And it's not something limited to premium car either, my first generation 500x has three different radio startup behaviour to choose: always on, always off, as it was when you turned the car off

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#328

Post by ssalka »

I feel compelled to share a video, now 9 years old, that shows how touch screens could be accommodated with sensible design in cars. The UIs we are used to on our phones are not suitable for driving, but we could make something that is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVbuk3jizGM

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#329

Post by airtonix »

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…

[dead]

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#330

Post by lolinder »

lvturner wrote: post #80
lolinder wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? You're the first person I've heard express this view, so I'm genuinely curious.

I'm not sure if it's the touch screen in my car that I love or the rest of the control system. But for me the whole thing is set and forget, if I need to adjust volume it's a scroll wheel on my steering wheel -- air conditioning I never really need to adjust. Sat nav -- yes I need to adjust this occasionally, but it's either voice command or park and change the destination with a keyboard -- but I don't see this bein…

> My signular gripe is that there is no physical button to open the glove-box, which is an annoying but very infrequent occurance.

That's really weird. Button nothing, why is there not just a handle on the glove box? Who thought it was a good idea to hook that up to the computer? Does that mean you can't open the glove box unless the car is turned on?

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