"Pedestrian and cyclist fatalities recently hit their highest levels in 40 years"
I wonder if the various self driving technologies have anything to do with this?
Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens
451–460 of 1001 posts
Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
"My civil engineer friends face losing their licenses, fines or jail time if they are found professionally negligent." These standards ought to be applied more widely and done in conjunction with tightened consumer law. In many cases the quality of electronics equipment has gone to the dogs. I could give instances of appliances I use that can only be used in a hobbled mode—numbers of published functions simply don't…
Singapore has criminal liability for software malfunctions. I don't think they've sent anyone to jail for a software bug yet, but the law allows for it.
Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens
#453>“These screens are presented as this avant garde, minimalist design,”
The idiotic trend of applying Jony Ive's minimalist iPad user interface designs to automotive touchscreen kills people.
It pointlessly distracts from the primary purpose of designing user-friendly, intuitive, safe automotive touchscreens.
Jony Ive Spearheads Minimalist Design Overhaul For iOS:
https://bitrebels.com/technology/jony-ive-minimalist-design-...
Guide: The Art of Minimalism in UI Design:
https://sympli.io/blog/the-art-of-minimalism-in-ui-design
Jony Ive's minimalist designs could reshape the future of iOS, OS X:
https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/10/30/jony-ives-minimal...
The Art of Minimalism in Mobile App UI Design:
https://uxplanet.org/the-art-of-minimalism-in-mobile-app-ui-...
More practical less vain interface designers are finally calling for an end to this terrible trend in minimalist interface design on mobile devices, but it never should have been applied to automotive interfaces in the first place, and there is already lots of blood on the hands of cocaine-addled cargo-cult iPad interface designers mindlessly aping John Ive while working on automotive interfaces.
The designer behind one of the iPad’s biggest apps is calling for an end to minimalism:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90604970/the-designer-behind-one...
The point of designing automotive touchscreen user interfaces is not to show off to the world what a brilliant sensitive snowflake of a minimalist avant garde artistic designer you are.
It's not about designing beautiful enigmatic minimal screens uncluttered by pesky visual clues, signifiers, and affordances, more suited to be hung on the walls of art museums for patrons to stare at and interpret and argue over their ambiguous meaning in their leisure time.
The art-first, safety-last trend of prioritizing aesthetics over usability in automotive interfaces should be outlawed, because it has a fatal impact in driver safety, that kills people.
Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens
#454Tesla unilaterally decided to push out a refactored UI to my old Model S a few months ago, changing the location of numerous functions to new sub-menu paths, and rendering years of muscle memory useless.
Not only do I have to re-learn where everything is, but older memories interfere and confuse every time I try to access an infrequently used function.
This experience has been irritating at best. It has felt extremely unsafe on more than one occasion.
Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens
#455With. A. Passion. Other touch screens (or similar things) I dislike: - the controls on my stove top - the controls on my monitor - the controls on my tv - the controls on my thermostat - probably more All of these should have physical buttons for the limited number of functions required. Or, at a minimum, for navigation and confirmation. Touch screens there suck. My wife's car has a touch screen on the control/infota…
> - the controls on my stove top How were these stove-top touch-buttons ever considered an upgrade to their predecessor? They always have no feedback, or that annoyingly high "beep" feedback. They are always slow to respond. They typically use only two or three buttons to control the actual temperature, forcing you to select location first, which is typically slow and terrible as well. Nobody in their right mind can…
The only saving grace of those is the ease of cleaning spills. Otherwise I completely agree with you and GP - how annoying it is that every physical button is now a clunky touch surface!
Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
It should be, at least on countries where Software Engineering actually means something, and not a title that one can easy peasy call themselves after a six weeks bootcamp.
Oh this again. Yeah a certification is going to solve all the problems.
It will, when it comes with a liability just like any other Engineering position.
Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens
#457With. A. Passion. Other touch screens (or similar things) I dislike: - the controls on my stove top - the controls on my monitor - the controls on my tv - the controls on my thermostat - probably more All of these should have physical buttons for the limited number of functions required. Or, at a minimum, for navigation and confirmation. Touch screens there suck. My wife's car has a touch screen on the control/infota…
> - the controls on my stove top How were these stove-top touch-buttons ever considered an upgrade to their predecessor? They always have no feedback, or that annoyingly high "beep" feedback. They are always slow to respond. They typically use only two or three buttons to control the actual temperature, forcing you to select location first, which is typically slow and terrible as well. Nobody in their right mind can…
Is that induction? The product page says "Elektrisk platetopp" and not "Induksjonstopper".
I'm looking for an induction top or an oven combo with knobs and it's difficult.
Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens
#458Earlier 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.…
> In my experience it was almost always a matter of the hardware being stretched way past its limits. What aspects of the hardware would lead to 500ms response times?
Underpowered CPU being asked to do way more work than it properly has capacity for.
Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens
#459With. A. Passion. Other touch screens (or similar things) I dislike: - the controls on my stove top - the controls on my monitor - the controls on my tv - the controls on my thermostat - probably more All of these should have physical buttons for the limited number of functions required. Or, at a minimum, for navigation and confirmation. Touch screens there suck. My wife's car has a touch screen on the control/infota…
> - the controls on my stove top How were these stove-top touch-buttons ever considered an upgrade to their predecessor? They always have no feedback, or that annoyingly high "beep" feedback. They are always slow to respond. They typically use only two or three buttons to control the actual temperature, forcing you to select location first, which is typically slow and terrible as well. Nobody in their right mind can…
I've used some kitchen equipment (fortunately, not ovens...) that think the buttons are pressed if you spill liquid on them. You have to stop and clean the thing before you can continue.
Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So what? You've got physical buttons? Big whoop. That physical button that takes 500ms to respond is still as dangerous. No, that's wrong. Problem with touchscreens is that (1) you need to look at them and (2) there is no tactile feedback of whether you pressed it or not and (3) you need to hover your arm in a moving car at just the right spot. Physical buttons cleanly resolve all of these major problems. If the ac…
> Physical buttons cleanly resolve all of these major problems > Given that with a physical button you didn't have to take your eyes off the road and given the tactile feedback you know for sure you activated/pressed/moved the control I never understand the "you don't have to look at buttons" argument—my car has lots of physical buttons and to push them, I briefly have to look at the console, find the button, and pre…
> If a touch screen interface were properly designed...
Huh? They cannot be. You cannot get the same level of tactile feedback from a touchscreen as from a properly designed knob.
> For me, when things get dangerous, its when pressing the button (physical or touch) doesn't do what its suppose to do.
I have experienced that regularly in cars. When you have clear, unambiguous feedback that you gave the input exactly how you're supposed to, it's a minor annoyance; you instantly know that the UI failed to pick up on your input. Redo and if failure is consistent, have it repaired.
When you have to start debugging whether it's your input method or the UI having an off day, while driving, that's when things get dangerous to me.