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Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

slate.com

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Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#541

Post by iSnow »

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…

I don't own the company. I will push back a bit, but if management insists on using the foot-gun, why would I get on their bad side? They are adults as well and if they don't agree with me, I do as they tell me.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#542

Post by seb1204 »

defrost wrote: post #364
imafish wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about GP - but in my country they teach the 9 and 3 position when you take your license. I’ve always thought 10 and 2 was an American thing.

I'm in Australia (and wrote the comment above yours) and was taught to drive (late 1970s) using a higher hand position - "ten and two" but without that phrasing. Also to always have two hands on the wheel, sliding it through one hand by a solid grip of the other .. all centred about off bitumen rough road driving with unexpected dips, cambers, holes that might catch you by surprise. I suspect the higher hand position…

As a fellow Australian I can agree and see some good points in this. However I also think it no longer applies to post 2020 cars in a city/urban environment.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#543

Post by seb1204 »

ryantgtg wrote: post #194
emmelaich wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same for me. I very rarely touch the screen while driving. And then after I do I’m like, “why didn’t I just a voice control for that?” I was pretty worried about getting a tesla because of the screen/controls, and I spent months only considering other brands. But! No regrets.

Do you also do AC control via voice?

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#544

Post by GuB-42 »

IceWreck wrote: post #421
jjav wrote: post #371

Earlier 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…

Why not have haptic feedback like in phones

Because haptics "like in phones" suck. They are nothing but vibration motors. There have been a lot of research of patents for more interesting interaction, but what we have now is arguable worse than what we had in a Nokia 3310 (because of the lower mass of the motors). The feedback is like if the entire screen was a single button.

Haptic tech I have seen are ways to vary the drag coefficient across the screen, tiny actuators that deform the screen, or use of interference to create vibration on a specific location. There is even touchless haptics, using ultrasound.

The only instance where a manufacturer seemed to care was with the iPhone 6 "Taptic Engine", which is little more than a better vibration motor, giving a better "whole screen button" effect. But they didn't improve further, in fact, if anything, the newer models are worse.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#545

Post by vultour »

fps_doug wrote: post #494
zamnos wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Underpowered CPU being asked to do way more work than it properly has capacity for.

Plus 400 layers of abstraction because the lowest bidder doesn't know any actual software engineering and every time they face a problem they add yet another library to the project that someone on SO mentions because the accompanying sample code in the answer has the least amount of lines.

This absolutely boggles my mind. I had to do some javascript recently, and every time I had what I thought was a very basic question the most upvoted answer was "just npm install this library, and use this one-liner". I honestly never experienced this before with any other language, it's horrifying.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#547

Post by elcritch »

klabb3 wrote: post #391
egberts1 wrote: post #382

Even US Navy prohibits touchscreens on weapon systems and radars. Slapping your ship bow from the crest might likely press the wrong coordinate or fire button instead.

Someone should do a skit where military UIs are all replaced by current consumer-tech UIs, along with its dark patterns. That’d actually be hilarious.

This scene close enough? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDLvUqhwHZc

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#548

Post by geraldwhen »

TheFragenTaken wrote: post #533
jjav wrote: post #371

Earlier 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…

The fact that these cars pass safety certification, makes me question certifiers. It's illegal to look at your phone while driving, for good reason, but it's legal to fiddle with a damn computer screen, because it's part of the car. I predict it's a matter of time before we'll see a correlation between number of crashes, and cars with touchscreens.

In many states you can absolutely use your phone while driving, either to call someone or actively use gps without a window mount.

What’s explicitly prohibited is texting/writing and driving.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#550

Post by drivers99 »

Gigachad wrote: post #202
yellowapple wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mind the touchbar as a concept, but the implementation was terrible and it should never have replaced any keys.

I thought previously and how I'd be fine with it, but then realised its only tolerable when I can just completely ignore it and at that point I'd rather the cost go in to a part I do use. The 2021 model improved so many parts.

I rest my finger by the Esc key for some reason (vi use maybe) and every once in a while the screen would suddenly fade to black because it was registering a long key press on the Touch Bar[1] for the screen dim control. After a few times I realized I could customize the Touch Bar to only have a few necessary keys and keep them on the far right.

Just another case of inadvertent button activation for touch screens.

[1] iPad decided this should be capitalized, lol

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