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The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

theturnsignalblog.com

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Re: The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

#4

Post by tempest_ »

moolcool wrote: post #3

Touchscreens have ruined car UX for a generation.

It is such a bad implementation.

Whenever I am in a car with a touch screen the two things that get me

- The car bounces and I miss the thing on the screen I was aiming for

- I am low vision I have to lean in so close to read those stupid screens with the tiny UI widgets

I hope they figure something better out, I honestly preferred when they were doing the screens with the buttons around the edge.

Re: The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

#5

Post by rkagerer »

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm going to repeat a comment I made a few times before, as I think it's relevant:

In one of the talks at Google I/O a few years ago a VP from Audi (or Volvo?) spoke in a thick and lofty German accent about how "ve haf completely oferhauled ze driver exzperienze". He played a sexy video clip showcasing their new Android infotainment system (something like https://youtu.be/h_7_fKJ0PNs), and the first thing I noticed is how they'd taken away my traditional temperature knobs and replaced them with digital touchscreen ones. They looked just like physical ones, and were in the exact same place you would expect (https://9to5google.com/2017/05/15/android-cars-audi/). So, I've gained absolutely nothing, and now I have to take my eyes off the road and look down at the stupid console just to change the temperature.

TLDR: Tacticle feedback is a Good Thing(tm) and designers should cultivate - not fight - muscle memory.

Re: The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

#6

Post by bombcar »

Here’s a thing I realized about climate controls that is NOT intuitive - it is not about the temperature/humidity in the car or room! That’s only an accident - it’s about how the person/people feel.

So the older cars work closer to that because they basically have the options “blow hot/cold air on me” instead of “try to maintain this temperature”.

I can be quite comfortable in a wide range of temperatures if I can get a blast of cold or hot air “on demand”.

Re: The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

#7

Post by a2tech »

My Ford Edge has almost all the important controls accessible only through the touchscreen. If I'm in reverse for example I lose all ability to adjust the temperature, fan, or seat temperature. Its terrible. Adjusting the seat warmers requires moving an onscreen slider which is weirdly overly sensitive and yet at the same time laggy. Adjusting it while driving is almost impossible without looking at the screen which is unsafe and absolutely unnecessary.

Re: The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

#9

Post by prepend »

It’s not just cars. I think the touchscreen/iOS control set has some hard to use features.

For example, the slider wheel to specify a date or time is not very easy to use. I use Runkeeper to track exercises. If I have a 45 minute workout, I have to scroll through 0-44 to get to 45. This takes a few swipes and is more effort than tapping “4” and “5.”

I feel like the interface is superficially tested but not for routine functions where someone would like to speed up their interaction.

I think this inherits from the select drop-down html control where on the desktop everything is 1-2 clicks to select the drop down and then the value. But on a touchscreen it’s swiping.

This Carrie’s through to all these vehicle interfaces. I hope they get better. The S class interface in this article looks terrible. And that’s for a very nice car that other manufacturers are emulating.

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