Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

drive.com.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 523 posts

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#121

Post by aenis »

georgeecollins wrote: post #62
aenis wrote: post #47

'He also explained that "I'm a big believer in screens, because I really believe if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen." ' I am a big believer in keeping "product people" away from UI design for dangerous machinery. The eyes and the attention of the driver should be on the road. All the audio visual noise from the car is just plain dangerous. I don't want my car to draw my attentio…

I agree but at the same time cars are requiring less of our attention. Forget autonomous driving for a moment and consider lane change alerts for cars in your blind side, automatic braking if you come up too fast on the car ahead, active lane keeping, smart cruise control. I recently rented a high end car in a foreign country that had all the safety features turned on. Before I arrived I was worried about driving in…

Call me old school, but I'd like a physical master switch to disable all of the systems you mentioned. I drive a lot, and often in rented cars, and in various countries.

- automatic braking - i brake gently and then do a limousine stop. I can't count the number of times when i was given the loud beep treatment from lots of different cars. I never rear ended anyone in about 1.2m kms driven.

- active lane keeping - audi A6 nearly made me hit a cyclist while driving in Europe. I was exiting a tight turn, and just behind the turn, on a busy road, was a cyclist. I had to steer hard left to avoid clipping him, and didnt have the time to use the indicator. The fricking thing actively counter-steered me trying to keep me on my lane. Incidentally no automatic braking at the same time. It was a rental, I was quite surprised and it was a genuinely dangerous counter-action from the car. No thanks.

- smart cruise control. Nice when it works. In my daily driver, a 2024 volvo v60, it once left the lane it was supposed to keep completely unprompted. Good thing I was holding the steering wheel firmly. No thanks.

- lane change alerts - nice when done right. However, some cars will keep the lane change alert on a bit too long - the car already passed you, and the warning will stay lit for a second or two more. Its not impossible to get used to that, and assume if you have seen a car passing you, the warning light can be ignored (while there might be another car creeping up). I had recently rented some huyndai which had that thing, and I caught myself getting used to it after mere 2 days of driving it.

- rest breaks - i think i had this on a rental huyndai. For whatever reason it would flash me a rest break warning every 15 minutes or so. No clue why, I wasnt driving for more than 1hr, and was completely rested. It was distracting me with that stuff for most of the journey. No thanks.

I genuinely like ABS, ESP and thats about it. Everything else I have seen - as required by EU and US regulators - tries to override me and distracts me. As I am getting older, I am less and less tolerant of distractions.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#122

Post by cnst »

sharts wrote: post #103
aenis wrote: post #47

'He also explained that "I'm a big believer in screens, because I really believe if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen." ' I am a big believer in keeping "product people" away from UI design for dangerous machinery. The eyes and the attention of the driver should be on the road. All the audio visual noise from the car is just plain dangerous. I don't want my car to draw my attentio…

So called “product people” are the reason for enshitification because of mostly resume/linkedin driven design philosophy.

Resume Driven Development is why fundamentally people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are crucial to ensuring the enshitification is kept in check.

Elon Musk may be a bad example in this situation, because he's actually a fan of removing the extra controls and the physical buttons, but at least their UX is far-far better than any of the legacy manufacturers.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#123

Post by seanmcdirmid »

eurekin wrote: post #110
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My screen goes into dark mode as soon as I hit a tunnel so in practice it isn’t an issue. I mostly don’t notice anymore, but I had my eyeglasses prescription redone and I can’t see the screen very well anymore while driving. Will need progressive driving glasses I guess. Note if you give up a screen they aren’t going to replace it with analog controls. It’s just too expensive, instead you’ll get something that turns…

Yes, my goes either-or quite abruptly and, while that's not really annoying, I notice it doing way too often, than I'd like to. It shouldn't be done in a binary fashion as well.

I really don’t notice because it happens with the light change of entering a tunnel anyways. Since I’m in Seattle, it happens often, so maybe I just got used to it.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#124

Post by yoyohello13 »

Barbing wrote: post #74
aenis wrote: post #47

'He also explained that "I'm a big believer in screens, because I really believe if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen." ' I am a big believer in keeping "product people" away from UI design for dangerous machinery. The eyes and the attention of the driver should be on the road. All the audio visual noise from the car is just plain dangerous. I don't want my car to draw my attentio…

The low fuel, low wiper fluid, and forward collision warnings sound like they were all implemented a little clumsily. What do you think the best implementation would look like? Seems it would still have to strike a balance. It's dangerous to tell the driver they're low on fuel if we distract them. But it's also dangerous for a driver to run out of fuel on the highway if we didn't catch their attention. Also guessing…

Those warnings just don’t need to exist. I have a car from 2002, it has none of those and it’s fine, totally fine.

There is a fuel gauge I look at to see my fuel level, when I’m out of wiper fluid it just doesn’t work (I have extra in my trunk so no big deal). I don’t need a noise to tell me there is a car in front of me, I’ve been driving this car every day for 15 years with no accidents so obviously a collision alarm is not required for safe driving.

How about we stop infantilizing people and expect some base level of competence.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#125

Post by Spooky23 »

ryandrake wrote: post #85
Spooky23 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t know what the group was presented and how. Remember you have the stupid stuff that Tesla pushed hard during the peak Elon reality distortion field time. I regularly are in a Toyota, BMW and Honda, and all of these have well thought out touch/knob implementations.

It's pretty straightforward to structure and conduct a focus group to give you the feedback that you want to hear. If the money guys told you "touchscreens save us 1% on the BOM, make it happen," then you could design your demos and question wording to ensure that your report said "customers love this shit."

Oh totally. I’m just saying when this stuff was at its peak, everyone was excited about the future bullshit. I remember my father in law was legit excited about it, until he drove his new car for a few weeks!

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#126

Post by aenis »

hephaes7us wrote: post #114
georgeecollins wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree but at the same time cars are requiring less of our attention. Forget autonomous driving for a moment and consider lane change alerts for cars in your blind side, automatic braking if you come up too fast on the car ahead, active lane keeping, smart cruise control. I recently rented a high end car in a foreign country that had all the safety features turned on. Before I arrived I was worried about driving in…

When the car actually drives itself completely, I think they will be safer than human drivers. All of these half measures are pretty concerning to me. I think they let drivers feel more comfortable, despite paying less attention, and I think their failure modes may often be much worse than the (human-driven) crashes they purport to prevent. Anecdote: I once had a rental car with alane-keeping assistance system that w…

I had the same thing while passing an unexpected cyclist. That was an Audi A6, I vividly remember even though some 5 years have passed - I was one of the scariest things that happened to me on the road.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#127

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

amelius wrote: post #100
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to have some of these cars in my local market, but at 3:15 this guy explicitly makes the comparison and says they're not up to Mercedes-Benz level.

If you watch the entire video you see that this remark is just a minor nitpick on one of the dozens of cars in that video. They could very easily replace that piece of plastic wood by real wood to fix it.

The fact that it'd be easy to replace strengthens the negative signal. If they're cutting corners in a highly visible portion of the car which would have required no additional engineering to do right, they're probably cutting more corners in ways that are harder or impossible to see. No review video will reveal, for example, whether they used a poor quality adhesive or the button labels show visible wear within months.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#128

Post by smugma »

hephaes7us wrote: post #99
Barbing wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The low fuel, low wiper fluid, and forward collision warnings sound like they were all implemented a little clumsily. What do you think the best implementation would look like? Seems it would still have to strike a balance. It's dangerous to tell the driver they're low on fuel if we distract them. But it's also dangerous for a driver to run out of fuel on the highway if we didn't catch their attention. Also guessing…

For years, vehicles have had a little light that comes on when you are below about 50 miles of range. It's next to the fuel gauge. I've always heard it called the "walk light", which I presume is a reference to the fact that, if you don't do something, you may have to start walking soon. My car has a little screen in the dash where it usually shows my range, or the current temperature - information that I check when…

Forward and rear collision warnings have saved me several times in 3 different cars, including slamming on the brakes as I was backing up and then a MUNI bus that I didn’t see flew by.

I’ve also been in 4 accidents that were my fault (one on the same street, a MUNI bus blocked my view of another car that had the right of the way) and 2 that weren’t but I wasn’t able to avoid them.

I will always buy a new car with the latest tech because I acknowledge I’m a below average driver and those warnings (inc the subtle “someone is in your blind spot” light) are helpful to me.

PS I also prefer physical knobs (especially on the steering wheel) and don’t have cars with giant touchscreens.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#129

Post by everdrive »

shcheklein wrote: post #12

If they have custromer feedback and focus groups like they mention how did it happen in the first place? Some overoptimistic head-of-something? Really curious. I own previous -2021 mb and had to drive the upgrade (touch buttons) once as a replacement car. UX is terrible. Period. I even checked then in the dealership what they did to S-class and mybachs - and yes, same crappy wheel, etc. Anyways, I was mostly surprise…

>If they have custromer feedback and focus groups like they mention how did it happen in the first place?

This is part of the modern UI paradox. Never before has UI and UX gotten so much attention, and logging, and tracking, and research, etc. But of course with all that additional attention UI and UX is generally getting worse over time. I have my theories why, but I'd bet they're paying for decent talent here and are coming to the wrong conclusions.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#130

Post by everdrive »

garyfirestorm wrote: post #29
Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #18

What I'm surprised by is that cars are chock-full of ornate, unique parts (cupholders are a good example). I would have imagined that car infotainment controls would be a small fraction of the BOM, so I've been wondering if it's not really a cost thing. Sort of like small phones or 3D TVs from the early 2000's.

If you can save a dollar on a part, and that part goes into millions of cars per year… then it will be on the chopping block. That cost and weight savings are then passed onto other things, better rear camera? More electrical current to charge your phone faster. Quicker HVAC operation? Everything is a compromise and tradeoff. Source - I work in an OEM.

>better rear camera? More electrical current to charge your phone faster. Quicker HVAC operation?

Modern vehicle luxury is disgusting and decadent.

Post reply on HN