131–140 of 242 posts
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Did you ever tried to use the rotary dial for text input? I gave up immediately. The car has a regular screen regular, no touch. Something is good only when balanced.
They have touchscreens now, so you can input text with an on-screen keyboard but do everything else with the controller.
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Did you ever tried to use the rotary dial for text input? I gave up immediately. The car has a regular screen regular, no touch. Something is good only when balanced.
Yeah, agreed on a rotary dial being terrible for text input. That's where a touch screen shines. But you shouldn't need to do anything requiring text input while driving.
Ah yes. A control with a little, densely detailed screen on that your hand totally covers when using it. This type of control is investigated by design teams at auto companies and the sensible ones rarely take it forward as, while they look cool, when used in a vehicle they are more distracting than touch screens.
A significant number of people prefer something that looks cool over actual usability
Enough that car companies will put out something that looks cool even if they know usability isn’t great. They aren’t dumb, they just build what sales
Whenever we did ux research for our product, this would come up over and over. Users would always pick designs that looked cooler even when we made them bad on purpose to be sure
Just is what it is. Of course, it’s possible to build something that looks cool AND has good ux, but this is actually hard and ain’t nobody got time for that.
I applaud the author for putting thought into how to design digital controls, in contrast to the "just put whatever garbage on a touch screen" strategy most carmakers do today. However, I still question the benefit of this complex, modal control (you have to press a single knob to "cycle between" multiple modes). My ancient, 2016 car features three knobs. This luxury allows me to, without looking, adjust any of three…
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The author is pretty clear that having more than two modes diminishes the usefulness of the interface. Three modes was complex enough that he redesigned it down. I've changed the channel tuner when I've reached for the volume knob. If the haptic feedback between the two is clearly different, that will help, no?
Controls that require a feedback loop have more cognitive overhead than controls you can just use “blindly” (this includes not having to check for haptic feedback to test what mode it’s in) and from pure muscle memory. For example, you learn that your preferred volume when driving on a highway is at (say) the two o’clock position, and with time you’ll blindly turn the knob to that position without even consciously th…
I still have a nightmare about the dog of my relative run to the road and get out between 2 parking cars. It is a miracle it was not killed. I would not be able to detect it if I doing all these knob and feedback thing.
The old lady driving and stop in time in her old car … knobs and eye on help
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My 2004 5 series BMW had this (it was called iDrive). A command style knob that could move on an axis of sorts (up and down, left, right). You could also press it in. I absolutely hated it.
That was among the first generations of iDrive. I was (and to some extent still am) skeptical, particularly given how overwhelmingly negative the reception was at the time. But, FWIW, the motoring press was later – as BMW apparently improved the system significantly – swayed to accept, and sometimes even praise, the iDrive. At least from about 2015-20, or possibly as early as 2010-15. Can't give any personal evaluati…
- the touch controls are blacked out at night, no backlight, no ambient light touches the black touch controls surface, the temperature control is hidden from occupants at night
- Everything except temperature can only be accessed via the infotainment screen HOWEVER nothing can be accessed from any of the default/ambient screens, you must always first go into the HVAC screen and then select your options
- the car would rather that you don’t operate HVAC in terms of temperature, fan speed and choice of vents to enable, instead defaulting to a “helpful” screen which offers around 8 fairly indistinguishable settings like “warm my feet”
WHAT?!?!!
Turns out I value instant heat above all else, all previous cars have taken a mile or two to begin producing warmth. This (thanks to being an EV) just instantly starts blasting 5kw of heat into the cabin. Amazing.
So I still hate the controls but I wouldn’t give up instant heating to fix them. Obviously I’d rather have instant heating AND sane controls. I just never knew what i valued as a user before, I found it interesting.
[1] VW ID Buzz
Oh, god. It just keeps getting worse. I don't want a fake knob that simulates a real one except it ignores me and decides the fan speed, blend door position, and probably the recirculation door on its own (allowing only a temporary override). I want a fan dial that is electrically connected to the fan, such that the position of the dial directly controls the voltage being sent into the fan motor, with no computer or robotics in between. In other words, a step switch. And I want a slider that is mechanically connected to the blend door for controlling temperature, again, with no computer or robotics in between. And the same for the recirculation door.
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It is achievable in every car by cracking the window
That's the workaround I'm forced to use, but obviously the disadvantages are noise exposure and forgetting it's cracked resulting in rain entering the car. :-( Yay for "progress" eh? I know the recirculate door servo can stop halfway, just let me control it...