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Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

motorauthority.com

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Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#191

Post by Phillipharryt »

Shivetya wrote: post #182

Well after owning a Tesla Model 3 I am of the opinion, why in the hell do we need forty plus buttons in cars? Seriously! (Go count your buttons, some cars are higher than that) First off with regards to the touch screen in the Tesla. In the vast majority of drives I never ever touch it. Not once. Why not? Well I have my temperature preference set, I usually play the music that is coming off my phone, and well, what e…

Do you often get into new and different cars and drive them? Your last paragraph is an odd argument. The buttons in my car stay in the same place and don't change with context. If I want to turn the radio down I reach over and rotate the knob to the left, muscle memory and tactile response. That knob will never do anything except the radio volume. Far safer because I don't even need to glance at it.

Edit. Your top paragraph about user settings, that applies to any car that maintains a user profile, that's not a benefit of touch screens.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#192

Post by close04 »

Shivetya wrote: post #182

Well after owning a Tesla Model 3 I am of the opinion, why in the hell do we need forty plus buttons in cars? Seriously! (Go count your buttons, some cars are higher than that) First off with regards to the touch screen in the Tesla. In the vast majority of drives I never ever touch it. Not once. Why not? Well I have my temperature preference set, I usually play the music that is coming off my phone, and well, what e…

If it's something you're reasonably expected to do while driving (so with the car in motion) then you should be able to do it without ever having to take your eyes off the road. Physical buttons let you do that. Between the ones on the steering wheel to control 99% of multimedia, the ones behind the wheel for lights&stuff, and the ones on the center console to control car functions like A/C and whatnot, you mostly hit that target.

Touchscreens force you to take your eyes off the road. You can't fumble around and guess if you pressed the right thing or some random function. This means they are only appropriate for things that would normally be done while the car is not moving. Before someone mentions "but GPS", you should NOT be typing in GPS addresses while driving unless you're using voice. Touchscreen or not you still have to look at that screen for a pretty long time.

And I will also mention the obvious: with everything bundled on the touchscreen God forbid that one single part breaks (due to design choice [0] or simple accident). It renders a good part of the car unusable.

So yeah, I'm good with having a big cool touchscreen but this doesn't mean the basic functions have to be moved there.

[0] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#193

Post by sizzle »

I can't wait for the day of Alexa/Siri/Google Assistant voic-level speech integration for controlling air conditioner, calling, asking questions, rerouting gps etc all hands free with emphasis on actually being usable, unlike the crap automakers have been torturing us with (half-assed navigation that needs to be updated at dealership, voice input system that barely understands commands unless you say them in some very specific order, etc).

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#194

Post by blattimwind »

It's funny how the dashboard UI of lower-end cars tends to be consistently better than higher-end cars, because low end cars simply have a bunch of buttons that you can use without taking your eyes of the road. Sometimes even the location of controls is much better in low end cars; the VW up! comes to mind with all important controls located directly next to the steering wheel. Beautiful. In other cars just switching the radio off has you reaching for a button somewhere between the not-ashtray and the backside of the moon.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#195

Post by Phillipharryt »

Isinlor wrote: post #144
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we extend this idea, why not do it for airplanes? It seems like a bad idea to be changing the layout of mission-critical systems. I'm sure it'd wreak havoc if the cockpit of a 787 was all touch screens, with UI changes pushed at the whim of developers. I drive a car with analog controls. The buttons for controlling the radio, hazard lights, the A/C, etc are all static. I wouldn't want it to change. It gets the job…

How about spacecraft with touchscreens: https://www.spacex.com/crew-dragon ? Compare to the cockpit of Space Shuttle: https://i.redd.it/9mj5bcbnzsx21.jpg

I hope you're arguing in favour of the space shuttle there. It has no contextual buttons. I'll always argue that contextual controls do not belong in critical systems. Every button on that shuttle will do the same thing every time you press it. A touch screen looks nice but isn't safe. Mission control is telling you to press X button, but X button isn't actually on your display right now?? That's a big problem.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#196

Post by sizzle »

WalterBright wrote: post #128
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For music and navigation, touchscreens are OK, as these are things you don't suddenly need to adjust if something happens. But for instance the defrost function on the AC can be something that you need to immediately control while driving 60 mph, e.g. if you enter a tunnel with moist microclimate (we have one of those nearby, it fogs up your windscreen in ~10sec at some conditions). Such things need to have physical…

> the AC: the buttons are shaped like a human, and you press the part of your body where you want air I was driving a friend's newer car down the freeway once, and had to call him to find out how to turn on the godam defroster. There were so many knobs, switches, and dials that influence this, all labelled with icons so I had no idea what they did. Turns out that you had to push two buttons, toggle a toggle, and turn…

I want to speak to the car with my hands on the steering wheel and tell it to defrost the windows like I'm talking to an Alexa device. I can't wait for this day to come...

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#197

Post by zubspace »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #92
quakenul wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user's need for touch screens in cars The flexibility to benefit from rapid product iteration. If you think of cars as mostly software products that receive updates over the air, a flexible interface makes a lot more sense (even though I agree that it makes for a pretty bad user interface).

If we extend this idea, why not do it for airplanes? It seems like a bad idea to be changing the layout of mission-critical systems. I'm sure it'd wreak havoc if the cockpit of a 787 was all touch screens, with UI changes pushed at the whim of developers. I drive a car with analog controls. The buttons for controlling the radio, hazard lights, the A/C, etc are all static. I wouldn't want it to change. It gets the job…

An A380 is already full of screens where touch input could be introduced. All major airplane manufacturers are definitely experimenting with touch screens in the cockpit [1]. I guess not for flight critical systems for different reasons, because of missing tactile feedback and limited usage during turbulent flights [2]. But maybe that's just a question of time...

[1] https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/airbus-aims-for-a... [2] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/22729/why-are-t...

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#198

Post by [deleted] »

cyxxon wrote: post #75

I was actually pondering buying a Mazda, but now I am not so sure. Generally I get the idea - please give me hardware buttons for radio/music volume, temperature control, or to toggle suspension modes or whatever. But I want to use e.g. the Spotify on my phone, and Google Maps. Someone further down commented that it seemed to him that car makers have given up on their own branded version if car software, and ohmygod…

[deleted]

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#199

Post by arvinsim »

romwell wrote: post #152
atoav wrote: post #74

I don't even think you have to be defensive about it. Touchscreens can make sense for things where you need to have a flexible interface and cannot afford your physical interface to look like the cockpit of an airplane. But for everything that is even a tiny bit critical you usually want to avoid it if possible. This is why even 50k€ cinema cameras like the Arri Alexa swear on knobs and buttons. The things with butto…

The world of musical instruments went through this decades ago. Yamaha DX7, one of the best-selling synths of all time, didn't have any knobs or sliders to edit its sounds. People loved the sounds, but editing them was so hard that few musicians did - that's why you can hear many DX7 stock presets in 80's music. The 90's were the dark ages of the synth. Even the buttons went away, everything was in a menu now. The sy…

I still appreciate that virtual synths makes it much easier for beginners like me to start with making music.

But I wouldn't hold it against advanced users if they want a more tactile experience.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#200

Post by snaky »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #109
lobotryas wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument doesn’t make sense to me. Why would you do any of that WHILE DRIVING?? That’s both dangerous and foolish. As for key presses to navigate a menu you would be surprised how quickly a human memorized exactly how many times to press what buttons to get to where they want to go. In my current car I know that if I press Home, down x3, and OK I will end up in the Media menu. I can do all this without taking mu…

Incidentally, that was the aspect of old feature phones I most miss today. I could operate them without looking by muscle memory - and it worked because the UI was fixed, but more importantly, it was soft-real time: the delays were predictable and you could learn them too. Today's touch devices tend to lag completely randomly.

There were green-and-black text UIs that allowed receptionist at hotel check you in blazingly fast, keeping an eye contact with you. No mouse, just keyboard shortcuts.
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