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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

#21

Post by bob1029 »

rkagerer wrote: post #8

Are there any reliable modern vehicles with a UI more like a decade or two ago? (eg. physical knobs and a dash that doesn't blind you)

I've got a new Ram 1500 and I haven't had to turn on the infotainment system or use a touch screen one time. I've got the screen completely off except when in reverse (automatically turns on and off as needed).

Most of the inputs are chunky physical things. Drive select is a gigantic clicky knob and there are three dedicated rotary dials just for the climate controls.

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

#22

Post by bryanlarsen »

prepend wrote: post #13
rkagerer wrote: post #5

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…

Audi has always been funny to me as they’ve been a copycat brand for the 30 years I’ve been aware of them. So it makes since that their “innovation” is a skeuomorphic digital version of a physical dial that costs more and is shittier. There’s a gnostic origin story of the demiurge who is like a retarded brother of God that sees heaven and wants to make their own version. But they mess up and make a crappy version tha…

The Audi Q4 and the VW id.4 are basically identical cars. The Q4 has a lot more buttons than the id.4, but the reviews I've seen say it makes it worse, not better.

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

#24

Post by kyrra »

moolcool wrote: post #3

Touchscreens have ruined car UX for a generation.

It's not just cars. Other places I've seen this is large home appliances, with recent examples being inwall ovens and washer/dryer.

On the oven front, the high end GE ones[0] have a display. It looks fine from pictures, but when you're trying to interact with it, it's just slow. It has a design flaw of just an unresponsive touch screen. But buttons you want easy access to aren't always there. (This can maybe get better if they fixed the implementation, but right now it's terrible).

On the washer dryer front, I've been using two recently so I could compare. One is an old Maytag with a physical dial. The other is a semi new Samsung that has buttons but uses a display. With the Samsung, you always have to push and hold the power on off button. The Maytag you can just turn the dial and then hit start. The Maytag is just overall faster to interact with.

I feel like these large appliance makers see displays as a selling point, but then they produce very suboptimal implementations that are terrible and the downgrade from the previous experience. I really wish they would spend more time on UX, rather than style.

[0] https://www.geappliances.com/appliance/GE-Profile-30-Smart-B...

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

#25

Post by xyzelement »

As someone who doesn't want to navigate the touchscreens, I love that my 2021 Highlander has physical climate controls.

But I also realized that you no longer need them. My wife set her climate control to 70 degrees and never touched it since. In the winter it warms her up, in the summer it cools her down. Her car is a perfect 70 degrees all year round.

So for her, it doesn't matter how inaccessible the controls are, she never uses them. I suspect at least in part, the less accessible design reflects the lower usage.

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

#26

Post by sbradford26 »

rkagerer wrote: post #8

Are there any reliable modern vehicles with a UI more like a decade or two ago? (eg. physical knobs and a dash that doesn't blind you)

The Ford Maverick has pretty much all physical controls, but still supports Android Auto and Apple Carplay. They are pretty difficult to get though at the moment.

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

#27

Post by moolcool »

tempest_ wrote: post #4
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.

First, car companies are generally terrible at making software from the jump. The interfaces are always byzantine, laggy, and poorly laid out. There's the small bandaid of Apple Carplay and Android Auto, but then your vehicle settings are decoupled from the rest of the UI, which is confusing and frustrating. I'm honestly due to get a new car, but I have no idea what to get because virtually every car on the market feels like using a 10 year old Android tablet.

All I want is a small display, doesn't have to be touch, for backup camera and carplay. Please put everything else behind buttons, switches, and LED indicators.

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

#28

Post by bbx »

rkagerer wrote: post #8

Are there any reliable modern vehicles with a UI more like a decade or two ago? (eg. physical knobs and a dash that doesn't blind you)

I've never bought a car but if I do, that might be the third most important criteria on my list (1st being security, 2nd being reliability/ease of maintenance).

It seems the Japanese brands (Toyota, Mazda, Honda…) tend to tick most of these boxes. I would have hoped brands like Volvo or Volkswagen would avoid this touchscreen trend but it seems they jumped on the bandwagon.

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

#29

Post by Robotbeat »

I like old style physical control as well, but I typically use a combination of steering wheel knobs and voice control to adjust climate control on my Model S, not the touch screen. That means I don’t have to take my eyes off the road, or even my hands off the wheel. Voice control is really the most hands-off way to adjust climate.

(Voice control could be more polished than it is, but it works great for climate control IMO. I really like it for enabling or disabling the defrost, which can take fiddling with if you use touch screen or old style controls… especially in a rainy/cloudy situation where you want both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road..)

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

#30

Post by Spooky23 »

prepend wrote: post #9

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 routin…

This stuff started when responsive web design became a thing. The big change from my POV is designers were empowered to implement the “top x” features or user journeys and pretty much ignore the rest.

Ignoring low use functions is bad. There are plenty of buttons in my car that are a waste of money on the bill of materials if you think about frequency. But if I need it in an emergency, it’s essential.

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