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Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

drive.com.au

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Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#391

Post by CrimsonRain »

tribaal wrote: post #132
fasteddie31003 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla does a great job not having buttons. I think the real issue is that other car companies have bad interfaces that make physical buttons necessary. Tesla just has a great UI that does not need physical buttons.

Exactly - I own a Tesla and an id.buzz and it’s just insulting how bad the user experience is on the buzz. I don’t need buttons for the rear view mirrors or lights, I need them to do the right thing for me instead. VW not saving the position of the rear view mirrors on my profile is stupid. Having a hardware button for the seat position “profile” is stupid. Having walk away lock locking and unlocking the bus in a loo…

You are absolutely right. See my other post before where I saw essentially the same thing. It is absurd how bad the German companies are; the only thing they know how to do great is the engine.

I never understand these people with their ac knobs... What are they doing that they need to change AC all the time during driving?

I set it to 21.5 with auto, and it is perfect for the whole car. Why do people need to constantly change ac?!!

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#392

Post by CrimsonRain »

Synthetic7346 wrote: post #87
fasteddie31003 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla does a great job not having buttons. I think the real issue is that other car companies have bad interfaces that make physical buttons necessary. Tesla just has a great UI that does not need physical buttons.

I disagree, taking my eyes off the road to change climate controls is bad UI/UX

Why do you need to change climate control at all let alone when driving? Is it because the car can't maintain proper temperature? Response time is lagging? Or what?

Also, you can just use voice control. Works better than physical buttons.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#393

Post by marvin »

teamonkey wrote: post #386
_the_inflator wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite China, IT development is a complete disaster in Germany. All car so called German car manufacturers UX/UI is horrible to say the least. Dieter Rams is the only UX/UI designer, who became famous - outside of Germany. Hartmut Esslinger kind of popularized DR, what an irony, that two Germans made history, but of course not in Germany and even in Germany DR wasn't well known. Braun was a brand and statement, but…

> Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom. “The company is the largest non-American software company by revenue and the world's fifth-largest publicly traded software company by revenue. In June 2025, it was the largest European company by market capitalization, as well as one of the 30 most valuable publicly traded companies in the world.” https://wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP

High market cap but universally hated by its end-users is probably not a great yardstick to measure consumer software against.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#396

Post by ssl-3 »

aembleton wrote: post #321
Conlectus wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that everyone always misses in these conversations is that screens over buttons is a cost cutting measure, not a first-principles design decision. It means the UI can be designed and developed mostly independently of the physical controls, which helps reduce rework. I also expect it reduces costs for manufacture and assembly. I’m in favour of more physical controls, but it surprises me that this rarely come…

Somehow, the Dacia Sandero has physical controls for climate control and physical buttons on the steering wheel. It manages to do that whilst being one of the cheapest cars you can buy.

Having fewer functions means fewer controls are required. Fewer controls means fewer buttons. KISS tends to promote this.

If it's the choice between $50 worth of buttons and $100 worth of touchscreen, then $50 worth of buttons wins on cheapness.

And at that end of the market, it works (and it makes sense that it works).

---

But at the other end of the market: Common luxury cars have lots of features, and KISS isn't really one of the design goals (if a customer wanted cheap and simple instead, perhaps they'd be shopping for a Dacia instead). Things are still built down to a cost, but there's a greater quantity of those things.

When the choice is between $200 worth of buttons or $100 worth of touchscreen, then $100 worth of touchscreen wins.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#397

Post by sandworm101 »

ssl-3 wrote: post #340
sandworm101 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite car was a 92 BMW 325IS coupe, standard. It was a simple driving machine. It drove well. It performed when asked. It had room for four, or three plus skiis with half the rear seat folded down. And BMW took a strong stance against drinking and driving: zero cup holders. I miss that car. I would buy one again in a heartbeat if BMW still made them.

My E36 was fantastic as well. Automatic climate control, heated motorized mirrors, heated monkey pissers, heated power-adjusted leather seats, power windows, power sunroof, dash lights that fluidly adjusted to ambient conditions, two throttle bodies (in series -- one for the loud pedal, one for the ASC+T), and a single-DIN radio that was dead-nuts simple to upgrade properly whilst leaving the rest of the factory syst…

Sounds like you had the north america version. Mine was built in Europe, first sold in canada. It had to be dealer-modified for daytime running lights before being first sold (headlight switch "off" was turned into another on.)

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#398

Post by sam_bristow »

marvin wrote: post #393
teamonkey wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom. “The company is the largest non-American software company by revenue and the world's fifth-largest publicly traded software company by revenue. In June 2025, it was the largest European company by market capitalization, as well as one of the 30 most valuable publicly traded companies in the world.” https://wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP

High market cap but universally hated by its end-users is probably not a great yardstick to measure consumer software against.

No, but it seems to be par for the course for enterprise software.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#399

Post by ErroneousBosh »

Zak wrote: post #306
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1990 Citroën AX Sport - https://assets.dyler.com/uploads/cars/406167/9080414/medium_... Look at that door handle. Fully flush, NACA profile scoop in the bodywork to insert your finger behind the trailing edge of the door and flick the little lever up to unlatch it. Give me that, please. I wish I'd never sold my 1991 Citroën AX GT, it was so quick and quiet. Hardly any wind noise, so it must have been very aerodynamic…

1969 Pontiac Grand Prix - maybe not actually aerodynamic, but it does have flush door handles: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/1969_Pon...

Super clean. We need more cars that look like that, and I bet we can make them reasonably safe too.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#400

Post by rawoke083600 »

_the_inflator wrote: post #31
nokeya wrote: post #6

I’m quite suspicious that they do that not because they understood or learned something, but because China requires physical buttons starting next year. And they simply don’t want to lose one of their biggest markets.

Despite China, IT development is a complete disaster in Germany. All car so called German car manufacturers UX/UI is horrible to say the least. Dieter Rams is the only UX/UI designer, who became famous - outside of Germany. Hartmut Esslinger kind of popularized DR, what an irony, that two Germans made history, but of course not in Germany and even in Germany DR wasn't well known. Braun was a brand and statement, but…

No disagreeing with your points. I can see the passion in your reply :)

But Hetzner Cloud UX/UI is wonderful, compared to the rivals, Digital Ocean, Google, AWS (yea those are bigger and offer more, but still)

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