Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens • Hacker News Board

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#421

Post by IceWreck » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 7:02 AM UTC

jjav wrote: post #371

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #189

I wouldn't mind touchscreens as long as these imbecile developers would strictly limit UI response time to under 16ms. In no world where you're barrelling 3,000+ lbs of mass at tens of miles an hour should you be distracted by some moronic app or subsystem failing to respond in time because it was written by under-experienced software "engineers." Any software running as a part of a motor vehicle should be federally…

> So what? You've got physical buttons? Big whoop. That physical button that takes 500ms to respond is still as dangerous. No, that's wrong. Problem with touchscreens is that (1) you need to look at them and (2) there is no tactile feedback of whether you pressed it or not and (3) you need to hover your arm in a moving car at just the right spot. Physical buttons cleanly resolve all of these major problems. If the ac…

Why not have haptic feedback like in phones

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#422

Post by onion2k » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 7:02 AM UTC

bradgessler wrote: post #413

jjav wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what? You've got physical buttons? Big whoop. That physical button that takes 500ms to respond is still as dangerous. No, that's wrong. Problem with touchscreens is that (1) you need to look at them and (2) there is no tactile feedback of whether you pressed it or not and (3) you need to hover your arm in a moving car at just the right spot. Physical buttons cleanly resolve all of these major problems. If the ac…

> Physical buttons cleanly resolve all of these major problems > Given that with a physical button you didn't have to take your eyes off the road and given the tactile feedback you know for sure you activated/pressed/moved the control I never understand the "you don't have to look at buttons" argument—my car has lots of physical buttons and to push them, I briefly have to look at the console, find the button, and pre…

my car has lots of physical buttons and to push them, I briefly have to look at the console, find the button, and press it

For things that you do regularly the button should be optimized to not be in the middle of a cluster. Ideally it'll be somewhere you can see easily (like on the steering wheel), and most importantly of all it isn't dependent on context. In my car I can easily turn on the aircon, or change the music volume, or answer the phone without looking away from the road because I know where the button is and one press always does that thing. On a touchscreen you always need to give it attention because the screen area changes what it does depending on what you've pressed before pressing that area. That is a huge disadvantage.

Your point about pressing a button not doing what it's supposed to is right, but I have to admit I can't remember the last time that happened in any car I've owned. Buttons not working isn't a common issue as far as I know.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#423

Post by oblio » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 7:02 AM UTC

modzu wrote: post #353

flyinghamster wrote: post #39

I think one of the most frustrating aspects of this whole kerfluffle is the automakers' longstanding willingness to ignore customers and double down at any pushback. It's downright stupid that it has taken this level of screaming from customers to roll back a design choice that should never have been made.

in every large business there is a very simple formula for decision making: what option maximizes profit? if we have to kill 100,000 cyclists and pedestrians in the process, who gives a shit, people die every day for no damn reason at all. lets kill em all, bastards arent our customers anyway

Case in point: SUVs and trucks.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#424

Post by docorc » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 7:02 AM UTC

Cars can use a single button to activate most of the controls by using Android Auto/Apple/Tesla style voice commands so they do not have to visually do it on touchscreen.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#425

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 7:04 AM UTC

Transfinity wrote: post #314

ISO-morphism wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that the engineers are competent at developing software, and think that a lot of the quality issues are due to engineers abdicating authority over the software to managers and never saying "No, adding in that feature at this point in the timeline is going to make this a steaming pile of shit and I refuse to do it and still call myself a software engineer." I get that we have families to feed, but I've seen…

There's no incentive for an engineer to do that. Saying yes and delivering crap gets you a bonus, hard truths get you shuffled around or made redundant. There's no real consequence for delivering crap, so that's what happens. Contrast this with other engineering fields, where the engineer is truly responsible for the decisions they make. My civil engineer friends face losing their licenses, fines or jail time if they…

It should be, at least on countries where Software Engineering actually means something, and not a title that one can easy peasy call themselves after a six weeks bootcamp.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#426

Post by wasmitnetzen » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 7:05 AM UTC

bradgessler wrote: post #413

jjav wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what? You've got physical buttons? Big whoop. That physical button that takes 500ms to respond is still as dangerous. No, that's wrong. Problem with touchscreens is that (1) you need to look at them and (2) there is no tactile feedback of whether you pressed it or not and (3) you need to hover your arm in a moving car at just the right spot. Physical buttons cleanly resolve all of these major problems. If the ac…

> Physical buttons cleanly resolve all of these major problems > Given that with a physical button you didn't have to take your eyes off the road and given the tactile feedback you know for sure you activated/pressed/moved the control I never understand the "you don't have to look at buttons" argument—my car has lots of physical buttons and to push them, I briefly have to look at the console, find the button, and pre…

You might need to use your eyes to find the button, but once you've seen it, your finger will probably find it while you can look back at the road. Or if you still need to guide your fingers, once you're touching the button, your eyes are free again. There's no need to look at a physical volume knob to get feedback on your actions, there very much is a need for a touchscreen slider.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#427

Post by oblio » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 7:06 AM UTC

martindbp wrote: post #401

Yes, tactile buttons are better for the user. But that won't matter in the long run as cars become more and more autonomous. Tesla's FSD for instance is far from perfect (and MobilEye will bring this to other brands), but when not actively controlling the vehicle 99% of the time, tactile buttons vs touchscreens becomes much less of an issue.

1. You do know that other car manufacturers have more advanced and more reliable driver's assistance than Tesla's fake FSD, right? MobilEye or not.

2. We could be 50 years away from universal real FSD.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#428

Post by bottlepalm » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 7:07 AM UTC

bombolo wrote: post #345

jillesvangurp wrote: post #342

I think there are maybe also a fair bit of car manufacturers that are simply rushing old converted ICE models with a battery to market that also really suck at doing anything with software (like VW). It's easier for them to do what they have been doing for decades than do something new. It's not so much that they don't like touch screens but that they lack the ability to develop good software for them. Particularly m…

No amount of UX genius can make a touchscreen visible when the sun is glaring on it. For the Teslas records, it might be because they're exclusively used for short urban trips.

The roof, back and back side windows on a Tesla are tinted, how are you getting screen glare? I've never had that issue.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#429

Post by onion2k » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 7:09 AM UTC

stonogo wrote: post #384

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even as someone who believes in the indefensible bloat of modern software, I'd say TI-OS on my 84+ (from using it in high school and college several years ago) is not exactly the fastest to use: - Graphing a plot was slow due to slow CPU and high-precision math libraries (could take 3-10 seconds depending on function complexity and detail) - MathPrint mode slows down printing expressions to an extent, IIRC even movin…

I beat Doom on a TI-84. I'm not sure I buy this.

Doom does very little work to draw each frame. It does a handful of small calculations to update the game state, and then traverses a BSP tree and draws some vertical blocks for walls followed by a flood fill for the floor and ceiling (although I suspect that was missing on the TI-84 ports because filling is slow). Calculating and drawing a complex graph often requires far more operations.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#430

Post by neuronic » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 7:09 AM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #189

I wouldn't mind touchscreens as long as these imbecile developers would strictly limit UI response time to under 16ms. In no world where you're barrelling 3,000+ lbs of mass at tens of miles an hour should you be distracted by some moronic app or subsystem failing to respond in time because it was written by under-experienced software "engineers." Any software running as a part of a motor vehicle should be federally…

Hard disagree.

Point 1: I think the failure to respond in time is, while annoying, a minor problem. The real issue is that you HAVE to look to navigate 3 different incosistent submenus instead of just turning a knob using haptics only (unless you own the car I drive a lot of VW ID.3 and Audi A6. The ID.3 is hot garbage when it comes to its interface. It regurlarly crashes and freezes as well. Winter and freezing temps outside? Too bad the software for climate control just crashed. Have fun with your frozen windows and mirrors.

The Audi lets me turn all knobs without looking just by feeling their surface and clicks. No eyes off the road at any point once you know the car.

Point 2: it's much less the software than some assume although the engineers aren't entirely blameless. The CPUs used for these systems are the absolute ass low end crap you can find on the market to drop manufacturing costs by another $200 on your $50,000 car. Also management of the engineers is TERRIBLE from what I heard from colleagues at 2 different car makers (one being VW).