51–60 of 242 posts
Car manufacturers, please hire this guy to build your interfaces. He gets it. Touch screens must not be used for controls you are going to frequently operate while driving the car, it's maximum unsafe.
One overlooked feature of physical controls is that they also give interiors an identity and experience. Growing up obsessed with cars, I loved seeing how different brands would lay out the cabin. Volvos from the 2000s used a rather large diagram of a seated person to select the HVAC vent for example. Also, in my brain, a 3000+ pound object just dang requires some stuff to physically press, push, and hear click! A co…
The main problem stems from the fact that car manufacturers will always choose novel designs over usability. They change components not to improve functionality, but simply for differentiation. As you pointed out, even if a control is well designed like Volvo's HVAC, it's phased out during the next refresh.
A newer problem is that every single car maker is beyond incompetent when it comes to software and UX. It's not part of their culture and expertise. So in addition to bad or missing buttons, even the screens are a nightmare.
This is an entrenched idea in the automotive industry, so it probably won't change, but it's something that really needs to stop in my opinion.
Touch screens are fine for given much more fine-grained access to controls. But they should be limited to controls that you _don't need to set while driving_. It's absurd that it takes 3 taps on a screen -- diverting my attention to the screen -- on my Tesla to turn on defogging (a common event here!) while I can do it with a one touch (now muscle-memorized) on my Subaru.
Standardizing voice control in cars will go a long way until vendors decide to standardize physical controls or car OS. I should be able to get in any car and say "Set heat to X", "Defrost Windows" etc.
Standardizing voice control in cars will go a long way until vendors decide to standardize physical controls or car OS. I should be able to get in any car and say "Set heat to X", "Defrost Windows" etc.
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…
Touch screens are such a lazy, shitty, dangerous way to implement 90% of the functions they’re currently used for. Good to see that at least one person is working on this problem.