I realize the article is pro buttons. I think a huge thing missing from the button discussion (well, maybe lightly touched on in the article) is that physical buttons and controls help guide without looking. Other buttons give feedback that your hand is in the right place. Sure, at first contact that (very bad) reference radio is worse than the touch screen but within a few days of using that I would not need to look to make sure I was hitting the button I wanted because I could feel the face of it with my hand and know I was hitting the right button. So basically, even though the paper picked essentially the worst radio on the planet, it would likely be better than a well designed touch screen after just a few days of use. First day though? That thing is a nightmare.
Car touchscreens are cheap, not good
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Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good
#52They're getting better though. The first gen touchscreens were tiny and unreliable. The one in my 2024 Ioniq 5 is pretty decent. I am really glad I still have physical AC controls though, even if they're capacitive. Touchscreens are modal. If I want to control the climate, I first have to press the Climate capacitive button or scroll through the screen to find climate. That takes my hands off the wheel and my eyes of…
> I will _happily_ pay the $100 more to have a more premium and tuned interior
I'm guessing the cost difference is greater than this. Which means the end-user price difference would be north of $1k.
Would be interesting to see if customers would pay $2 to 5k extra for a mostly-tactile interior. (I think back-up camera requirements make some screen unavoidable.)
Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good
#53More importantly, car touchscreens are dangerous. It’s impossible to operate a touchscreen without moving your attention from the road to the touchscreen itself. That’s why I think it must be a legal requirement for any car with touchscreen controls to operate car functions must have driver assistance features enabled, no exceptions.
Just like the article mentioned, you can't just say that touchscreens are dangerous without bringing up how many buttons do not make it better UX. There are plenty of touchscreen designs that are way better than buttons.
The only metric that matters is how fast you can get attention back on the road.
Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good
#54I gotta say, the one redeeming feature of Ferrari Luce, for me at least, was the interior. I don't dislike screens, I just hate the tesla-esque obsession (where, for them with FSD - for all the hate they get about it up here - it might actually make sense since u are gonna have a FSD+Grok car) with no buttons. I know buttons add cost, but going back to the Luce example again: you have a healthy sized screen (so u don…
Tesla arguably has better, more useful, and more obvious physical buttons than most cars. Most car manufacturers spray confusing physical buttons everywhere with esoteric icons and insane UX. Everything you'd want to do as a driver in a Tesla has a physical button or a set it and forget it "auto" mode.
That's why Lyft/Uber drivers who use Teslas need to cover them in stickers explaining how to do such esoteric behaviors as "open door"
Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good
#55Sure, touchscreens are cheap, but high-quality touchscreen software is most def NOT CHEAP!
Apple and Google have spent untold amounts of money developing iOS and Android. CarPlay and Android Auto are really nice.
Tesla has spent gobs of money on its touchscreen software too. It's the only native car touchscreen UI I've tried that feels smooth, snappy, responsive, simple.
I've tried the native touchscreen UI of quite a few US and European carmakers. All of them fall short. They feel janky, clunky, obtuse.
Physical buttons are much, MUCH cheaper than high-quality touchscreen software.
Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> wait until the whole thing is unresponsive due to heat or a bug Chances are if the whole thing is unresponsive due to heat or a bug the volume knob isn't going to actually change the volume as well. Its not like the knob is the actual pot directly changing the circuitry in the amp these days, its a digital input.
Not convinced that is true.
I've personally experienced it on at least six different car infotainment systems by four different manufacturers where the stereo will start playing whatever was left on, you turn the volume knob but the whole thing is still loading so it doesn't react for a few seconds.
Even outside of OEM head units, I've owned a few after market head unit stereos where the volume knob was technically a digital input and if the system was lagging hard the volume input could be delayed a good bit.
A number of these systems will have a different volume level for things like phone calls than for the music, but both volume levels are controlled by the knob. It'll also do things like automatically lower the volume level for notifications or have dynamic volume levels based on acceleration. The knob is rarely directly controlling the actual output of the system.
Here's a good question: if you press the volume buttons on the steering wheel controls, does the volume knob on the radio move?
Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good
#57Car touchscreens are a safety hazzard. Everyone hates them (except tesla owners), they need to largely banned
Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good
#58Sure, touchscreens are cheap, but high-quality touchscreen software is most def NOT CHEAP! Apple and Google have spent untold amounts of money developing iOS and Android. CarPlay and Android Auto are really nice. Tesla has spent gobs of money on its touchscreen software too. It's the only native car touchscreen UI I've tried that feels smooth, snappy, responsive, simple. I've tried the native touchscreen UI of quite…
I think the reality is that it is harder to sell a subscription to a button than it is to software.
Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good
#59More importantly, car touchscreens are dangerous. It’s impossible to operate a touchscreen without moving your attention from the road to the touchscreen itself. That’s why I think it must be a legal requirement for any car with touchscreen controls to operate car functions must have driver assistance features enabled, no exceptions.
> It’s impossible to operate a touchscreen without moving your attention from the road to the touchscreen itself.
The article directly links to a study that shows this is also true of physical buttons. Regardless of the fact that buttons are tactile, people don't go feeling up their radio without looking, even if they can. Furthermore, the vast majority of infotainment input today is into phone mirroring systems like carplay.
This whole thing is compounded by the fact that Mazda's knob solution was actually worse while being marketed as better. While a touchscreen needs to be looked at to find a button, a cursor controlled by a knob needs to be watched in whole to navigate to the button. Your fine motor skills as a human allows you to directly press a button, physical or not, without looking at your arm to get near it.
Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good
#60I want to cheer (again) for my 2020 Ford Escape. Its infotainment design was a significant differentiator that led to my selection after testing a dozen different models across all US manufacturers.
It has Carplay/Android Auto, naturally, but it also has physical buttons for play/pause/previous/next and volume, and physical buttons for A/C control. All buttons have fixed purpose, they don't change depending on whatever mode something is.
It is an ideal amount of buttons compared to, say, the Honda CRV or Toyota RAV4 at the time that had extra buttons around the screen for flexible purposes.
I hear the Escape was actually designed for the European market (as the Kuga), which may explain its design sensibility.
Unfortunately, the Escape has not been a roaring success, and Ford will discontinue it in the US market in favor of the Bronco Sport which has, you guessed it, a huge touchscreen and few physical buttons.