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Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

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Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#561

Post by moffkalast »

hunter2_ wrote: post #117
exabrial wrote: post #17

Pro Tip: So do ER Doctors and Insurance Companies. What would be best is something along the lines of a hybrid aircraft controls. See F/A-18 Hornet cockpit. Basically tactile buttons around the perimeter (maybe just side or bottom for consumer), but the options can change. Also for consumers, touchscreen should be a value-add to tactile controls, with hardware buttons as primary. So you could touch-scroll with a fing…

> tactile buttons around the perimeter ... but the options can change "Soft keys" [0] are what you're describing. Very commonly seen on ATMs. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_key

And on like every car made in the era where screens were high in pixel density but weren't touch capable yet.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#562

Post by krsdcbl »

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…

I'd like to strongly disagree!

When I'm barreling down the road with 2 metric tons of steel under my ass I'll prefer the shittiest tactile UI that let's me FEEL by touch alone if a) the command I'm about to issue is the desired one and b) if i actually issued the command!

I'll take a physical button or dial for my AC over a touch screen submenu slider any day in a car, even if the touchscreen was In this scenario the responsiveness of UI is completely irrelevant if it requires me to take my eyes off the street to find it and to validate my input in the first place. When i operate a secondary control in a car i technically already have to shortly compromise ideal safety by taking one hand off the steering wheel and thinking about an additional process. That might be brief, but things happen FAST at 100 km/h. If __on top of that__ I have to stop observing what my car and other cars around me are actually doing, hence interrupting the control mechanism that would let me interrupt the current action and react in the case of imminent danger, I'll be compounding the risk of the whole operation (driving) by orders of magnitude.

"Waiting for response" might feel annoying, but it's nowhere near the safety concern "looking at a screen on the center console to hit the right thing on a glass pane while moving and experiencing inertia" will always present. And that's even without additional complications like "hitting the wrong thing because I didn't look and having to visually debug what i just did on the fly, all still while driving".

Touchscreens aren't an issue because their software is bad, but because they're the wrong interface in the first place.

If the UX is bad, the best UI won't fix it. And this goes x1000 for tools that can literally kill me and others.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#563

Post by krsdcbl »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #221
mtrpcic wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit of buttons isn't in the response time, it's in the tactile feedback that makes it so you don't need 16ms response time. I heard it click, I felt it click, it clicked. If the thing I wanted to happen doesn't, it's because it's broken and not because I can't tell if I clicked the right spot on my iPad. Not having to take your eyes off the road in these cases is the benefit of buttons, and no improvement to…

This isn't how tactile buttons in modern cars work. You're doing the same thing as pushing keys on a keyboard. The software can still be slow. Turn the physical volume dial on a car with a slow Apple CarPlay interface and tell me how that works out for you. Oh, it's too loud? But it takes 2 seconds for the software to respond due to lag and now you're fiddling with the volume button trying to not make it worse? A phy…

The issue is NOT the delay, it's having to look at the interface vs. being able to feel what I'm doing

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#564

Post by jaclaz »

wkat4242 wrote: post #227
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…

> That physical button that takes 500ms to respond is still as dangerous. You've just removed one problem. Major accidents are almost always a cascade of errors. It may not be perfect, but not having to take eyes off the road can really break the chain of a big accident in progress. A touchscreen UI probably won't cause an accident on its own, but it will be a link in the chain of a driver already tired and lost in t…

Though all in all it is a minor nuisance, my car navigation system has this safety feature of randomly displaying over the map a popup (that you have to touch/click OK to have it go away) about how you shouldn't be interacting with it when driving.

For some reasons it tends to pop up every time I am approaching or already inside a roundabout, preferrably one of those where if you miss the right exit and take the wrong one it will take you 20 minutes in the traffic to get back to where you were.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#565

Post by the_overseer »

Lio wrote: post #529
the_overseer wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The industry works as follows: the OEM (Daimler, Toyota etc.) says they want a software spec implemented. Other companies (Tier 1 suppliers) bid to win the contract. The cheapest usually wins. If you have a company and refuse to take the crazy deadlines and low quality and low pay then don't worry, there is another Tier 1 supplier across the street who will do it for you. OEMs know that you need them more than they n…

Something missing here is that the Tier 1 supplier will take one look at the spec and know that latency hasn't been mentioned or considered. They will not tell the customer this because either the customer doesn't care, so why waste time and resources ...or when the customer realises they will open a Change Request to fix the issue. Change Requests are how you make an actual profit on unprofitable, low-balled contrac…

From what I observed product owners know that the system sucks and it's laggy. They also know that the OEM management only keeps repeating "cheap, cheap, cheap", "with a renewed focust on costs" and other sayings like these.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#566

Post by shellfishgene »

bjarneh wrote: post #417
checkyoursudo wrote: post #393

With. A. Passion. Other touch screens (or similar things) I dislike: - the controls on my stove top - the controls on my monitor - the controls on my tv - the controls on my thermostat - probably more All of these should have physical buttons for the limited number of functions required. Or, at a minimum, for navigation and confirmation. Touch screens there suck. My wife's car has a touch screen on the control/infota…

> - the controls on my stove top How were these stove-top touch-buttons ever considered an upgrade to their predecessor? They always have no feedback, or that annoyingly high "beep" feedback. They are always slow to respond. They typically use only two or three buttons to control the actual temperature, forcing you to select location first, which is typically slow and terrible as well. Nobody in their right mind can…

I have the Ikea Högklassik induction stove top, and it has 4 touch sliders, one for each zone. I'm actually quite happy with it, it works well enough, not as easy as knobs but close. Also they seem to have worked on the spilling/wet hands problem, it's still sometimes annoying but seems much improved from older designs.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#567

Post by gorbachev »

bjarneh wrote: post #417
checkyoursudo wrote: post #393

With. A. Passion. Other touch screens (or similar things) I dislike: - the controls on my stove top - the controls on my monitor - the controls on my tv - the controls on my thermostat - probably more All of these should have physical buttons for the limited number of functions required. Or, at a minimum, for navigation and confirmation. Touch screens there suck. My wife's car has a touch screen on the control/infota…

> - the controls on my stove top How were these stove-top touch-buttons ever considered an upgrade to their predecessor? They always have no feedback, or that annoyingly high "beep" feedback. They are always slow to respond. They typically use only two or three buttons to control the actual temperature, forcing you to select location first, which is typically slow and terrible as well. Nobody in their right mind can…

You can charge more for touch controls, than for cheap, reliable physical knobs.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#568

Post by soco »

onion2k wrote: post #422
bradgessler wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mus…

My car has plenty of buttons on the steering wheel, but unfortunately there's only so much real estate so you'll still need to fiddle in other places (ventilation and warming). And there are also menus, handled by the steering wheels buttons and displayed on the screen right in front of your nose but I still don't recommend that while driving as the menu structure was put together by throwing D12 dices on a drunk night out (luckily many menus are disabled while driving so there's less room for error)

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#569

Post by the_overseer »

kgwgk wrote: post #471
the_overseer wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The infotainment code is rewritten every time. By different devs. Because that is how automotive industry works. This time BMW wants infotainment and a third party wins the contract (because it's the cheapest usually). For the next BMW car another company wins the contract. Everything is rebuilt from scratch. The components that make up the infotainment a lot of times are actually developed by different companie…

> Because that is how automotive industry works. This time BMW wants infotainment and a third party wins the contract (because it's the cheapest usually). For the next BMW car another company wins the contract. Everything is rebuilt from scratch. Yeah, that's how the automotive industry works. For each car BMW will change the third parties manufacturing each piece and every model is completely rebuilt from scratch. T…

I've never understood why that is happening. Are they trying to make sure there is no knowledge accumulation at a single tier 1 supplier? Kind of make sure nobody can create a competing product and just sell it to different OEMs?
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