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The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

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Re: The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

#61

Post by Pxtl »

fovc wrote: post #36

Please don’t automate the climate controls further. If it’s 20F outside, I’m probably bundled up and happy with 55F cabin temperature. If it’s 85 I’ll be wearing a tshirt and will freeze in 65F. Then there’s a separate issue of the control system being crappy. Even if it’s 20F and you need to heat the cabin to 55F, I don’t want deafening heat blasting in my face for 2 minutes to get there ASAP. I’d prefer a 10-15 slo…

As somebody with allergies and asthma, the "blasting in my face" is always a problem. Blasts of cold air can set off asthma, and there's often dust and pollen accumulated in car intakes.

Re: The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

#62

Post by sbradford26 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #45
sbradford26 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think if manufacturers do a good job you don't really have to adjust the temperature often. But also it is also a learning curve for some people. My dad has a brand new F150 that he is always adjusting the temperature up and down and turning off the auto fan. It very much is the setting the thermostat higher in an attempt to heat the house faster.

> It very much is the setting the thermostat higher in an attempt to heat the house faster. This bugs me :) Having said that, I don't know if some cars apply an s-curve to their heat output that you could hack by doing this, so I keep my opinion to myself when I see people doing it.

It is his car so I let him do what he wants. I just make sure my mom sets the temperature and leaves it in her hybrid since setting it to max temperature and such causes it to get significantly worse fuel economy.

Re: The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

#63

Post by neogodless »

tiffanyh wrote: post #23

When the iPhone launched (all display), journalist said it’d fail due to lack of tactile buttons (Blackberry).

There was a preference for some people to type without looking at the keyboard. That preference was all but eliminated over time due to the advantages of larger smartphone screens.

While driving a car, it's no longer about preference - it's about attention and safety.

Re: The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

#64

Post by stanleydrew »

moolcool wrote: post #27
tempest_ wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is such a bad implementation. Whenever I am in a car with a touch screen the two things that get me - The car bounces and I miss the thing on the screen I was aiming for - I am low vision I have to lean in so close to read those stupid screens with the tiny UI widgets I hope they figure something better out, I honestly preferred when they were doing the screens with the buttons around the edge.

First, car companies are generally terrible at making software from the jump. The interfaces are always byzantine, laggy, and poorly laid out. There's the small bandaid of Apple Carplay and Android Auto, but then your vehicle settings are decoupled from the rest of the UI, which is confusing and frustrating. I'm honestly due to get a new car, but I have no idea what to get because virtually every car on the market fe…

It's not exactly what you're looking for, but maybe test drive a car with Android Automotive (Google's built-in infotainment product). I have it in my Volvo XC40 EV and like it. But at least in my car there are still physical controls for audio playback and a few other things (not climate).

There is a list of cars with Android Automotive at the bottom of its Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Automotive

Re: The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

#65

Post by HereBeBeasties »

rocket_surgeron wrote: post #43
a2tech wrote: post #7

My Ford Edge has almost all the important controls accessible only through the touchscreen. If I'm in reverse for example I lose all ability to adjust the temperature, fan, or seat temperature. Its terrible. Adjusting the seat warmers requires moving an onscreen slider which is weirdly overly sensitive and yet at the same time laggy. Adjusting it while driving is almost impossible without looking at the screen which…

>If I'm in reverse for example I lose all ability to adjust the temperature, fan, or seat temperature For every single millisecond after you check your backup camera to make sure there's no kid in the blind spot behind your car, your whole-ass body should be rotated with you head looking over your shoulder and out the rear window. Unless you have a monster SUV that you can't see out of anyways, in which case use the…

What if I stop the car entirely while I perform the adjustments? "Put it in park" I hear you say. Tedious, and doesn't always work anyway - many cars leave you with a full-screen reversing camera even once you're moving forwards until you get above 5mph or whatever. And what if I want to stop and adjust my side mirrors to see better, and those are adjusted via the touch screen? (I'm looking at you, Tesla.)

Guess what? I can happily reach down and adjust a real temperature dial by touch while looking at a reversing camera, without looking at that dial or being distracted, in the same way that I can do that while driving forwards. It's the touch screen that's the problem here.

Re: The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

#66

Post by ethbr0 »

tomrod wrote: post #58
ethbr0 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is modern attempts to birfurcate UX into silos of efficiency-agnostic design art + implementation-only engineering. If you call designers artists, remove objective KPIs, and give them free reign, you get one-button mice. Similarly, if you let engineers build something, you end up with git's cli. In contrast, design and use been studied as a unified discipline since the early 1900s: https://en.m.wikipedia.…

> If you call designers artists, remove objective KPIs, and give them free reign, you get one-button mice. Similarly, if you let engineers build something, you end up with git's cli. Am I in the wrong to think both of these are plenty functional to the point I like them? A one button mouse functions a lot like a touchbad when you factor in meta keys (at least to my memory -- I've only ever used one in conjunction wit…

Regarding the optimal number of buttons on mice, I'd respectfully observe that the average number of human fingers on a hand is 5.

And as for git cli, I have no problem with it (conceptually or practically), but I also accept that most people aren't us.

It's moderately difficult to build something that's perfect for yourself: it's much harder to build something that's optimal for everyone not-you.

Re: The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

#67

Post by andix »

bluedino wrote: post #16

I feel like I'm the only one that uses the manual controls. It bugs me getting into someone's car where the heat is set to 85 degrees and the HVAC goes full blast once you turn the key, but you know nothing warm is going to come out of the vents for at least ten minutes, when the engine starts to warm up (in the winter)

I know that Mercedes doesn’t do that. The fan speed only increases once the heating is working. But their luxury cars usually have additional electrical heating, that works right from the start, and is powered by the battery and the generator.

And the diesel engines usually have a diesel powered heating element, to warm up the engine quickly, this is needed to reduce the pollution, because the cold engine performs badly.

Re: The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

#68

Post by bradleyjg »

kyrra wrote: post #24
moolcool wrote: post #3

Touchscreens have ruined car UX for a generation.

It's not just cars. Other places I've seen this is large home appliances, with recent examples being inwall ovens and washer/dryer. On the oven front, the high end GE ones[0] have a display. It looks fine from pictures, but when you're trying to interact with it, it's just slow. It has a design flaw of just an unresponsive touch screen. But buttons you want easy access to aren't always there. (This can maybe get bett…

Making a good touchscreen UI—-from both a hardware responsiveness and UX perspective is very expensive.

I’d rather GE make an oven that reliably holds temp and leave touchscreens to the Apples of the world.

If that horse has left the barn, never to return, then what if they at least build on top of android?

Re: The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

#69

Post by xyzelement »

neogodless wrote: post #54
xyzelement wrote: post #25

As someone who doesn't want to navigate the touchscreens, I love that my 2021 Highlander has physical climate controls. But I also realized that you no longer need them. My wife set her climate control to 70 degrees and never touched it since. In the winter it warms her up, in the summer it cools her down. Her car is a perfect 70 degrees all year round. So for her, it doesn't matter how inaccessible the controls are,…

When the sun is hitting me, I need it to be about 5 degrees cooler. Does the climate control account for that?

I dunno. I suppose in that case someone would just turn the one dial down, not fuck around with fan speeds etc.

Re: The design of in-car climate controls has gone backward

#70

Post by zrobotics »

germinalphrase wrote: post #55
cjrp wrote: post #14

I had an eight-gen (2005–2012) Honda Civic, and honestly I've never seen a car with better ergonomics. Climate and radio controls high up and within easy reach of the driver, different sized/shaped knobs so you can differentiate by touch, big digital speedo and GPS screen high up so they're practically at the base of the windscreen. I drove a ninth-generation Civic while mine was being serviced, and even that felt li…

There must be some bummed out designers in these companies who know better than to mediate all these tactile controls.

Part of it is a cost thing. Automotive grade buttons are really, really expensive. Honda probably pays $1-10 each for a button or rotary dial, a touchscreen is $30-70 depending on size. Plus, backup cameras are legally mandated, so they need to include a screen anyway, difference between a touch & plain screen is likely negligible, on the order of maybe $0-10. (costs are estimated and include the molding & plastics, which drive the cost way up).

I would imagine there is significant accounting pressure to push as much as they can onto the screen. There are definitely a contingent of designers who are upset by this trend, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is also a contingent of people in the design department who advocate for this due to the 'cleaner' look and are wanting to emulate Tesla.

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