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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

#761

Post by Gordonjcp »

phpisthebest wrote: post #620
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The judgement should have been against tesla, not the customer. Wipers are essential and should not require fiddling

Sounds like the driver was attempting to adjust non-critical features of wipers not turning them off and on We should be very careful not to include the kitchen sink in with "essential" items. Turning the wipers off and on, is critical, adjusting delay timings is not

> Turning the wipers off and on, is critical, adjusting delay timings is not

You've never driven in rain, have you?

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#762

Post by salamander014 »

hahamrfunnyguy wrote: post #751

Bought a 2023 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. The software UX is so bad and the car's systems are so buggy. One example is that if you don't shut the door all the way and shift into drive you get a beeping sound and a big red message that says SHIFT [p] into range I don't understand what that means. Is it telling me to put the car back into park? Why not just say the door is open? My '05 Subaru had lights on the dashboard…

My wife has a 2022 VW.

If the door is not closed and you shift into drive, you also get a very loud annoying beep and visuals.

Not only that, the brakes engage and the car LOCKS ITSELF IN PARK AND DOES NOT LET YOU DRIVE EVEN THOUGH THE SHIFTER IS IN ‘D’!!!

I pray the door sensor doesnt fail while driving on the highway, or theres never a situation that arises where the car needs to be driven regardless of the door being open.

On top of that, the door locks /trunk locks act very strange while the engine is running /driver door is open. Still dont have that figured out.

I’ve suggested that we don’t purchase another VW.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#763

Post by Gordonjcp »

londons_explore wrote: post #677
nicky0 wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in a rainstorm and the wipers are set to "minimum speed" then turning the speed up would be critical.

The safe thing to do would be to pull over first, as you see the rain getting heavier, then adjust.

Why wouldn't the safe thing be to reach out from the steering wheel with one of the fingers of your right hand, and move the little slider thing on the wiper switch to increase the wipe speed?

You know, like on my appallingly primitive 1998 Range Rover, or pretty much anything from the same era?

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#764

Post by mbork_pl »

pySSK wrote: post #337
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…

And on top off that, some product manager at Mercedes might say they absolutely need let's say Atmos in the next release and ask the Tier 1 to implement it. The Tier 1 usually uses multiple Tier 2s. The Tier 2s say they need more memory, but that's not practical at all because that hardware was fully validated years ago and you just don't make incremental changes to automotive hardware, and there won't be a hardware…

> Atmos

Well, that is evil by design irrespective of the particular implementation, no? ;-)

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#765

Post by BrandoElFollito »

Hendrikto wrote: post #612
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #609

I do not think drivers hate touchscreens. I think drivers hate idiot developers and their idiot management. First the touchscreens' esthetics are in the 90's. Then the touchscreens' performance are in the 90's Third the management strategy is to piss off the drivers by shoving down their throats the two above. I dream of a car where I (that is me personally) can set up what I want to see. I do not give a fuck about t…

> I do not think drivers hate touchscreens. I do, and have spoken to many who agree.

Did you ask them what they hate, exactly? The fact that there is no physical button (because they like the feeling of a physical button), or that the touchscreen buttons are not reactive enough and never show what you would like them to?

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#766

Post by Gordonjcp »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #497
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…

> I briefly have to look at the console, find the button, and press it. Are there no buttons on your car's steering wheel? Really, not even a horn? These can be pressed without even taking your hand off the wheel. And what about indicators, gear shifter, lights, parking brake? Do you "briefly have to look at the console" to find those?

> Are there no buttons on your car's steering wheel? Really, not even a horn?

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#767

Post by naravara »

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…

> Physical buttons cleanly resolve all of these major problems.

It depends on how the physical button works. You functionally don't get tactile feedback if the response time isn't good. You don't actually always know that you've activated a control (e.g. Did I not press it hard enough? Did I need to rotate it further?) Cheap buttons or knobs or dials can often feel mushy and be unclear as to whether you've fully turned them or pushed them.

Not taking eyes off the road is definitely better, but general distraction is still a problem even if you don't have to look away.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#768

Post by gjadi »

londons_explore wrote: post #703
gjadi wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't yet worked on automotive stuff but I work in the embedded space. We're using small MCU (not CPU) to drive 480x272 or 800x600 screen. 240Mhz, 8MB of RAM. For example on ESP32-S2 or ESP32-S3. If you had GPS, bluetooth, wifi, etc. to the mix, yeah that's a challenge and you need to make your UI pretty simple.

Nearly everything automotive now has a GPU. When you have a GPU, even a very low power one, graphics get far easier. simple operations like "fade from this screen into that screen at 60 fps" become easy. They would be impossible with CPU graphics, simply because a slow CPU can't update every pixel on the screen at 60 fps anyway. Despite that, automotive graphics ramain laggy because they normally build something bare…

Yeah a GPU makes things easier. Note that you can do it with Java, we do it at $work.

Anyway, when you're designing your UI, you've to take into account the computation power available and design around that, otherwise you're doomed.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#769

Post by naravara »

randallsquared wrote: post #656
phpisthebest wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the driver was attempting to adjust non-critical features of wipers not turning them off and on We should be very careful not to include the kitchen sink in with "essential" items. Turning the wipers off and on, is critical, adjusting delay timings is not

Shortening a delay timing has the same effect as turning the wiper on in some rain conditions.

I can't help but feel like we've made a mistake by concentrating so many of the people who design our standard software UX patterns in California. From Tesla designing car interfaces that don't understand how wipers need to work to Apple designing weather apps that don't clearly communicate wind chill to smartphones that require use of the touchscreen to answer a phone call rendering it impossible to answer while wearing gloves. It's like they only understand the concept of weather from TV shows set in New York.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#770

Post by pc86 »

acapybara wrote: post #647
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…

Our Subaru has a physical volume knob. Its position is only a "gentle suggestion" to the software to move volume up or down. At times, especially when starting the vehicle, there is major latency in the software processing the knob movement.. Also, if the knob is moved too fast, the sw gets the wrong reading. This results in volume being way too high for serveral seconds as well as many other frustrating, dangerous s…

You sort of hit the nail on the head there. That's not a physical button. It's a physical button tied to terrible software. The software is the problem, and if the button either changed the volume in an analogue way (ideal), or Subaru had engineers who were writing better software (both less ideal and much less likely to happen), there would be no issue.
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