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Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

motorauthority.com

831–840 of 974 posts

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#831
post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do agree, though, that touchscreens beyond phone interfaces should be used very sparingly. The Tesla's all-touchscreen situation in particular seems like a terrible idea. Most of us are used to being able to adjust the AC without looking, and that's only possible because there are physical controls we can feel. This is a very common misconception. You CAN adjust the A/C via the steering wheel buttons, turn it off…

> You CAN adjust the A/C via the steering wheel buttons, turn it off, control the fan speed etc. It's very intuitive. I've owned a Tesla for nearly 3 years, and I have no idea how to do that via the steering wheel controls. I'll dork around with the interface when I get back in my car after work today to try to figure that out. But evidently at least for me, feature discovery is half the challenge, no matter how easy…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLIBYlgsHis&feature=youtu.be...

That video tutorial is now outdated since there has been many UI improvements, but the steps should still be the same.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#832
post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You CAN adjust the A/C via the steering wheel buttons, turn it off, control the fan speed etc. It's very intuitive. I'm doing web searches for this right now and not finding anything, either for Model 3 or Model S, or just Tesla in general. Where do they hide this information?

I have a model 3 and I'd like to know myself. AFAIK it's not possible..

I know the S/X have the functionality. I haven't been in a Model 3 so I can't say for sure.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#833

Praise to Mazda for making this decision. As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user's need for touch screens in cars. For years I have been working on product interfaces (not just apps). Many studies I conducted actually told me that people favored analog controls over digital touch screens controls. It gives you tactile feedback, making it accessible for anyone with sense of touch. >…

Hah. My car is a 2008, older than most in-car technologies, but when I've thought about replacing it, a big click-knob was going to be a #1 requirement. It just seemed like a mousewheel for car: an instant classic.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#836

Praise to Mazda for making this decision. As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user's need for touch screens in cars. For years I have been working on product interfaces (not just apps). Many studies I conducted actually told me that people favored analog controls over digital touch screens controls. It gives you tactile feedback, making it accessible for anyone with sense of touch. >…

I will say that navigation to an address is much much better with an on-screen keyboard. It is a uniformly HORRIBLE experience with buttons and knobs. Maybe the endgame should be voice, but that can be hit or miss too.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#837
post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user's need for touch screens in cars. Before phone integration, I might've agreed with you, or at least had no opinion on the subject. After watching many car companies, even high-end ones like BMW and Mercedes, fail utterly at producing reasonable phone integration systems or interfaces, though, I'm all-in on CarPlay. >It basically means they ha…

>CarPlay is amazingly good, and only really works well with a touchscreen. >At this point, it would be very hard for me to buy a car that didn't have CarPlay integration with a touchscreen. I've seen implementations without touch, and they're much, much less useful. Well, maybe the solution is to make apple carplay and android auto to work well with a dpad and buttons configuration, those interfaces have been working…

I don't know about CarPlay but Android Auto works good enough with knob controls.

I have a 2014 Mazda3, which Mazda offered Android Auto/CarPlay upgrade for a fee earlier this year and I upgraded. My car has a touchscreen, but disables all touch features above a certain speed (5 or 10 mph I think). I don't think I'm really missing anything on Android Auto without touch.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#838
post #283

Not ready to give Mazda any praise for their infotainment systems. I leased a 2019 CX-5 Grand Touring Reserve a couple months ago. Had I known how bad Mazda’s UX was I would have leased something else. First off their system takes an eternity to cold boot. If I’m making a quick run to the store or dropping the kids off at a friends house the system isn’t available for most of the ride. While it’s booting, the radio r…

> auto-hold braking feature have to be set every drive

Every car I drove with auto-hold requires you to enable it after each startup of the car. Pretty sure it's a safety thing, as this makes most basic thing (depressing break) behave differently than it did for all automatic cars for the last 50 years.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#839
post #578

Praise to Mazda for making this decision. As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user's need for touch screens in cars. For years I have been working on product interfaces (not just apps). Many studies I conducted actually told me that people favored analog controls over digital touch screens controls. It gives you tactile feedback, making it accessible for anyone with sense of touch. >…

> As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user's need for touch screens in cars. You are viewing the 'need' from the end user perspective. That is likely not the driving force that is causing touch screen proliferation. The likely driving force that is causing it is the manufacturers BOM costs. A single, rectangular, touch screen, that can swallow up a bunch of different knobs and button…

my old mustang had 10 old fashioned buttons under the screen that i could use to dial a phone number. new jeep has a rectangular thingy that could swallow up everything, but somehow it didn't swallow 10 buttons, so i have to pull up the phone to dial a number while driving.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a huge fan of Carplay. Instead of having to listen to FM radio or fiddle with a phone screen on a silly dashboard sticker things, I get a massive screen with my phone on it. I can listen to podcasts and Spotify, follow Waze, dictate messages, all without fiddling

Maybe I don't switch back and forth between stuff while I'm driving as much as you do? I set everything up before I need to focus on the road, and then I just drive. If I need to change to a different playlist, or switch from music to the news, I pull over , make the switch, then start driving again. If CarPlay makes it more tempting or productive for me to do non-driving things while I am driving , then it is not a…

Once you get used to Waze on the big screen, you'd never want anything else.
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