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Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

motorauthority.com

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Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#881

Post by plaidfuji »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #533

While I applaud the human factors engineering of removing touch-sensitive screens, it only applies to vehicles in which there is a driver. We are clearly in the final days of "driving", before the driver becomes just another passenger in the autonomous vehicle. Once fully autonomous, won't the touch-screen interface be the ideal user interface inside a vehicle - familiar, ubiquitous and simple? Wouldn't Mazda be bett…

I’m surprised I had to go so far down to find this comment. Most complaints about cabin UI here are that they require taking eyes off the road. Tesla is clearly designing a car for a time when the driver never needs to look at the road at all.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#882

Post by xx_alpha_xx »

fatnoah wrote: post #370
ubermonkey wrote: post #368

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…

>I've seen implementations without touch, and they're much, much less useful. I have this. I never use it. Instead, I mount my phone next to the screen and use Android Auto on my phone. Using the rotary dial and other buttons is a) far more difficult and b) far more distracting while driving. An action that takes 1 second with a touch requires several seconds of fumbling with a knob and buttons w/out touch.

But the important different IMHO is that a knob / buttons don't require you to take your eyes off the road. In that 1 second you look down, you could cause an accident due to inattention.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#883

Post by isostatic »

namdnay wrote: post #856
petre wrote: post #848

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish they did that in the EU. Reversing cameras are massively useful, especially in vehicles with low visibility such as the Toyota CH-R.

Really? As much as I like the comfort of the rear radars for big vehicles, I’ve always found the camera a bit useless

That's what I thought, but I've rented a couple with camears and they are really useful - the overlays which shows where your wheels will go with your current steering position etc.

The last car I rented had a 360 degree camera which showed a top down picture of the car and surroundings!

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#884

Post by isostatic »

jefurii wrote: post #666
pwg wrote: post #578

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. 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…

I totally understand the business case for touchscreens in cars. It's all about reducing cost to the business , but this usually comes at the expense of safety, which is a totally unacceptable tradeoff.

That's a rather communist view. The free market allows people to buy cheaper cars at the expense of their safety, what's wrong with that?

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#885

Post by _ZeD_ »

owl57 wrote: post #735
leonroy wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The likely driving force that is causing it is the manufacturers BOM costs. Whilst I think this is part of it's about more than just reducing the BOM. There's a trend to move all interfaces from knobs and switches to touch screens even when money isn't the problem. For example the SpaceX Dragon capsule also takes this approach which you can see from the images below: https://www.spacex.com/crew-dragon A heavily vib…

Buyer's only get a chance to regret it after they've spent a lot of time with the vehicle. Several years ago, probably. Now, when their previous car already has a similar touchscreen?

They likelly had forgotten how it was before

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#886

Post by josefresco »

ronsor wrote: post #820
josefresco wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly? Have you ever dealt with a designer, or old websites with no concept of ADA/WCAG? Because I do, daily and it's ...difficult (to put it lightly) I don't work for Facebook, or Google, I work for small businesses, many of which are still battling to become PCI compliant, or GDPR compliant, or even getting a privacy policy posted. The pain is real.

What I mean is that the sites don't care and don't bother.

Accurate.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#887

Post by Steuard »

isostatic wrote: post #884
jefurii wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally understand the business case for touchscreens in cars. It's all about reducing cost to the business , but this usually comes at the expense of safety, which is a totally unacceptable tradeoff.

That's a rather communist view. The free market allows people to buy cheaper cars at the expense of their safety, what's wrong with that?

Off the top of my head:

* If the design of your car makes you a less safe driver, you are more likely to crash into me.

* The US as a society has committed (surprisingly recently) to providing emergency care to anyone who shows up at a hospital before asking whether they can pay. Car accidents are a sadly common reason for people requiring emergency care. That means that reducing car accidents is a public benefit.

* Modern societies have made the choice in general to require some baseline level of safety from all sorts of products in order to make commerce more efficient. If consumers feel confident that they can (e.g.) buy a random toy off the shelf for their kid without needing to do a bunch of research on whether it contains lead paint or dangerous parts, that reduces friction and increases sales. The same reasoning can apply to car safety features: it's easier to get people to just buy a car if they have a baseline level of confidence that any car they buy is safe to drive.

That's just a few reasons that first came to mind. I've already thought of one or two more that would take a little longer and a little more care to put into words, but I encourage you to think about these questions yourself when they come to mind, too.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#888

Post by saltminer »

zaroth wrote: post #851
saltminer wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be equating touchscreens with safety and quality. These do not go hand in hand - the underlying system can be absolute crap with a touchscreen (remember old dedicated GPS units?), or they could be Tesla-equivalent but with a weird physical button input system. > Sometimes that means interacting with the navigation interface while under way, whether it’s due to updating a route, checking for traffic, zoomi…

Oh I definitely understand that the vast majority of touch screens are utter trash! But that's not to say that all are. Understanding what lane I need to be in, and what the traffic conditions are up ahead around the bend; these things add to situational awareness that makes driving safer. But I'm just not going to use a shit GPS that I need to program an address by spinning a scroll wheel and individually selecting…

>At an unfamiliar complex intersection (greater than 4-way), sometimes you can't figure out where the GPS wants you to go. A quick pinch-zoom before the light turns can give you the visual queue you need to avoid having to make a last minute decision as you enter the intersection.

Seems like a usability problem. Google Maps displays what lanes go in what directions so you don't have to zoom in on the map and will speak it to you so you don't even have to look at your phone/Android Auto/etc.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#889

Post by drderidder »

pwg wrote: post #578
marapuru wrote: post #47

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…

It's not that hard to make programmable / re-assignable physical dials and switches to interface in a tactile way with changing software applications.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#890

Post by jammi »

TheGRS wrote: post #610
pwg wrote: post #578

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. 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…

Are knobs and plastic moldings that expensive though? I'm not sure this is really a driving factor. Touch screens have marketing appeal (at least from the seller's perspective), I have to think having a shiny touch screen on your new Mazda is simply just trying to get more people to purchase a new car and nothing more.

> Are knobs and plastic moldings that expensive though?

Yeah, the molding for any typical single component is tens of thousands of dollars per iteration. A car has a lot of those components, so the fewer the better.

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