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Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

autocar.co.uk

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Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#91

Post by munificent »

jetrink wrote: post #15

I will never understand how this trend started in the first place. If you look at e.g. digital cameras, they all have touch screens these days, but they also still have buttons and dials everywhere. The one in front of me has eight physical buttons, seven dials and a power switch. The reason is obvious: when you're taking photos, you don't want to be looking down at a screen; you want to be focused on the task at han…

I think there's too much selection bias for this analogy to be particularly strong.

Digital cameras are increasingly a niche product that exist mainly to cater to people who specifically want a the "SLR" user experience. If you just want to take decent enough photos, your smartphone's camera today is better than most prosumer DSLRs from like five years ago.

I don't think today's DSLRs have the form factor that they have because it's objectively more usable. It's just the form factor that their self-selected customers want. One piece of evidence in favor of that is that all DSLRs do have big LCD screens on the back and often require a lot of menu diving to access any functionality that didn't exist in cameras before the digital revolution.

There's still a physical dial for switching modes even though that's not something you actually change that often. Meanwhile you often have to dig into a menu or go through crappy buttons to do things like delete a photo.

I won't go so far as to describe it as fetishization, because I think that's unfairly critical. But I do think a camera UX designed from first principles purely for usability would not have the same physical controls as a typical DSLR.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#92

Post by Shivetya »

I will defend the screen in the Tesla 3, the simple fact is that you really never have to use on your typical drive and yes muscle memory works for simple UIs like what the Tesla employs.

Compared to 40+ buttons in my previous Volt AND a screen. Many cars have that many or more buttons and this is easier? Where screen's become distracting is when the UI is shit, having more than one or two clicks to do anything, and worse duplicating features there are physical buttons for but naturally distract the driver who thinks they should use that screen.

From automatic headlamps, climate control, and wipers, I really have no reason to interact with the screen except as glances while I do the standard look around while driving.

My favorite test... put a sticky on every button and only remove one if you truly had to use the function. bonus points for not having to remove the sticky to find out what the button did.

edit: spelling error

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#93

Post by jfengel »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #37

Unfortunately we won't get this car in the US. I love my 1st gen Honda Fit and plan to keep it pretty much forever, they're such a great vehicle. Incredible gas mileage and they're actually fun to drive with the short wheelbase. In tune with the article I put the only Carplay receiver with a physical volume knob in it and it's perfectly easy to use.

I gotta say... I got a Fit in 2007, pre-ordered before they were available, and at 300k+ miles it's doing great. The guy at the oil change place literally turned his eyes to the heavens and said that he couldn't find any service to recommend. He'd never seen a car of such age that clean; it should surely be leaking something.

I've heard Honda has gone downhill in the last decade, and my next car probably won't be a Honda. But at this rate, my next car will drive itself. (Especially since I'm no longer putting miles on it at the rate that got me to 300k in a decade.)

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#94

Post by thedance »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #86
fenwick67 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious to know if the buttons are in the base model or are an upgrade.

I DO have the highest trim level, so maybe that's why.

At least in the US models of the Fit there's no difference in the interior trim levels. I think part of the confused nature of this discussion is that Honda never shipped the touch-only dashboard that this article is talking about in the US market. The Fit and as far as I have seen every model Honda sells in the US has always had real knobs and switches for the climate controls. The touch climate controls were available in Japan and elsewhere.

ETA:

Non-USA interior: https://img.sm360.ca/images/article/the-honda-way/58810//the...

USA interior: https://file.kelleybluebookimages.com/kbb/base/evox/StJ/1082...

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#95

Post by munificent »

sneak wrote: post #30
jetrink wrote: post #15

I will never understand how this trend started in the first place. If you look at e.g. digital cameras, they all have touch screens these days, but they also still have buttons and dials everywhere. The one in front of me has eight physical buttons, seven dials and a power switch. The reason is obvious: when you're taking photos, you don't want to be looking down at a screen; you want to be focused on the task at han…

I can only conclude from the situation you describe, as well as the fact that most cameras (as cameras, not phones) still lack GPS and sometimes Wi-Fi, that a great many industrial designers are trend-following, uncreative bores. Most modern car interior controls are horrible (Tesla’s giant laggy touchscreen included).

> a great many industrial designers are trend-following, uncreative bores.

More likely that the executives above them who are watching what sells and what doesn't are.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#96

Post by catalogia »

kube-system wrote: post #55
ardy42 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Touch screen controls in automotive environment is such a bad idea Touch screen controls are a bad idea in general when the form factor has space for adequate physical controls. The only time they're an acceptable compromise is for small devices like phones. Even then careful use of a small number of buttons can be a great improvement.

The situation is more nuanced than "touchscreens are bad"; the number of controls has grown exponentially since touchscreens have made it easier to put literally hundreds of buzzers and whistles on modern vehicles. It's fairly common now for cars to have configuration settings like: the number of seconds that the courtesy lights stay on after locking the car. This is a feature that would never need to be operated whi…

> "It's fairly common now for cars to have configuration settings like: the number of seconds that the courtesy lights stay on after locking the car. This is a feature that would never need to be operated while the vehicle is in motion, and likely wouldn't be configured more than once by any given owner."

Features like that could be implemented as dipswitches/etc hidden in a compartment under the hood, or not at all. The "configuration screen with a gazillion tweakable settings" thing has generally fallen out of favor in desktop and mobile software, and I expect the car industry will eventually catch up.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#97

Post by zchrykng »

thedance wrote: post #68
sneak wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only conclude from the situation you describe, as well as the fact that most cameras (as cameras, not phones) still lack GPS and sometimes Wi-Fi, that a great many industrial designers are trend-following, uncreative bores. Most modern car interior controls are horrible (Tesla’s giant laggy touchscreen included).

Why do I need my camera to have GPS? In what situation would I be equipped with a camera and not my phone, which certainly has a GPS? This seems like the same instinct that makes OEMs put mobile modems in laptops, as if I would ever have my laptop but not my phone to which to tether it.

GPS in the camera is handy for auto-tagging the location of the photos. Which is nice for when on trips.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#98

Post by beamatronic »

samizdis wrote: post #8

Eminently sensible call by Honda. Knobs, dials and switches work well and do not demand that a driver takes their eyes off the road. I suppose that voice controls would be a reasonably safe tech option, but probably not cost-effective.

My 2007 Honda already has voice controls. Never use them.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#99

Post by throwanem »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #71
throwanem wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My car has onboard voice controls, but, unlike Siri via the car's audio system, they suck. Recognition is slow and unreliable enough that I never bother, and if I did, the cognitive overhead would be unacceptably high anyway. They'd have done better not to bother implementing them at all and instead just offload that work to the driver's paired smartphone, which for a sedan that listed $32k new, it's very reasonable…

It's interesting, when I had my Windows phone and linked it with my 2014 Ford Fiesta which had Microsoft Sync, it was incredibly fast, responsive and a joy to use. Once you got the format of your queries down, it was super easy to use. They had a button on the wiper knob. Press it, wait for the beep and your're off and running. It synced up instantly. As soon as your phone was connected via bluetooth, you were good t…

It might just be the car. Unless I invoke the onboard voice recognition, my Altima essentially behaves as a Bluetooth headset powered by internal combustion, and Siri is as usable that way as via the phone's own speakers and mic.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if that were heavily dependent on the quality of the car's audio system, though; I went for the best available trim package, figuring that if I had to go back to owning a car again then it might as well at least be as comfortable as I could manage, and I might not have so good an experience here if I had economized a bit more.

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