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Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

drive.com.au

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Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#91

Post by not_your_vase »

satvikpendem wrote: post #33
WalterBright wrote: post #3

Unmentioned is touchscreens frequently don't work. I often have to make repeated presses on my iphone until it registers. The same with swipes. Since there is no audible or tactile feedback, this cannot work well while keeping your eyes on the road.

That's pretty weird and indicates your phone or its touchscreen might be defective, you should get it looked at, because other than with old resistive touchscreen phones I've never had capacitive touchscreen phones need multiple presses.

Touchscreens need to be used in a specific way. Most people does it already instinctively, but it is very easy to do it wrong. E.g. if you try tap on a button, but you move your finger 2mm on the screen, that tap becomes a swipe, and nothing happens.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#92

Post by r0fl »

eurekin wrote: post #82

Never understood any appeal of a screen inside a car: 1. Reflections make you tilt, just to make some pesky highlights go away. Even if they are angled properly, there's always something (like a sun reflected by a watche's face) what causes nuissance at any angle 2. Car can go from a tunnel to a sunny valley in few seconds. That's 5 to 8 stops of dynamic range difference, that a human eye is easily designed to handle…

To expand on #4

WINTER AND GLOVES!

Yes it’s a first world proven that I have to take gloves off to turn on my heated seats but buttons made sure stupid problems like this never happened in the first place

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#93

Post by 2143 »

WalterBright wrote: post #50
satvikpendem wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty weird and indicates your phone or its touchscreen might be defective, you should get it looked at, because other than with old resistive touchscreen phones I've never had capacitive touchscreen phones need multiple presses.

I've had multiple Apple touchscreen products. The same on all of them. Sometimes I have to lick my fingertip to get it to register.

We’re going off track, but I’m curious as to whether you experience this problem only on Apple devices, and not – for example – Android devices?

(btw, it’s an honor to be able to reply to you; hope you’re doing well :) )

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#94

Post by SauntSolaire »

satvikpendem wrote: post #33
WalterBright wrote: post #3

Unmentioned is touchscreens frequently don't work. I often have to make repeated presses on my iphone until it registers. The same with swipes. Since there is no audible or tactile feedback, this cannot work well while keeping your eyes on the road.

That's pretty weird and indicates your phone or its touchscreen might be defective, you should get it looked at, because other than with old resistive touchscreen phones I've never had capacitive touchscreen phones need multiple presses.

I assume you're young? Finger capacitance can reduce quite significantly with age.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#95

Post by Archelaos »

_the_inflator wrote: post #31
nokeya wrote: post #6

I’m quite suspicious that they do that not because they understood or learned something, but because China requires physical buttons starting next year. And they simply don’t want to lose one of their biggest markets.

Despite China, IT development is a complete disaster in Germany. All car so called German car manufacturers UX/UI is horrible to say the least. Dieter Rams is the only UX/UI designer, who became famous - outside of Germany. Hartmut Esslinger kind of popularized DR, what an irony, that two Germans made history, but of course not in Germany and even in Germany DR wasn't well known. Braun was a brand and statement, but…

> And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally.

Also I wouldn’t want to disagree with you outright, there are still a few important German companies in the IT sector (or related): Siemens, Infineon, Deutsche Telekom, Bechtle, TeamViewer come to my mind.

What Siemens exemplifies is that the strength of German industry is not pure software, but high-tech machinery. While Siemens and most of its spin-offs are doing somewhat okay, the stocks of its spin-off Siemens Energy have risen by ~700 % in the last 3 years.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#96

Post by seanmcdirmid »

eurekin wrote: post #82

Never understood any appeal of a screen inside a car: 1. Reflections make you tilt, just to make some pesky highlights go away. Even if they are angled properly, there's always something (like a sun reflected by a watche's face) what causes nuissance at any angle 2. Car can go from a tunnel to a sunny valley in few seconds. That's 5 to 8 stops of dynamic range difference, that a human eye is easily designed to handle…

My screen goes into dark mode as soon as I hit a tunnel so in practice it isn’t an issue. I mostly don’t notice anymore, but I had my eyeglasses prescription redone and I can’t see the screen very well anymore while driving. Will need progressive driving glasses I guess.

Note if you give up a screen they aren’t going to replace it with analog controls. It’s just too expensive, instead you’ll get something that turns to control your AC, but it’s really converted to a digital signal immediately and it’s physical rotation won’t be synchronized with the state of your AC like they were in the old days. I also really hate capacitive buttons which are worse than unsynced dials and screens, it’s like a touch screen with a fixed function.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#97

Post by dhorthy »

functional programming taught us this decades ago. State is the root of all evil.

If the outcome of my interaction with the interface (e.g. tap a place on the screen) is a function of not just where i tap but the last 2-6 places i recently tapped (menus etc) suddenly you've added massive complexity and mental overhead.

can't wait to get back to a button that does the same thing every time every time i press it [1]

tesla screens, carplay, mercedes screens, its been getting worse for a while

1) I know in reality most are sliders or an on/off toggle but the point stands

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#98

Post by 1980phipsi »

aenis wrote: post #47

'He also explained that "I'm a big believer in screens, because I really believe if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen." ' I am a big believer in keeping "product people" away from UI design for dangerous machinery. The eyes and the attention of the driver should be on the road. All the audio visual noise from the car is just plain dangerous. I don't want my car to draw my attentio…

And at the same time the car companies want to move away from Apple CarPlay, which for any of its fault is a substantially better UI than we can expect the legacy carmakers to produce.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#99

Post by hephaes7us »

Barbing wrote: post #74
aenis wrote: post #47

'He also explained that "I'm a big believer in screens, because I really believe if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen." ' I am a big believer in keeping "product people" away from UI design for dangerous machinery. The eyes and the attention of the driver should be on the road. All the audio visual noise from the car is just plain dangerous. I don't want my car to draw my attentio…

The low fuel, low wiper fluid, and forward collision warnings sound like they were all implemented a little clumsily. What do you think the best implementation would look like? Seems it would still have to strike a balance. It's dangerous to tell the driver they're low on fuel if we distract them. But it's also dangerous for a driver to run out of fuel on the highway if we didn't catch their attention. Also guessing…

For years, vehicles have had a little light that comes on when you are below about 50 miles of range. It's next to the fuel gauge. I've always heard it called the "walk light", which I presume is a reference to the fact that, if you don't do something, you may have to start walking soon.

My car has a little screen in the dash where it usually shows my range, or the current temperature - information that I check when safe to do so, but never very urgently. This is the perfect place for a warning about low wiper fluid.

As for forward collision warnings, ehhhh. Maybe that should beep loudly, but it should almost never be wrong! (A false alarm could easily mean I slam on the brakes and get rear-ended, so that has to be balanced with the safety advantage of the true alarm.)

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#100

Post by amelius »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #51
satvikpendem wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that last sentence? Plenty of Chinese EVs are as refined as luxury brands, such as seen here: https://youtu.be/xiFmuoBIyjQ

I'd love to have some of these cars in my local market, but at 3:15 this guy explicitly makes the comparison and says they're not up to Mercedes-Benz level.

If you watch the entire video you see that this remark is just a minor nitpick on one of the dozens of cars in that video. They could very easily replace that piece of plastic wood by real wood to fix it.
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