'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 attention to itself for anything less than a critical engine/tyre pressure failures. I do not want beeps on anything else distracting me while I am driving.
My Volvo will, for instance, flash the same type of visual alert when fuel level is low (permanent "do you want to navigate to a fuel station" modal window obscuring navigation, speedometer and so on) -- as when it encounters a serious engine malfunction. It will steal a bit of my attention when it pops up. One of those days, someone will have an accident because of this moronic design, its statistically certain.
Same with wipers fluid level low. I need to click on the button to hide the message.
It will on occasion beep very loud when it thinks I am not braking hard enough. The map in the google android car navi rotates when i am just trying to pan. When I want to select an alternative route I need to very precisely touch a very small area on the screen, and more often than not instead of selecting the alternative route it will actually rotate the map.
It is clear to me that either the people designing car UIs are staying away from those cars, or are just incompetent. (Or, I guess, both).
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.
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 you’re relatively detail oriented and don’t run out of gas, per:
“I don't want my car to draw my attention to itself for anything less than a critical engine/tyre pressure failures.”
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.)
I agree but at the same time cars are requiring less of our attention. Forget autonomous driving for a moment and consider lane change alerts for cars in your blind side, automatic braking if you come up too fast on the car ahead, active lane keeping, smart cruise control.
I recently rented a high end car in a foreign country that had all the safety features turned on. Before I arrived I was worried about driving in an unfamiliar country. After I wondered, could I have crashed at all? I was so augmented.
> I am a big believer in keeping "product people" away from UI design for dangerous machinery.
I mean, there are product people who can do UI design for dangerous machinery. Put them back in charge. It seems like in the last decade, these product people were replaced with product people from Internet Attention-Monetizing companies and Gacha games, where you are rewarded if your product "attracted eyeballs" and "fueled engagement" and kept users hooked. These guys moved into car companies and are trying to do the same thing to drivers who are trying to navigate their cars at high speeds.
I think if I were a car company OEM trying to do it right, I'd look at every resume that came across my desk and if they ever worked for an internet software or game company, I'd chuck it in the trash.
Yes, you are right. All my power tools (from Makita, Milwuakee, Festool) have absolutely phenomenal UI - so there are still corners of industrial design where the dark patterns/attention grabbing product people haven't ventured. They should be brought back to car companies.
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 because the devices were and still are extremely convenient. Braun never put design or beauty in the spotlight - it wasn't recognized as such and therefore not of value to capitalize on.
VW? "No one needs Apple Car or Android. We are the world wide Nr. 1 in car business, what does a computer company know about cars? hahaha"
Hubris, resulted into a failed attempt to build in 2 years a complete Car OS. It was so bad, I was mocked back then, because I bet against it.
I am the only one who successfully build a No Code platform in financial services that became such a hit internally, that it became the standard. dbCORE is its name.
Very long story, but design by committee is the norm in Germany, and since outsourcing is the way to go, vendors sell changes all the time otherwise they lose the customer.
Value chains like Apple or Google are inconceivable and no one in Business has a background in CS.
Porsche 997-2 had the best UX/UI there was. Fantastic blend of nobs and touchscreen. It blew my mind, really. This was 2008. The iPhone came to light 2007!
Really, highly impressive, extremely functional and almost no friction at all. 90% was top.
And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally. Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom. And I gurantee you, no one fell in love with its UX/UI...
> 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.
My 992.2 has AA/CarPlay, and an outstanding user interface, with a nice mix of configurable displays and physical buttons. Fairly certain it is a top 100 product in it's market.
VW? "No one needs Apple Car or Android. We are the world wide Nr. 1 in car business, what does a computer company know about cars? hahaha"
I have no idea what you are talking about. I think all recent VW cars (since 2018) support Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. CarPlay works great with our VW ID.3.
Also, since a refresh a few years ago, the in-car system has had great UX/UI. We are perfectly happy with it and this is after almost two decades of iOS + having tried the systems of various different cars (including NIO).
We do not have anything to complain about, except more physical buttons would be nice, but the latest generation is bringing them back (e.g. the new ID.3 NEO). We are considering upgrading to the ID.3 NEO soon (or maybe Hyundai).
100% agreed. I think it's safe to say that good software UX is incompatible with the way German hardware companies are generally run.
It's the same old story about how hardware companies can't do software UX, except extra amplified because of the strong emphasis on hierarchy, formal degrees and their, errm, heavy processes.
Already happening, best example is worldwide grounding of Boeing 737 MAX. It was China who triggered it, not US authorities (protecting US corporation).
Similar thing with batteries on airplanes, tube trains, ferries and underground garages. China cares about fire hazard, other countries care about ideology.
Not even ideology anymore, see US. Democratic country has been attacked in a biggest war since WW2, and they've decided to halt all support and attack Iran instead.
It’s funny you say that because the China “anti regulatory effect” of the 90s-2000s also had a great impact on quality of life for the world in its own way
And for those commands that do not deserve a physical button and are only accessible via touch, please adhere to a few simple rules.
1. Put them always in the same place. Especially the "back" or "exit" button!
2. Each button should do one thing, not switch between 3 or more modes that you should look to understand which one you've just activated. Negative example: one button to cycle from cuise control, to drive assist, to speed limit, and back to off.
3. The area where a tap is interpreted as a button press should not also be where a swipe is recognized. In moving vehicles it is too easy for your finger to swing just an inch before touching the screen.
4. The active area of a virtual button must be large, larger than the icon it displays, so large that you shouldn't be distracted from driving just to aim at it!
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. Auto adjusting screen brigtness is never as bright as necessary in sunny conditions. Even if it were, it would be a significant battery drain and an element, that heats the cars interior already unnecessarily.
3. You don't have pure blacks in many of them, so that annoying halo at the corner of the eye is often present. You can solve it with an OLED, but those are even worse in bright daylight
4. All of the usually mentioned tactile feedback facts - you can reach with your hand to a AC knob, feel it's current set by finding the bulge with a finger and gently turn exactly how you want them. Zero lag, no eye contact necessary at all (keep that on the road!), instant feedback. Nothing that any screen can ever give.
5. Biggest gripe of all - modality. I think that there were some high ranking studies done early in design exactly against this type of input for high risk applications. Modality is the biggest enemy of discoverability and throws extra delays into otherwise instant input.
6. If you use a LCD variant, they interact with sunglasses polarity filter and, at some orientations, can be blocked altogeter. As you often use sunglasses exactly, because you want to see the road the best, it's contrary to the main objective of the control again.
7. Refocusing. If you can use a tactile control, with a good feedback, you're freeing your eyes from the need to adjust it's lens to focus from far to near to far again. Not many people are aware, that this is even happening, and can lead to overestimating your ability to keep engaged attention on the road.
I'd pay extra for a zero screen variant in a jiffy. Had I ever need to use a screen, I would've put my phone in a holder instead.
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
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.
I saw the new Ferrari dash and infotainment controls. They struck such a nice mix of digital and analog. Reminded my of the iPhone Dynamic Island and coincidentally designed by Jony Ive
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
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.
I have Raynaud's which causes loss of circulation in my fingertips even when the weather isn't that cold (so even in a car with the heat on). Then this happens, touch screens do not register correctly, and I end up having to use a knuckle or do what my sister does and use the tip of the nose
I really like what Jony Ive did with Ferrari. It’s the perfect blend of digital and analog instruments. High quality material and finishing.
Many of these German car companies are following what sells well in Chinese markets, more and more screens. IMO, nothing beats the feeling and assurance of tactile buttons/toggles/knobs.
If they have custromer feedback and focus groups like they mention how did it happen in the first place? Some overoptimistic head-of-something? Really curious. I own previous -2021 mb and had to drive the upgrade (touch buttons) once as a replacement car. UX is terrible. Period. I even checked then in the dealership what they did to S-class and mybachs - and yes, same crappy wheel, etc. Anyways, I was mostly surprised that they didn’t know this before. Something is wrong with their research / decision making.
I guess it is possible that customers - the ones that they asked anyway - were also caught up in the touchscreen hype. There was a lot of hype in the first few years of iPhone and iPad.
You don’t know what the group was presented and how.
Remember you have the stupid stuff that Tesla pushed hard during the peak Elon reality distortion field time. I regularly are in a Toyota, BMW and Honda, and all of these have well thought out touch/knob implementations.
It's pretty straightforward to structure and conduct a focus group to give you the feedback that you want to hear. If the money guys told you "touchscreens save us 1% on the BOM, make it happen," then you could design your demos and question wording to ensure that your report said "customers love this shit."
What I'm surprised by is that cars are chock-full of ornate, unique parts (cupholders are a good example).
I would have imagined that car infotainment controls would be a small fraction of the BOM, so I've been wondering if it's not really a cost thing. Sort of like small phones or 3D TVs from the early 2000's.
If you can save a dollar on a part, and that part goes into millions of cars per year… then it will be on the chopping block. That cost and weight savings are then passed onto other things, better rear camera? More electrical current to charge your phone faster. Quicker HVAC operation? Everything is a compromise and tradeoff.
Yeah, I have to agree. People always talk about it that way, but to me it seems clear that removing buttons is just people trying to chase Tesla’s ball. There’s genuine consumer demand for buttons to go away in phones, kitchen appliances, etc., I’m not sure how obvious it was without hindsight that cars wouldn’t go the same way.
More prevalent in luxury cars, although Japanese had their share of bad experiments as well. My 10yo Honda has all climate control buttons, but no volume knob, which is mitigated a bit by having volume button on the steering wheel.
IMO luxury manufacturers like MB and BMW tried to squeeze larger screens, more of them and there was not enough space to put those screens, buttins and vents. Some luxuty brands make vents supper slim.
The same way they've fought cheaper ICE brands: delivering higher quality materials, a fancy badge and a great driving experience. Currently the Chinese EVs are cheap, but far from Merc levels of refinement.
I really don't know about that. Mercedes used to mean high, tactile, audible mechanical quality. You'd hear it while closing the doors, you'd see it when looking at perfectly assembled dash, you'd hear it while driving and you'd be happy with it when clocking 500k miles with just regular maintenance. I remember those cars - I think the quality started tanking around late 1990s.
Right now its just ok. My friends S class has visibly mis-aligned buttons (a 200k car). My other friends electric S-class bean-thingy has squeaking doors (a 2 year old, 120k-when-new car) and feels surprisingly cheap to touch and drive. Sure, small sample and all of that but I don't think those are exceptions.
I only drove one Chinese car, and it was just a normal experience - what I'd expect from a volvo, bmw, or audi. Good UI on the infotainment, was below average annoying. No big difference vs. a merc. For sure not a qualitative difference in levels of refinement.
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.
it wont matter how many physical buttons you apparently have, if its not physical all the way through, that "button function" can be redefined, or taken away at any time.
Too little too late. I was a long time advocate of German cars, owned a bunch of them but after this fuckery with touch screens everywhere I moved to other brands and I’m staying there for the foreseeable future. BMW, Mercedes and VW have really dropped the ball when it comes to usability. At least BMW has a decent OS that kinda makes the whole experience less dreadful than that of the other two.
Whenever you add a touchscreen to something it makes the UI/UX a software issue instead of a hardware issue. You can ship updates. You can cheap out on UI/UX designing because you can ship it later. So you find commonly used features buried 4 menus deep. You also find that the positions of things in menus will randomly change by OTA updates.
Touch screens are (IMHO) terrible for cars because there's no tactile feedback that allows you to use them without looking at the screen. Dials, buttons and switches can be felt and used. It goes beyond being lazy. It's unsafe.
The only reason we got trouch screens in cars at all is cost-cutting.
I hope Elon Musk can take a lesson from Mercedes. Tesla went in the other direction: there are barely any physical buttons to remove, so they removed the stalks for signaling and even for changing gear! You have to use the touch screen to shift gears!
Tesla does a great job not having buttons. I think the real issue is that other car companies have bad interfaces that make physical buttons necessary. Tesla just has a great UI that does not need physical buttons.
There is another thing that reduces the safety of car - it is sunroof.
In India, all top trims come with sunroof.
I believe, sunroof can not provide the safety that of one without sunroof.
More ever, it can absorb significantly more heat compared one without sunroof.
I for one am quite happy that Mercedes is committed to a physical button for hazard lights, parking assist overrides, and the other controls that are used so very...rarely. Perhaps they'll do something about the less commonly used buttons like climate control for the next model redesigns in five to seven years.
I really struggle to understand what's so damned difficult about this. They've admitted touchscreens annoy the hell out of drivers and capacitive touch buttons are even worse. Is it really going to take yet another lifecycle before they actually do something about it?
And many stupid decisions have no direct impact on the driver, but instead on those around the car. Like red beltline lights that don’t function as brake lights, instead using red lamps near the road that are easy to be obscured/ignored because the giant red lights above them look like brake lights.
Or dashes that are fully lit at night even if the headlights aren’t on, so the driver doesn’t have an obvious visual indicator that their tail lights aren’t lit.
So many rules I’d enforce were I king of the automakers.
My 2024 Sequoia has the heads up display and I really like it. Shows the mph, integrated turn directions with Apple CarPlay, and shows what song is playing without me having to take my eyes off the road. The only problem is since it’s a projector my wife and I have to use vastly different settings in order to see the HUD while driving. She didn’t realize it existed for nearly a year since we’re about a foot height difference and I’d set it up when we got the car.
For 4x4 pickup trucks, bring back physical transfer case shifters and get rid of the idiotic menus for that. Also bring back transfer case Neutral mode so that flat towing again becomes commonplace. A Jeep Gladiator pickup is a great vehicle but doesn't replace larger pickup trucks that have lost those great transfer case features.
Whatever is happening in car industry, it is so unexciting, over-engineered, and too glossy. I'm so happy I don't have to work for people who prefer new car toy over paying me a decent salary.
I’m seeing some brands say they have physical buttons but they aren’t the same. They’re more like touch based buttons that are not in a screen. And I feel they’re just as bad. I want to be able to use the button without looking. Like one car had a touch based slider for operating the air vents. Ridiculous
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 attention to itself for anything less than a critical engine/tyre pressure failures. I do not want beeps on anything else distracting me while I am driving.
My Volvo will, for instance, flash the same type of visual alert when fuel level is low (permanent "do you want to navigate to a fuel station" modal window obscuring navigation, speedometer and so on) -- as when it encounters a serious engine malfunction. It will steal a bit of my attention when it pops up. One of those days, someone will have an accident because of this moronic design, its statistically certain.
Same with wipers fluid level low. I need to click on the button to hide the message.
It will on occasion beep very loud when it thinks I am not braking hard enough. The map in the google android car navi rotates when i am just trying to pan. When I want to select an alternative route I need to very precisely touch a very small area on the screen, and more often than not instead of selecting the alternative route it will actually rotate the map.
It is clear to me that either the people designing car UIs are staying away from those cars, or are just incompetent. (Or, I guess, both).
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 you’re relatively detail oriented and don’t run out of gas, per:
“I don't want my car to draw my attention to itself for anything less than a critical engine/tyre pressure failures.”
The general public though… uh oh!
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.)
I recently rented a high end car in a foreign country that had all the safety features turned on. Before I arrived I was worried about driving in an unfamiliar country. After I wondered, could I have crashed at all? I was so augmented.
I mean, there are product people who can do UI design for dangerous machinery. Put them back in charge. It seems like in the last decade, these product people were replaced with product people from Internet Attention-Monetizing companies and Gacha games, where you are rewarded if your product "attracted eyeballs" and "fueled engagement" and kept users hooked. These guys moved into car companies and are trying to do the same thing to drivers who are trying to navigate their cars at high speeds.
I think if I were a car company OEM trying to do it right, I'd look at every resume that came across my desk and if they ever worked for an internet software or game company, I'd chuck it in the trash.
Engineers should be delegated to the worker-bee level and you should just get some gear heads and some soccer moms to design to UI.
the_homer.jpg
This, but unironically.
Big Tech, WTF guys you let gen-z/millennials design your interfaces and ship w/e works for them alone? Seniors have money and can’t use your products
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 because the devices were and still are extremely convenient. Braun never put design or beauty in the spotlight - it wasn't recognized as such and therefore not of value to capitalize on.
VW? "No one needs Apple Car or Android. We are the world wide Nr. 1 in car business, what does a computer company know about cars? hahaha"
Hubris, resulted into a failed attempt to build in 2 years a complete Car OS. It was so bad, I was mocked back then, because I bet against it.
I am the only one who successfully build a No Code platform in financial services that became such a hit internally, that it became the standard. dbCORE is its name.
Very long story, but design by committee is the norm in Germany, and since outsourcing is the way to go, vendors sell changes all the time otherwise they lose the customer.
Value chains like Apple or Google are inconceivable and no one in Business has a background in CS.
Porsche 997-2 had the best UX/UI there was. Fantastic blend of nobs and touchscreen. It blew my mind, really. This was 2008. The iPhone came to light 2007!
Really, highly impressive, extremely functional and almost no friction at all. 90% was top.
And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally. Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom. And I gurantee you, no one fell in love with its UX/UI...
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.
VW was supporting CarPlay from launch and the VW MEB dash was on all pro material of Apple for ages.
6000 people to develop a software stack for VW.
Go figure. The fact VW supported CarPlay early is footnote in this comedy.
I have no idea what you are talking about. I think all recent VW cars (since 2018) support Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. CarPlay works great with our VW ID.3.
Also, since a refresh a few years ago, the in-car system has had great UX/UI. We are perfectly happy with it and this is after almost two decades of iOS + having tried the systems of various different cars (including NIO).
We do not have anything to complain about, except more physical buttons would be nice, but the latest generation is bringing them back (e.g. the new ID.3 NEO). We are considering upgrading to the ID.3 NEO soon (or maybe Hyundai).
It's the same old story about how hardware companies can't do software UX, except extra amplified because of the strong emphasis on hierarchy, formal degrees and their, errm, heavy processes.
Perhaps we will have a "Beijing regulatory effect" positively impacting the world like the Bruxelles and California ones.
Similar thing with batteries on airplanes, tube trains, ferries and underground garages. China cares about fire hazard, other countries care about ideology.
Not even ideology anymore, see US. Democratic country has been attacked in a biggest war since WW2, and they've decided to halt all support and attack Iran instead.
1. Put them always in the same place. Especially the "back" or "exit" button!
2. Each button should do one thing, not switch between 3 or more modes that you should look to understand which one you've just activated. Negative example: one button to cycle from cuise control, to drive assist, to speed limit, and back to off.
3. The area where a tap is interpreted as a button press should not also be where a swipe is recognized. In moving vehicles it is too easy for your finger to swing just an inch before touching the screen.
4. The active area of a virtual button must be large, larger than the icon it displays, so large that you shouldn't be distracted from driving just to aim at it!
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. Auto adjusting screen brigtness is never as bright as necessary in sunny conditions. Even if it were, it would be a significant battery drain and an element, that heats the cars interior already unnecessarily.
3. You don't have pure blacks in many of them, so that annoying halo at the corner of the eye is often present. You can solve it with an OLED, but those are even worse in bright daylight
4. All of the usually mentioned tactile feedback facts - you can reach with your hand to a AC knob, feel it's current set by finding the bulge with a finger and gently turn exactly how you want them. Zero lag, no eye contact necessary at all (keep that on the road!), instant feedback. Nothing that any screen can ever give.
5. Biggest gripe of all - modality. I think that there were some high ranking studies done early in design exactly against this type of input for high risk applications. Modality is the biggest enemy of discoverability and throws extra delays into otherwise instant input.
6. If you use a LCD variant, they interact with sunglasses polarity filter and, at some orientations, can be blocked altogeter. As you often use sunglasses exactly, because you want to see the road the best, it's contrary to the main objective of the control again.
7. Refocusing. If you can use a tactile control, with a good feedback, you're freeing your eyes from the need to adjust it's lens to focus from far to near to far again. Not many people are aware, that this is even happening, and can lead to overestimating your ability to keep engaged attention on the road.
I'd pay extra for a zero screen variant in a jiffy. Had I ever need to use a screen, I would've put my phone in a holder instead.
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
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wv1btxCjVE
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
They now resell a Chinese EV with a very Tesla model 3 inspired interior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_6e#/media/File%3AMazda6e...
I didn’t find the original press release but you can find a lot of copies like the following article.
https://www.motoringresearch.com/car-news/mazda-getting-rid-...
(btw, it’s an honor to be able to reply to you; hope you’re doing well :) )
The parent post is a chef’s-kiss-perfect illustration of the problem with modern tech.
Many of these German car companies are following what sells well in Chinese markets, more and more screens. IMO, nothing beats the feeling and assurance of tactile buttons/toggles/knobs.
Remember you have the stupid stuff that Tesla pushed hard during the peak Elon reality distortion field time. I regularly are in a Toyota, BMW and Honda, and all of these have well thought out touch/knob implementations.
... I cannot believe they actually put them in a base model Sprinter.
Do they hate tradespeople?
I would have imagined that car infotainment controls would be a small fraction of the BOM, so I've been wondering if it's not really a cost thing. Sort of like small phones or 3D TVs from the early 2000's.
Source - I work in an OEM.
IMO luxury manufacturers like MB and BMW tried to squeeze larger screens, more of them and there was not enough space to put those screens, buttins and vents. Some luxuty brands make vents supper slim.
https://www.slate.auto/
Right now its just ok. My friends S class has visibly mis-aligned buttons (a 200k car). My other friends electric S-class bean-thingy has squeaking doors (a 2 year old, 120k-when-new car) and feels surprisingly cheap to touch and drive. Sure, small sample and all of that but I don't think those are exceptions.
I only drove one Chinese car, and it was just a normal experience - what I'd expect from a volvo, bmw, or audi. Good UI on the infotainment, was below average annoying. No big difference vs. a merc. For sure not a qualitative difference in levels of refinement.
Mercedes-Benz?
Legislatively
Touch screens are (IMHO) terrible for cars because there's no tactile feedback that allows you to use them without looking at the screen. Dials, buttons and switches can be felt and used. It goes beyond being lazy. It's unsafe.
The only reason we got trouch screens in cars at all is cost-cutting.
I really struggle to understand what's so damned difficult about this. They've admitted touchscreens annoy the hell out of drivers and capacitive touch buttons are even worse. Is it really going to take yet another lifecycle before they actually do something about it?
Or dashes that are fully lit at night even if the headlights aren’t on, so the driver doesn’t have an obvious visual indicator that their tail lights aren’t lit.
So many rules I’d enforce were I king of the automakers.