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I understand your point; but we should remember that the redesign of the shifter did not happen in isolation. Car designers have been tinkering with controls f

I understand your point; but we should remember that the redesign of the shifter did not happen in isolation. Car designers have been tinkering with controls for decades. Sometimes the addition of new ideas can be very helpful. For example, I had a Ford Taurus back in the late 90s. Buttons that had a "positive" effect had a convex portion; buttons with a "negative" effect were concave. Door locks, cruise control, etc., all worked this way. It was very easy to operate that car without looking, or in the dark. Now add to that the computers-do-everything reality of the modern world. Controls that used to be directly hooked to some mechanism no longer are; software reads the control, and software initiates the desired effect. This means that the form of controls is no longer dictated by the mechanisms they relate to. Designers are free to design controls that users will find easy to use and intuitive. And so designers have tried all kinds of things. But, alas, some of them turn out to be bad ideas. I don't say this excuses the design flaws at issue here, but I do think it does go a long way toward explaining them. [Meanwhile, I have a another Ford Taurus. No convex/concave buttons. I have no idea why not. :-( ]

WalterBright 10y ago
A classic in aircraft design are the levers that control the flaps have a flap-shaped knob, and the control for the nose gear has a little tire for the knob. This is all so the pilot knows what control his hands are on without looking at it. But as a cockpit designer told me once, everything that seems intuitively obvious in cockpit design was paid for with blood.
- unexistance 10y ago
  > But as a cockpit designer told me once, everything that seems intuitively obvious in cockpit design was paid for with blood. pretty sure the same is true for a lot of other things that needed improvement, EVEN if the designer(s) knows beforehand a possible failure MIGHT results in human injury / death.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    I'm of the opinion that user interfaces should not be patentable, specifically so that when people find safer interfaces everyone else can copy them and standardize on them, rather than trying to carefully avoid them.
hyperion2010 10y ago
Been riding in/driving Tauruses for my whole life. When I get in another car that is missing features like this I always fail to figure out how things work, and even when I do I have forgotten by the next time I get in. I feel like the somatosensory experience of using a vehicle or a tool is completely neglected by designers who only ever look at a digital model. Yes, it may look good to you Mr. Visual, but have you actually touched it, or used it, played with it? I bet some of designers get an itchy feeling when they see the bumps on the F and J keys.... (end rant).
beloch 10y ago
The move from a traditional shifter to a monostable shifter is an obvious step backwards for one, painfully obvious, reason: It gives the user less information. With a traditional shifter, looking at or feeling the position of the knob immediately tells you what gear you're in. The monostable shifter takes that away. The designers probably thought that, if the sports-car segment can get used to paddle shifters, perhaps a stick-form of the paddle-shifter could fly with other users. This may have been true were park not thrown into the mix too.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  The parking is actually done using a parking brake, not the gearbox. Cars with manual transmission do not even have a notion of a parking gear. The car could also automatically engage the parking brake (and optionally a high gear) if the ignition key is removed. Problem solved, lives saved, easy fix? Heck, make this system mandatory, like airbags and safety belts.

WalterBright 10y ago

A classic in aircraft design are the levers that control the flaps have a flap-shaped knob, and the control for the nose gear has a little tire for the knob. This is all so the pilot knows what control his hands are on without looking at it. But as a cockpit designer told me once, everything that seems intuitively obvious in cockpit design was paid for with blood.

unexistance 10y ago
> But as a cockpit designer told me once, everything that seems intuitively obvious in cockpit design was paid for with blood. pretty sure the same is true for a lot of other things that needed improvement, EVEN if the designer(s) knows beforehand a possible failure MIGHT results in human injury / death.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  I'm of the opinion that user interfaces should not be patentable, specifically so that when people find safer interfaces everyone else can copy them and standardize on them, rather than trying to carefully avoid them.

hyperion2010 10y ago

Been riding in/driving Tauruses for my whole life. When I get in another car that is missing features like this I always fail to figure out how things work, and even when I do I have forgotten by the next time I get in. I feel like the somatosensory experience of using a vehicle or a tool is completely neglected by designers who only ever look at a digital model. Yes, it may look good to you Mr. Visual, but have you actually touched it, or used it, played with it? I bet some of designers get an itchy feeling when they see the bumps on the F and J keys.... (end rant).

beloch 10y ago

The move from a traditional shifter to a monostable shifter is an obvious step backwards for one, painfully obvious, reason: It gives the user less information. With a traditional shifter, looking at or feeling the position of the knob immediately tells you what gear you're in. The monostable shifter takes that away. The designers probably thought that, if the sports-car segment can get used to paddle shifters, perhaps a stick-form of the paddle-shifter could fly with other users. This may have been true were park not thrown into the mix too.

AstralStorm 10y ago
The parking is actually done using a parking brake, not the gearbox. Cars with manual transmission do not even have a notion of a parking gear. The car could also automatically engage the parking brake (and optionally a high gear) if the ignition key is removed. Problem solved, lives saved, easy fix? Heck, make this system mandatory, like airbags and safety belts.