4 ms·

I can't stand touchscreen systems. Instead of a single physical switch to turn AC on or off it's two latency laden taps. Part of it's menu design but I can't he

by m3rc 10y ago

I can't stand touchscreen systems. Instead of a single physical switch to turn AC on or off it's two latency laden taps. Part of it's menu design but I can't help but feel like it's always gonna happen with touchscreen centric designs.

ux-app 10y ago
That's poor design. My wife's new car has physical buttons for all the common functions that you might require to use while in motion: - Radio on/off - All radio controls on the wheel - Heating/cooling, physical knobs The touchscreen is treated as an optional, secondary interface, as it rightfully should be.
- rat87 10y ago
  Just Radio? I'm assuming people are listening to podcasts/Pandora/spotify/audiobooks just as frequently , not to mention looking at/listening to directions. And it doesn't even have a siri/google assistant button? I'd consider that vital.
  - ygra 10y ago
    It would work the same for anything your phone provides if it's connected via Bluetooth. There's likely also a way to get to Siri like on pretty much all Bluetooth headsets.
mattbeckman 10y ago
It probably won't be as big of a concern going forward as self-driving cars become the norm. For non-self-driving, I agree with you.
jobu 10y ago
It's unbelievable how far behind the technology curve most car companies are. We recently test drove a used 2015 Suburban with a touchscreen console. The MSRP for it in 2015 was almost 90k, and the touchscreen was laggy, unresponsive, and terrible resolution. 20 years ago I worked on a touchscreen point of sale system that was better than that shit.
- debaserab2 10y ago
  Consumer electronics are designed to fail in 3-5 years. Cars aren't. If my 2012 Honda Accord started failing this year, I'd be really upset. If my 2012 iPad mini started failing this year... well, I wouldn't be surprised given it's age. I don't want my car's firmware failing or even slow when my ABS system needs to kick in because of an icy road. We must hold automobiles to a higher degree of quality and consistency than consumer electronics and I don't believe these things are on par at all, nor should they be held to the same standard.
  - flukus 10y ago
    You think the features of car touchscreens will still be relevant in 5 years? The point them in because it adds planned obsolescence.
    - gambiting 10y ago
      I really don't think it's planned obsolescence - it's just that automotive entertainment systems are subject to the same amount of testing as everything else in the car, which means your average media system is 5 years behind. I have a 2005 Land Rover Discovery 3 with a touch screen, and at 11 years old, it still works the same as on the day I bought it. That's what you want. Software and hardware which continues working fine for more than a decade. On the other end of the scale we have Tesla, which clearly does very little testing of their media systems, and pushes updates over the air, so things get broken or changed with every update. But "hey, it's not a big deal, we'll just push another update in a month!" - that's absolutely not acceptable with cars. For example: https://medium.com/@michaelmeier_90534/tesla-model-s-is-great-except-1638f3f4d96f#.jzkq6mr8u https://medium.com/@michaelmeier_90534/tesla-model-s-is-grea... I would be absolutely furious if my car did this. I would rather have a shitty system that stays shitty for the lifetime of the car, than have a good system that gets broken through an over-the-air update.
      - flukus 10y ago
        I agree the tesla system is pretty bad, but software needs to be updatable. How many exploits do you think your 2005 land rover has?
mvindahl 10y ago
Almost everyone is carrying a touch screen in their pocket, complete with internet access, navigation, music, audiobooks, everything. Car manufacturers should just solve the problem of how to plug in the phone since they'll never deliver anything smarter or more powerful anyway. And, yes, physical knobs for things that you might do when driving, such as adjusting sound volume. The rest of the effort they should direct at the thing which they are good at; building cars. Equivalently, TV manufacturers should stop trying to make their TVs smart and leave this to 3rd party devices such as the Apple TV, Chromecast or whatever. Just make great image quality and make the smartness pluggable. Anyway, I'm digressing.
hvidgaard 10y ago
It is not because of the touch screen, but because the designer was probably an intern.

by m3rc 10y ago

ux-app 10y ago

That's poor design. My wife's new car has physical buttons for all the common functions that you might require to use while in motion: - Radio on/off - All radio controls on the wheel - Heating/cooling, physical knobs The touchscreen is treated as an optional, secondary interface, as it rightfully should be.

rat87 10y ago
Just Radio? I'm assuming people are listening to podcasts/Pandora/spotify/audiobooks just as frequently , not to mention looking at/listening to directions. And it doesn't even have a siri/google assistant button? I'd consider that vital.
- ygra 10y ago
  It would work the same for anything your phone provides if it's connected via Bluetooth. There's likely also a way to get to Siri like on pretty much all Bluetooth headsets.

mattbeckman 10y ago

It probably won't be as big of a concern going forward as self-driving cars become the norm. For non-self-driving, I agree with you.

jobu 10y ago

It's unbelievable how far behind the technology curve most car companies are. We recently test drove a used 2015 Suburban with a touchscreen console. The MSRP for it in 2015 was almost 90k, and the touchscreen was laggy, unresponsive, and terrible resolution. 20 years ago I worked on a touchscreen point of sale system that was better than that shit.

debaserab2 10y ago
Consumer electronics are designed to fail in 3-5 years. Cars aren't. If my 2012 Honda Accord started failing this year, I'd be really upset. If my 2012 iPad mini started failing this year... well, I wouldn't be surprised given it's age. I don't want my car's firmware failing or even slow when my ABS system needs to kick in because of an icy road. We must hold automobiles to a higher degree of quality and consistency than consumer electronics and I don't believe these things are on par at all, nor should they be held to the same standard.
- flukus 10y ago
  You think the features of car touchscreens will still be relevant in 5 years? The point them in because it adds planned obsolescence.
  - gambiting 10y ago
    I really don't think it's planned obsolescence - it's just that automotive entertainment systems are subject to the same amount of testing as everything else in the car, which means your average media system is 5 years behind. I have a 2005 Land Rover Discovery 3 with a touch screen, and at 11 years old, it still works the same as on the day I bought it. That's what you want. Software and hardware which continues working fine for more than a decade. On the other end of the scale we have Tesla, which clearly does very little testing of their media systems, and pushes updates over the air, so things get broken or changed with every update. But "hey, it's not a big deal, we'll just push another update in a month!" - that's absolutely not acceptable with cars. For example: https://medium.com/@michaelmeier_90534/tesla-model-s-is-great-except-1638f3f4d96f#.jzkq6mr8u https://medium.com/@michaelmeier_90534/tesla-model-s-is-grea... I would be absolutely furious if my car did this. I would rather have a shitty system that stays shitty for the lifetime of the car, than have a good system that gets broken through an over-the-air update.
    - flukus 10y ago
      I agree the tesla system is pretty bad, but software needs to be updatable. How many exploits do you think your 2005 land rover has?

mvindahl 10y ago

Almost everyone is carrying a touch screen in their pocket, complete with internet access, navigation, music, audiobooks, everything. Car manufacturers should just solve the problem of how to plug in the phone since they'll never deliver anything smarter or more powerful anyway. And, yes, physical knobs for things that you might do when driving, such as adjusting sound volume. The rest of the effort they should direct at the thing which they are good at; building cars. Equivalently, TV manufacturers should stop trying to make their TVs smart and leave this to 3rd party devices such as the Apple TV, Chromecast or whatever. Just make great image quality and make the smartness pluggable. Anyway, I'm digressing.

hvidgaard 10y ago

It is not because of the touch screen, but because the designer was probably an intern.