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Why touchscreens in cars don’t work

112 points by rubbercasing 8y ago

yesiamyourdad 8y ago
I completely agree with this. I had a dash mount for my phone but I quit using it because it was so distracting to have the phone up there. I rented a new Mustang last month and the UI was almost all touchscreen, even for climate control. After a week with that car, I decided I don't want a new car, at least until they can figure out how to give me some of that tactile control back again. The insights on voice control are good. It seems like a winner but in practice I never like it.
- ggg9990 8y ago
  I had to get a cheaper car than I wanted/could afford to avoid aggravating and accident-inducing touchscreen technology.
  - nerpderp83 8y ago
    I have rented numerous cars where the touchscreen could not be deactivated, the most I could do was turn the brightness down. It should be a law that auto manufacturers have a symboled toggle to turn off the non-essential displays in a car.
peter_retief 8y ago
I released an android app with 6 large buttons to control different types of sirens on emergency vehicles, been in use for a few years now.
- peter_retief 8y ago
  Sorry I never completed my response, just to say that in the field there were issues with users and the touch screen, they found the mechanical system easier to use
pjmlp 8y ago
Voice will only do it, when I can actually speak on my mother tongue and be understood. Being forced to use foreign language to talk to my car system and playing accents until the system finally gets it, means I don't bother using it at all. As for touch screens, having had a near miss with, I also avoid using them as much a possible. I need tactile feedback.
- mrweasel 8y ago
  Languages is perhaps one of the largest hurdles for voice at this point. I can't even get my browser to understand that I switch between Danish and English multiple times a day and adjust spell checking accordingly. So having a voice controlled system that will understand multiple languages simultaneously doesn't seem likely in the near future.
- imhoguy 8y ago
  Forget voice control with kids in the car :)
cyberferret 8y ago
Every time I see posts about car touch screen interfaces, and the associated UX problems, I am reminded of this video I saw a few years ago [0]. I think it is an elegant solution (only allow ONE thing to be controlled by the touch screen at a time), however will require a lot of learning and remembering to get used to all the different gestures. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVbuk3jizGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVbuk3jizGM
- pasta 8y ago
  It is not what is on the screen but the screen itself. From the article: "even when our participants weren’t performing tasks associated with the touchscreen, their eyes were still drawn away from the road and towards the screen" So even with a good UI a screen is still distracting drivers.
  - manmal 8y ago
    But why do we check smartphone screens all the time? We expect change (notifications, clock). Once we have learned what kind of changes are to be expected on the car’s display, and when, then the checking will subside. It will stop being interesting. The problem with smartphones is that you never know whether a new push notification will appear or not - a message, an interesting news article, a hot deal - so the screen is always loaded with the possibility of bringing something new and interesting. That’s why I switched off email notifications. Messages are not happening so often for me that I check all the time. A car‘s dashboard should IMO never show push notifications.
  - scaryclam 8y ago
    This is one of the reasons I dislike always-on screens in pubs. Instead of engaging with my friends we're all drawn to the tv screens, even when there's nothing interesting playing. It takes more effort for everyone to stay in the conversation.
  - cyberferret 8y ago
    But if you watch the video - you can fully interact with the screen without having to look at it. Just place two, three, four or five fingers anywhere on the screen and move up or down. I know initially people's eyes will be drawn to the screen to check whether they are manipulating the right parameter etc., but over time, I would expect that the hand will just drop to the screen, (multi) touch and move without eyes having to leave the road.
superasn 8y ago
I've been using echo dot inside my car and I couldn't be happier (got it at 50% thanks to prime day). The integration with Amazon music is pretty cool and everything just works! Of course so far it's for music only but I'm pretty sure that if you can control light bulbs with it, car mods aren't much behind!
panic 8y ago
A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design (from Bret Victor in 2011): http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/ http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi... We need to stop thinking about touchscreens as futuristic. They're a one-size-fits-all, budget option. The true "luxury experience" would be a custom, tactile control panel, designed not just around how it appears in design renderings, but also around how it feels to actually use.
- megaman22 8y ago
  One reason not to buy new vehicles. I'm not sure I can be bothered with anything newer that doesn't have actual knobs and buttons for the radio and heater. Being able to operate things by touch without taking your eyes off the road should be an iron-clad rule.
  - nerpderp83 8y ago
    You can't though, controls started going modal with screens even though they have buttons around 1997. The mode is cycled through using a button press in most devices, so you have to _look_ at it know what mode it is in. It would be o.k. if the mode selector switch was a toggle or to a lesser degree a rotor.
    - megaman22 8y ago
      This is the control panel in my pickup: http://www.1factoryradio.com/2010-ford-f-150-pickup-radio-temperature-ac-heat-control-panel-al3t-19a802-hb/ http://www.1factoryradio.com/2010-ford-f-150-pickup-radio-te... So many glorious buttons with unique raised labels. But just about everything you actually need to manipulate is controlled by the four large knobs. If you need to change the clock or mess with the equalizer, that is modal, but I have to pull out and read the manual to remember how that works anyway... My friend has a newer Edge and it's all touchscreen. You need a copilot to adjust the AC.
      - setr 8y ago
agnsaft 8y ago
touchscreens work in cars, just not for stuff you need while driving.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  I don't use my car when I'm not driving though
sbr464 8y ago
I would take it further and say “why touchscreens for most devices don’t work” (hifi/stereo, thermostat, desk phone, etc) Who really wouldn’t rather use a 1970s-80s silver stereo with buttons, compared to a cloud/digital player today? If clutter is an issue, check the book “Dieter Rams: As little design as possible” Obviously the overall experience on an iPhone is better than a blackberry, but the sheer speed and “lookahead” actions, where the input speed can exceed the UI state, is on another level. The same holds true for a console type order entry screen (think old school pizza parlor unix). Of course the features are lacking, but using hotkeys and not waiting on UI, is an entirely different experience in regards to speed. Preaching to the choir here I realize. More related to the story, I have a 2017 Honda Civic and every time I change the volume, my dev hat activates, thinking just wtf from a safety perspective. Full disclosure: I’m 35, not too old and cranky yet
- blauditore 8y ago
  > Obviously the overall experience on an iPhone is better than a blackberry How is this obvious? My impression is that this only applies to casual users, i.e. Apple designs UIs mainly for lowly skilled users whereas others focus more on mid-range or power users.
  - close04 8y ago
    When people call it generically "Blackberry" I assume they mean the keyboard models. Now I'll ask this as a long time fan of BB (in the past) and a person who's been using keyboard BB models daily with no interruption since the 6230 (circa 2003) up to this day: have you tried internet browsing on those things lately? It's better than nothing, I'll give you that, but just marginally. And that's not the only thing they don't do well. Even the age-old argument that physical keyboards are better/faster/whatever was destroyed a long time ago. Even after years of using the BB to the point I thought I'd get RSI I managed to be substantially more proficient with a virtual keyboard in no time. I can't imagine a scenario that's not the weirdest corner case where the BB does better. Probably the only thing they might do better is typing while driving. Something that is more likely to classify a person as a power-loser. And that's because as this article says, touchscreens and controlling multi-ton vehicles don't mix well. I think the argument of "professionals use Blackberry, amateurs use Apple" expired a looong time ago. Right around the time everybody gave up their Blackberry (including Blackberry) for an iOS or Android device. People should stop pushing that and try to find something else to make them feel important, smart, whatever. Doing things the cumbersome way doesn't make you a power user. Doing them fast and well does.
stkdump 8y ago
Touchscreens are good for small devices like smartphones or tablets. For everything beyond that I can't imagine why anyone wants them. The distance between hands and eyes on the human body makes it a clumsy way to interact. You either have to look down or raise your arm very high. And then you obstruct your view with the hand. For the driver of a car, I guess the perfect presentation is: Small amounts of important information should be shown in a head-up display. All the rest in a display behind the wheel. The controls should be on the wheel. Then some stuff should be redundant (hvac, media, navigation to enter destinations) in the center console mostly for the passenger. The display should be high, the controls low. There is a single good use for a touch screen: point on the map to select a destination.
- Angostura 8y ago
  Agreed. I have Carplay in my car, but lucky most of the controls are via good old fashioned buttons and twiddly knobs. I sat in a Tesla for the first time about a month ago, and was astounded at just how cluttered and horribly designed (lack of visual heirarchy) the big screen was. I'll stick with the physical buttons thanks. Even with the simplified Carplay interface I find my eye straying from the road too often, frankly. I do find the voice controls useful, though.
tikumo 8y ago
This is exactly why i've bought a car stereo with android that also has normal volume buttons on the side etc, most of them handle everything by touch but a normal button is still a lot easier, better feedback..
Animats 8y ago
Well, duh. This has been known in aviation for decades. It's called the "head-down time" problem.[1] There are Boeing studies at least back to 1979 on this. It's why combat aircraft have heads-up displays. Pilot training is big on minimizing head-down time. There are multiple crash reports where the pilot or pilots were looking at something on the panels too intently and not looking outside enough. Aviation deals with this in several ways. Combat aircraft have heads-up displays and "hands on throttle and stick" layouts, with all the important buttons on the throttle and stick. The car version of that is putting controls on steering wheel buttons and stalks, and putting the important displays on the rear view mirror or directly in front of the driver. Aviation also uses "cruise mode" as a dividing line. Below 10,000 feet, commercial aircraft have strict rules on unnecessary chatter and distractions in the cockpit. The crew must be focused on takeoff or landing. Above 10,000 feet, things are more relaxed. One could make a distinction between urban and open road driving for cars, but it's not clear it would help. Watch "Children of the Magenta".[2] This is an American Airlines chief pilot talking to his pilots. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=YTAoEX4LiAUC&pg=PA254 https://books.google.com/books?id=YTAoEX4LiAUC&pg=PA254 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10
- raynr 8y ago
  I am really frustrated about this TBH. It is so incredibly obvious to me that it is a bad idea. Any time you spend looking down is time where the state of the cars around you are out of your view, and when you look back up, you have to take a split second to update your mental model of everything around you. A lot can happen in a split second, at 90kph you cover 25m in a second. This is one of me and the SO's major bug bears. All the new cars sold here are touch screen only for everything, including climate control. The thing is, people keep buying these because they show well in the showroom. Car manufacturers only import certain models in and they'll import what sells. Pretty soon I couldn't buy a non touch screen controlled model if I wanted to. What is the solution? It's illegal to check your phone while driving because it's a distraction, maybe ban touch screens?
  - sbr464 8y ago
    One feature that irks me on my 2017 Honda Civic: Activate right turn signal, the main screen changes to right side camera feed, to help with the blind spot, very useful. When activating the left turn signal, there is no left camera or activation on the screen, you need to use traditional driving skills and just look. Nothing wrong with traditional skills, but I liken this to arbitrarily swapping around cancel/save buttons in UI/UX. There are still blind spots on the driver side that could be obliterated by a wide angle video feed, but some PM has decided for me, for whatever reason, that I need to use two completely different driving strategies in real time. First world problem I realize.
Theodores 8y ago
Writing from a seatbelt-less 1968 VW Bus where every corner of the vehicle is visible and where the dashboard has just the speedometer and a couple of warning lights: "Why digital maps in cars don't work" "Why backup cameras in cars don't work" "Why carphones in cars don't work" "Why CD players in cars don't work" "Why climate controls in cars don't work" "Why cup holders in cars don't work" "Why electric windows in cars don't work" "Why cigarette lighters in cars don't work" I think the Tesla big screen is the future and any talk of adding in gazillions of allegedly tactile buttons is defeatist. Maybe it would be better if new drivers had VW Bus mode, i.e. no distractions, not even a map. Then the features could be unlocked over time. Or the car could make you pull over to access the full menu system. If you are barrelling down the road at 70 miles per hour then you shouldn't be able to touch anything or be shown anything superfluous. If you then pull over into the service station then the display should then kick into life, show more than the basics and become interactive. Such a system could be adaptive, based on conditions different gadgetry could be shown. This would be a different design ethos to 'infotainment' and would require regulation or insurance premium fixes to make it a thing.
- nottorp 8y ago
  I don't think anybody ever uttered any of those "don't work" phrases as they're all quality of life improvements, as opposed to a touch screen. Also, you're not qualified to offer an opinion on a touch screen in a car because you haven't tried one long term ;)
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  Lets see we start with a false dichotomy of a 60s VW bus or something new and shiny as if the shiny in dash ui is why we want new and shiny and between a gazillion buttons and a crappy modal touchscreen that shows a gazillion different buttons in different screens instead. Ignoring the logical choice of a handful of important buttons for oft used features. Interfaces are interesting to you because you want to design them the people driving to work could basically give two shits. The interface to the cars ui is the least interesting thing they could possibly imagine about their new car and if they notice it you probably screwed it up. People like uninteresting interfaces that work like stuff they are already used to that are easy to operate preferably while cruising down the interstate at 70 miles per hour. The last thing people could possibly want is an interface that silently changes state based on what the car thinks is going on because they will almost certainly just think its broken when it doesn't work as expected. This also means that people will find that passengers can't use for example navigation while the car is moving because the car thinks is protecting the user from themselves. They will respond by grasping their phone in one hand while holding the wheel in the other so they can navigate or slightly better getting a little mount for their phone which will always be relatively new tech while their car quickly gets more obsolete long before the car outlives its usefulness. The most amazing choice of words in the entire post is where you describe putting actual buttons as defeatist as if foisting crappy ui were a mission rather than an affliction.
ggg9990 8y ago
Touchscreens are for UI that needs to reconfigure constantly -- i.e., for multiple-purpose devices. Smartphones are great examples. One minute it's a restaurant review guide, then it's a messaging device, then it's a compass, then it's a camera. When you need more buttons, they appear, when you need fewer buttons, they disappear. A car is largely a single purpose device. You always have the same few set of things you want to do in the car. Climate, Radio, Maps, etc. A touchscreen is a boneheaded interface for this device. Imagine if your on-off lightswitches were touchscreens. If your stovetop interface was a touchscreen. If your refrigerator ice dispenser was a touchscreen (I've seen this). Completely moronic, every single one of them.
- IshKebab 8y ago
  Some cookers do have.. well not touchscreens but they use capacitative buttons. They are even worse than you imagine.
  - egil 8y ago
    Stovetops with capacitive buttons are much nicer than the cheaper resistive buttons. Never had any problems with the two inductive stovetops I have owned, but vacation homes with cheaper electric stovetops with resistive buttons is more hassle. The flat surface of both variants makes them easy to keep clean and child lock.
  - janlaureys 8y ago
    Both my parents and my in-laws have ceramic electric stoves with capacitative buttons (or resistive, not sure) that stop working when your fingers are wet or greasy or the stovetop is too hot. It's horrible.
- gear54rus 8y ago
  Well touchscreens will show you new, better organized or painted buttons (with the power of FOSS of course). Surely you don't wanna swap half of your dash every time someone comes up with something better?
  - 8y ago
ape4 8y ago
Whatever happened to inflatable buttons. https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-07/your-next-touchscreen-might-come-inflatable-buttons https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-07/your-next-tou...
- mywacaday 8y ago
  Apologies completely off topic, I'm not a web developer, would someone be able to explain what the nearly 200 cookies that popsci.com are using are for? Only 69 are for popsci itself.
  - SquareWheel 8y ago
    Check the Application > Cookies section of your dev tools (F12). It should list them all.
    - mywacaday 8y ago
      I saw the list on the GDPR acknowledgement but am wondering what they could all possibly be doing?
bluetomcat 8y ago
Physical buttons and switches have a fixed position and give a steady, reassuring feedback when pressed. UI controls on a touch screen can be anywhere and the physical feedback just isn't there. Not to mention that most current infotainment systems are dog-slow to respond.
kwhitefoot 8y ago
Strange, I've driven my Tesla S 70D about 15 000 kilometres since Christmas and the touchscreen definitely works. So, channelling Douglas Adams, presumably the author has some new meaning for "don't work".
- Fins 8y ago
  Rowing the same distance in a boat, on dry land, would also "work". But not necessarily in an optimal or convenient way. Just like a touchscreen.
WalterBright 8y ago
I bought a touchscreen kindle. Gave it up for the older one with page turn buttons, which is just much nicer to use. Amazon nailed it with the kindle 3, and all the later ones are downhill.
- robotmay 8y ago
  Yep, I'm still using my one with physical buttons. It's a shame that market has completely stagnated, as it's letting Amazon release ridiculously expensive new models with the features they removed from the last few versions of their standard devices.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    I like the Kindle 3 so much I bought a second one, used, as a backup for when the first dies.
WalterBright 8y ago
Years ago, I got a patent for adding morse code to a phone with a rocker switch. The idea is one could text people without needing to look at the phone. You could also receive texts with morse by vibrating the phone. With a bit of practice, you could have the phone in your pocket, and send/receive without bothering anyone or taking your eyes off your task.
petagonoral 8y ago
An iPhone was the touchscreen they used in their study? Hardly comparable to in car screens.
PhantomGremlin 8y ago
I haven't seen anyone mention a Formula 1 steering wheel. Many many many functions, operable at 200+ MPH. No touchscreen. Just lots of knobs and buttons. But they do impose a very high cognitive load in operation. https://www.google.com/search?q=formula+1+steering+wheel https://www.google.com/search?q=formula+1+steering+wheel
manicdee 8y ago
Why are you trying to do things while on the road? Set the climate control to 22°C, start the music, set the turn by turn navigator, then get on with driving. Why is the experiment testing any kind of interfering with unfamiliar controls while the vehicle is in motion? The flaw isn't the UX, it's the tasks being performed and when they're being performed.
Shinchy 8y ago
I drove a Range Rover Velar - the interior is one giant touchscreen with additional sub menus, etc. To be honest I did find myself distracted from the road because of this. The worst though is the SatNav popups that will inform you about a better route, changes - or ironically to make sure you are concentrating on the road. All of which require you to use the touchscreen to remove so you can see where you are supposed to be going.
karakot 8y ago
One of the reasons I'm not buying a Tesla.
onemoresoop 8y ago
There is something critical about usability, location of controls and feel, that's why buttons, switches and dials have been our friends for so long. An LCD as many mentioned have none of these though they compensate in terms of how much functionality can be crammed into them, but, at the cost of UI/UX. On the other hand buttons or physical controls fail more often than LCDs. Also muscle memory. When using an LCD one has to look at it whereas with buttons it takes a bit of learning at the beginning and after a short time then fingers go right on the spot without even looking or sometimes touching.. LCDs have multiple states so the location is not fixed. Muscle memory is not working very well in this case Hope we can learn something from the past and innovate more. As an anecdote, about 10 years a go I was interested into digital instruments (VSTs and such). After a few years I switched to real gear out of curiosity and was amazed at how much easier the UI/UX was and how well some things were thought out. I wanted to do something and my fingers would jump on the right buttons without even thinking. I surprised myself with this. This is very critical in some situations. Creativity can be hampered by something that steals your attention, even a few glimpses start adding up.. Same thing goes with safety.

112 points by rubbercasing 8y ago

I completely agree with this. I had a dash mount for my phone but I quit using it because it was so distracting to have the phone up there. I rented a new Mustang last month and the UI was almost all touchscreen, even for climate control. After a week with that car, I decided I don't want a new car, at least until they can figure out how to give me some of that tactile control back again. The insights on voice control are good. It seems like a winner but in practice I never like it.

ggg9990 8y ago
I had to get a cheaper car than I wanted/could afford to avoid aggravating and accident-inducing touchscreen technology.
- nerpderp83 8y ago
  I have rented numerous cars where the touchscreen could not be deactivated, the most I could do was turn the brightness down. It should be a law that auto manufacturers have a symboled toggle to turn off the non-essential displays in a car.

peter_retief 8y ago

I released an android app with 6 large buttons to control different types of sirens on emergency vehicles, been in use for a few years now.

peter_retief 8y ago
Sorry I never completed my response, just to say that in the field there were issues with users and the touch screen, they found the mechanical system easier to use

pjmlp 8y ago

Voice will only do it, when I can actually speak on my mother tongue and be understood. Being forced to use foreign language to talk to my car system and playing accents until the system finally gets it, means I don't bother using it at all. As for touch screens, having had a near miss with, I also avoid using them as much a possible. I need tactile feedback.

mrweasel 8y ago
Languages is perhaps one of the largest hurdles for voice at this point. I can't even get my browser to understand that I switch between Danish and English multiple times a day and adjust spell checking accordingly. So having a voice controlled system that will understand multiple languages simultaneously doesn't seem likely in the near future.
imhoguy 8y ago
Forget voice control with kids in the car :)

cyberferret 8y ago

Every time I see posts about car touch screen interfaces, and the associated UX problems, I am reminded of this video I saw a few years ago [0]. I think it is an elegant solution (only allow ONE thing to be controlled by the touch screen at a time), however will require a lot of learning and remembering to get used to all the different gestures. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVbuk3jizGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVbuk3jizGM

pasta 8y ago
It is not what is on the screen but the screen itself. From the article: "even when our participants weren’t performing tasks associated with the touchscreen, their eyes were still drawn away from the road and towards the screen" So even with a good UI a screen is still distracting drivers.
- manmal 8y ago
  But why do we check smartphone screens all the time? We expect change (notifications, clock). Once we have learned what kind of changes are to be expected on the car’s display, and when, then the checking will subside. It will stop being interesting. The problem with smartphones is that you never know whether a new push notification will appear or not - a message, an interesting news article, a hot deal - so the screen is always loaded with the possibility of bringing something new and interesting. That’s why I switched off email notifications. Messages are not happening so often for me that I check all the time. A car‘s dashboard should IMO never show push notifications.
- scaryclam 8y ago
  This is one of the reasons I dislike always-on screens in pubs. Instead of engaging with my friends we're all drawn to the tv screens, even when there's nothing interesting playing. It takes more effort for everyone to stay in the conversation.
- cyberferret 8y ago
  But if you watch the video - you can fully interact with the screen without having to look at it. Just place two, three, four or five fingers anywhere on the screen and move up or down. I know initially people's eyes will be drawn to the screen to check whether they are manipulating the right parameter etc., but over time, I would expect that the hand will just drop to the screen, (multi) touch and move without eyes having to leave the road.

superasn 8y ago

I've been using echo dot inside my car and I couldn't be happier (got it at 50% thanks to prime day). The integration with Amazon music is pretty cool and everything just works! Of course so far it's for music only but I'm pretty sure that if you can control light bulbs with it, car mods aren't much behind!

panic 8y ago

A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design (from Bret Victor in 2011): http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/ http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi... We need to stop thinking about touchscreens as futuristic. They're a one-size-fits-all, budget option. The true "luxury experience" would be a custom, tactile control panel, designed not just around how it appears in design renderings, but also around how it feels to actually use.

megaman22 8y ago
One reason not to buy new vehicles. I'm not sure I can be bothered with anything newer that doesn't have actual knobs and buttons for the radio and heater. Being able to operate things by touch without taking your eyes off the road should be an iron-clad rule.
- nerpderp83 8y ago
  You can't though, controls started going modal with screens even though they have buttons around 1997. The mode is cycled through using a button press in most devices, so you have to _look_ at it know what mode it is in. It would be o.k. if the mode selector switch was a toggle or to a lesser degree a rotor.
  - megaman22 8y ago
    This is the control panel in my pickup: http://www.1factoryradio.com/2010-ford-f-150-pickup-radio-temperature-ac-heat-control-panel-al3t-19a802-hb/ http://www.1factoryradio.com/2010-ford-f-150-pickup-radio-te... So many glorious buttons with unique raised labels. But just about everything you actually need to manipulate is controlled by the four large knobs. If you need to change the clock or mess with the equalizer, that is modal, but I have to pull out and read the manual to remember how that works anyway... My friend has a newer Edge and it's all touchscreen. You need a copilot to adjust the AC.
    - setr 8y ago

agnsaft 8y ago

touchscreens work in cars, just not for stuff you need while driving.

TomMarius 8y ago
I don't use my car when I'm not driving though

sbr464 8y ago

I would take it further and say “why touchscreens for most devices don’t work” (hifi/stereo, thermostat, desk phone, etc) Who really wouldn’t rather use a 1970s-80s silver stereo with buttons, compared to a cloud/digital player today? If clutter is an issue, check the book “Dieter Rams: As little design as possible” Obviously the overall experience on an iPhone is better than a blackberry, but the sheer speed and “lookahead” actions, where the input speed can exceed the UI state, is on another level. The same holds true for a console type order entry screen (think old school pizza parlor unix). Of course the features are lacking, but using hotkeys and not waiting on UI, is an entirely different experience in regards to speed. Preaching to the choir here I realize. More related to the story, I have a 2017 Honda Civic and every time I change the volume, my dev hat activates, thinking just wtf from a safety perspective. Full disclosure: I’m 35, not too old and cranky yet

blauditore 8y ago
> Obviously the overall experience on an iPhone is better than a blackberry How is this obvious? My impression is that this only applies to casual users, i.e. Apple designs UIs mainly for lowly skilled users whereas others focus more on mid-range or power users.
- close04 8y ago
  When people call it generically "Blackberry" I assume they mean the keyboard models. Now I'll ask this as a long time fan of BB (in the past) and a person who's been using keyboard BB models daily with no interruption since the 6230 (circa 2003) up to this day: have you tried internet browsing on those things lately? It's better than nothing, I'll give you that, but just marginally. And that's not the only thing they don't do well. Even the age-old argument that physical keyboards are better/faster/whatever was destroyed a long time ago. Even after years of using the BB to the point I thought I'd get RSI I managed to be substantially more proficient with a virtual keyboard in no time. I can't imagine a scenario that's not the weirdest corner case where the BB does better. Probably the only thing they might do better is typing while driving. Something that is more likely to classify a person as a power-loser. And that's because as this article says, touchscreens and controlling multi-ton vehicles don't mix well. I think the argument of "professionals use Blackberry, amateurs use Apple" expired a looong time ago. Right around the time everybody gave up their Blackberry (including Blackberry) for an iOS or Android device. People should stop pushing that and try to find something else to make them feel important, smart, whatever. Doing things the cumbersome way doesn't make you a power user. Doing them fast and well does.

stkdump 8y ago

Touchscreens are good for small devices like smartphones or tablets. For everything beyond that I can't imagine why anyone wants them. The distance between hands and eyes on the human body makes it a clumsy way to interact. You either have to look down or raise your arm very high. And then you obstruct your view with the hand. For the driver of a car, I guess the perfect presentation is: Small amounts of important information should be shown in a head-up display. All the rest in a display behind the wheel. The controls should be on the wheel. Then some stuff should be redundant (hvac, media, navigation to enter destinations) in the center console mostly for the passenger. The display should be high, the controls low. There is a single good use for a touch screen: point on the map to select a destination.

Angostura 8y ago
Agreed. I have Carplay in my car, but lucky most of the controls are via good old fashioned buttons and twiddly knobs. I sat in a Tesla for the first time about a month ago, and was astounded at just how cluttered and horribly designed (lack of visual heirarchy) the big screen was. I'll stick with the physical buttons thanks. Even with the simplified Carplay interface I find my eye straying from the road too often, frankly. I do find the voice controls useful, though.

tikumo 8y ago

This is exactly why i've bought a car stereo with android that also has normal volume buttons on the side etc, most of them handle everything by touch but a normal button is still a lot easier, better feedback..

Animats 8y ago

Well, duh. This has been known in aviation for decades. It's called the "head-down time" problem.[1] There are Boeing studies at least back to 1979 on this. It's why combat aircraft have heads-up displays. Pilot training is big on minimizing head-down time. There are multiple crash reports where the pilot or pilots were looking at something on the panels too intently and not looking outside enough. Aviation deals with this in several ways. Combat aircraft have heads-up displays and "hands on throttle and stick" layouts, with all the important buttons on the throttle and stick. The car version of that is putting controls on steering wheel buttons and stalks, and putting the important displays on the rear view mirror or directly in front of the driver. Aviation also uses "cruise mode" as a dividing line. Below 10,000 feet, commercial aircraft have strict rules on unnecessary chatter and distractions in the cockpit. The crew must be focused on takeoff or landing. Above 10,000 feet, things are more relaxed. One could make a distinction between urban and open road driving for cars, but it's not clear it would help. Watch "Children of the Magenta".[2] This is an American Airlines chief pilot talking to his pilots. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=YTAoEX4LiAUC&pg=PA254 https://books.google.com/books?id=YTAoEX4LiAUC&pg=PA254 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10

raynr 8y ago
I am really frustrated about this TBH. It is so incredibly obvious to me that it is a bad idea. Any time you spend looking down is time where the state of the cars around you are out of your view, and when you look back up, you have to take a split second to update your mental model of everything around you. A lot can happen in a split second, at 90kph you cover 25m in a second. This is one of me and the SO's major bug bears. All the new cars sold here are touch screen only for everything, including climate control. The thing is, people keep buying these because they show well in the showroom. Car manufacturers only import certain models in and they'll import what sells. Pretty soon I couldn't buy a non touch screen controlled model if I wanted to. What is the solution? It's illegal to check your phone while driving because it's a distraction, maybe ban touch screens?
- sbr464 8y ago
  One feature that irks me on my 2017 Honda Civic: Activate right turn signal, the main screen changes to right side camera feed, to help with the blind spot, very useful. When activating the left turn signal, there is no left camera or activation on the screen, you need to use traditional driving skills and just look. Nothing wrong with traditional skills, but I liken this to arbitrarily swapping around cancel/save buttons in UI/UX. There are still blind spots on the driver side that could be obliterated by a wide angle video feed, but some PM has decided for me, for whatever reason, that I need to use two completely different driving strategies in real time. First world problem I realize.

Theodores 8y ago

Writing from a seatbelt-less 1968 VW Bus where every corner of the vehicle is visible and where the dashboard has just the speedometer and a couple of warning lights: "Why digital maps in cars don't work" "Why backup cameras in cars don't work" "Why carphones in cars don't work" "Why CD players in cars don't work" "Why climate controls in cars don't work" "Why cup holders in cars don't work" "Why electric windows in cars don't work" "Why cigarette lighters in cars don't work" I think the Tesla big screen is the future and any talk of adding in gazillions of allegedly tactile buttons is defeatist. Maybe it would be better if new drivers had VW Bus mode, i.e. no distractions, not even a map. Then the features could be unlocked over time. Or the car could make you pull over to access the full menu system. If you are barrelling down the road at 70 miles per hour then you shouldn't be able to touch anything or be shown anything superfluous. If you then pull over into the service station then the display should then kick into life, show more than the basics and become interactive. Such a system could be adaptive, based on conditions different gadgetry could be shown. This would be a different design ethos to 'infotainment' and would require regulation or insurance premium fixes to make it a thing.

nottorp 8y ago
I don't think anybody ever uttered any of those "don't work" phrases as they're all quality of life improvements, as opposed to a touch screen. Also, you're not qualified to offer an opinion on a touch screen in a car because you haven't tried one long term ;)
michaelmrose 8y ago
Lets see we start with a false dichotomy of a 60s VW bus or something new and shiny as if the shiny in dash ui is why we want new and shiny and between a gazillion buttons and a crappy modal touchscreen that shows a gazillion different buttons in different screens instead. Ignoring the logical choice of a handful of important buttons for oft used features. Interfaces are interesting to you because you want to design them the people driving to work could basically give two shits. The interface to the cars ui is the least interesting thing they could possibly imagine about their new car and if they notice it you probably screwed it up. People like uninteresting interfaces that work like stuff they are already used to that are easy to operate preferably while cruising down the interstate at 70 miles per hour. The last thing people could possibly want is an interface that silently changes state based on what the car thinks is going on because they will almost certainly just think its broken when it doesn't work as expected. This also means that people will find that passengers can't use for example navigation while the car is moving because the car thinks is protecting the user from themselves. They will respond by grasping their phone in one hand while holding the wheel in the other so they can navigate or slightly better getting a little mount for their phone which will always be relatively new tech while their car quickly gets more obsolete long before the car outlives its usefulness. The most amazing choice of words in the entire post is where you describe putting actual buttons as defeatist as if foisting crappy ui were a mission rather than an affliction.

ggg9990 8y ago

Touchscreens are for UI that needs to reconfigure constantly -- i.e., for multiple-purpose devices. Smartphones are great examples. One minute it's a restaurant review guide, then it's a messaging device, then it's a compass, then it's a camera. When you need more buttons, they appear, when you need fewer buttons, they disappear. A car is largely a single purpose device. You always have the same few set of things you want to do in the car. Climate, Radio, Maps, etc. A touchscreen is a boneheaded interface for this device. Imagine if your on-off lightswitches were touchscreens. If your stovetop interface was a touchscreen. If your refrigerator ice dispenser was a touchscreen (I've seen this). Completely moronic, every single one of them.

IshKebab 8y ago
Some cookers do have.. well not touchscreens but they use capacitative buttons. They are even worse than you imagine.
- egil 8y ago
  Stovetops with capacitive buttons are much nicer than the cheaper resistive buttons. Never had any problems with the two inductive stovetops I have owned, but vacation homes with cheaper electric stovetops with resistive buttons is more hassle. The flat surface of both variants makes them easy to keep clean and child lock.
- janlaureys 8y ago
  Both my parents and my in-laws have ceramic electric stoves with capacitative buttons (or resistive, not sure) that stop working when your fingers are wet or greasy or the stovetop is too hot. It's horrible.
gear54rus 8y ago
Well touchscreens will show you new, better organized or painted buttons (with the power of FOSS of course). Surely you don't wanna swap half of your dash every time someone comes up with something better?
- 8y ago

ape4 8y ago

Whatever happened to inflatable buttons. https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-07/your-next-touchscreen-might-come-inflatable-buttons https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-07/your-next-tou...

mywacaday 8y ago
Apologies completely off topic, I'm not a web developer, would someone be able to explain what the nearly 200 cookies that popsci.com are using are for? Only 69 are for popsci itself.
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  Check the Application > Cookies section of your dev tools (F12). It should list them all.
  - mywacaday 8y ago
    I saw the list on the GDPR acknowledgement but am wondering what they could all possibly be doing?

bluetomcat 8y ago

Physical buttons and switches have a fixed position and give a steady, reassuring feedback when pressed. UI controls on a touch screen can be anywhere and the physical feedback just isn't there. Not to mention that most current infotainment systems are dog-slow to respond.

kwhitefoot 8y ago

Strange, I've driven my Tesla S 70D about 15 000 kilometres since Christmas and the touchscreen definitely works. So, channelling Douglas Adams, presumably the author has some new meaning for "don't work".

Fins 8y ago
Rowing the same distance in a boat, on dry land, would also "work". But not necessarily in an optimal or convenient way. Just like a touchscreen.

WalterBright 8y ago

I bought a touchscreen kindle. Gave it up for the older one with page turn buttons, which is just much nicer to use. Amazon nailed it with the kindle 3, and all the later ones are downhill.

robotmay 8y ago
Yep, I'm still using my one with physical buttons. It's a shame that market has completely stagnated, as it's letting Amazon release ridiculously expensive new models with the features they removed from the last few versions of their standard devices.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  I like the Kindle 3 so much I bought a second one, used, as a backup for when the first dies.

WalterBright 8y ago

Years ago, I got a patent for adding morse code to a phone with a rocker switch. The idea is one could text people without needing to look at the phone. You could also receive texts with morse by vibrating the phone. With a bit of practice, you could have the phone in your pocket, and send/receive without bothering anyone or taking your eyes off your task.

petagonoral 8y ago

An iPhone was the touchscreen they used in their study? Hardly comparable to in car screens.

PhantomGremlin 8y ago

I haven't seen anyone mention a Formula 1 steering wheel. Many many many functions, operable at 200+ MPH. No touchscreen. Just lots of knobs and buttons. But they do impose a very high cognitive load in operation. https://www.google.com/search?q=formula+1+steering+wheel https://www.google.com/search?q=formula+1+steering+wheel

manicdee 8y ago

Why are you trying to do things while on the road? Set the climate control to 22°C, start the music, set the turn by turn navigator, then get on with driving. Why is the experiment testing any kind of interfering with unfamiliar controls while the vehicle is in motion? The flaw isn't the UX, it's the tasks being performed and when they're being performed.

Shinchy 8y ago

I drove a Range Rover Velar - the interior is one giant touchscreen with additional sub menus, etc. To be honest I did find myself distracted from the road because of this. The worst though is the SatNav popups that will inform you about a better route, changes - or ironically to make sure you are concentrating on the road. All of which require you to use the touchscreen to remove so you can see where you are supposed to be going.

karakot 8y ago

One of the reasons I'm not buying a Tesla.

onemoresoop 8y ago

There is something critical about usability, location of controls and feel, that's why buttons, switches and dials have been our friends for so long. An LCD as many mentioned have none of these though they compensate in terms of how much functionality can be crammed into them, but, at the cost of UI/UX. On the other hand buttons or physical controls fail more often than LCDs. Also muscle memory. When using an LCD one has to look at it whereas with buttons it takes a bit of learning at the beginning and after a short time then fingers go right on the spot without even looking or sometimes touching.. LCDs have multiple states so the location is not fixed. Muscle memory is not working very well in this case Hope we can learn something from the past and innovate more. As an anecdote, about 10 years a go I was interested into digital instruments (VSTs and such). After a few years I switched to real gear out of curiosity and was amazed at how much easier the UI/UX was and how well some things were thought out. I wanted to do something and my fingers would jump on the right buttons without even thinking. I surprised myself with this. This is very critical in some situations. Creativity can be hampered by something that steals your attention, even a few glimpses start adding up.. Same thing goes with safety.