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82% of vehicles sold this year came with a touch screen
- akeck 8y agoThat's terrifying. (Have car with touch screen. No car should have a touch screen)
- b_tterc_p 8y agoWhat are people using the screen for? I do maps and Spotify, all of which is controlled through the phone, voice, or steering wheel control. None of it requires interaction while driving aside from thumb flicks Having a screen is much better than a separate phone or gps unit showing maps.
- sexydefinesher 8y agoHorrible, like stoves with touch interfaces that can't handle water.
- silversconfused 8y agoAny interest in a voice controlled stove? Just an idea I've been kicking around...
- kevinconroy 8y agoFlame on!
- OrgNet 8y agohow about old fashioned nubs and buttons?
- RandomBacon 8y agoI do not want voice control anything.
- bluejellybean 8y agoI am the complete opposite of you, give me voice control on every last device. All that I ask is that my data doesn't get fed into your network, give me an option to opt out of that and I would be happy.
- silversconfused 8y agoYeah, my thinking is that this is a simple enough task that no network connectivity would be needed. Plus removing hands on control could increase safety and cleanliness.
- RandomBacon 8y ago"anything", not just cars. 1) I don't want to have to trust the company that sold the product that they currently aren't doing anything with the data, or trust that they won't change their policy a year down the road. 2) Voice recognition doesn't work for mute people, people with speech impediments, people with voices that speech recognition doesn't understand, people that don't speak (insert language here), people that just want to easily and quickly push a button and not waste time or energy saying something, people that don't want to wake the kids in the back seat, etc. (I wonder if removing hand controls for speach recognition would violate the Americans With Disabilities Act.)
- hiharryhere 8y agoNo thanks. I want my stove to last 10+ years. Replacing a single knob is a lot simpler to repair, and less likely to fail than the microphone, speaker, logicboard etc. in a voice stove.
- silversconfused 8y agoNone of those parts could be expected to break. This wouldn't be IoT. Just a static dumb voice control system on an SoC. But I'm with ya. My stove is turning 15 this year. Looking forward to it being able to drive next year. Maybe I can even expect some bouncing baby grandstoveren a few years after that (but hopefully not too soon, there's so much world out there for a young adult stove to see).
- bookofjoe 8y agoFWIW my GE electric stove/oven was installed when my house was built in 1967 (52 years ago). Everything works perfectly except for one front burner, which went bad about 2005. Oven is perfectly calibrated. I bought the house (and stove) in 1983 and have never required a service visit. When I mentioned to an appliance tech who was installing a new Maytag washer/dryer that I was thinking of getting a more modern stove, he said, "Don't."
- NikolaNovak 8y agoAbsolutely not. First, I don't want to yell at my stove. I don't want it to misunderstand me. I don't want to forget it is on (dials are pretty easy to notice out of place; yes you can add a LED but now you're compensating for a flaw that doesn't need to exist). I don't want to compete with my Google Home or my Alexa. I don't want my Kitchen to end up a constant stream of barked commands as I cook. I don't want to stop conversation or music just to turn my stove on and off. I don't want to take the time to speak "Stove, please turn on the bottom right burner to setting of five" when it takes me one fifth the time to actually change the knob. It's a UI that works. It works great. Everybody STOP messing with UI that works great, pretty please :P
- silversconfused 8y agoClearly you have not met my stove! It literally polls the buttons once per second. It's a total crapshoot if you need a short press or a long press to register input. Voice control on this unit would not remove anything you'd miss. I grew up with a stove that had an analog clock and a mechanical timer. Now THAT was a nice stove interface...
- NikolaNovak 8y agoMy sympathies - that's because, unfortunately, you have a stove where somebody took UI that works and tried to "modernize it". It sounds like it has touch buttons. We have a brand new, nice stove that has knobs. It works GREAT :). My next purchase will be a microwave oven that doesn't have million useless buttons but instead two dials/knobs - how much power, and how long. And I don't expect to ever use the how much power dial either :P
- silversconfused 8y agoThey are tact switches, not capacitive. It's just a cheap GE.
- throwaway55554 8y agoNope. That's a bad accident waiting to happen.
- blakesterz 8y agoFriend of mine just got a new Volvo, that touch screen was such a UI/UX disaster it was just shocking. The number of touches it took to do anything was ridiculous. He was trying to figure out how to do something super basic, like it should've just had a dial on the dash basic, and it took minutes to find. I don't know if others are better, but that thing made me want to never buy a new car.
- itsaidpens 8y agoXC90? I'd say they have a pretty great touchscreen interface.. My favorite right now is from JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) with physical dials embedded into a screen - that can context change. [1] 1. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Wj857_eHVHE/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Wj857_eHVHE/maxresdefault.jpg
- elsonrodriguez 8y agoDon't forget the OLED buttons on the steering wheel that also change context. Land Rover is so far ahead in UX it's unbelievable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6YYun90S8g&feature=youtu.be&t=6m22s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6YYun90S8g&feature=youtu.be...
- itsaidpens 8y agoWow - that is WILD!
- dman 8y agoDitto
- bredren 8y agoSubaru’s is horrendous as well. It’s amazing how crappy they can get away with on products that cost like $30k+.
- werdnapk 8y agoI've had the updated XC90 since 2016 and while yes, the touch screen took some getting used to, I can now access everything I need quite easily. I really do like the clean looking interior. I test drove a Porche Macan as well and it's the exact opposite of the XC90... literally buttons everywhere you look. I guess the different interior designs attract different people. I really just prefer the minimalist approach with the XC90.
- r00fus 8y agoI've had a touch-screen in my system since 2005 (Prius). I prefer to the nest of buttons that is my 2012 Sienna. I don't mind if temp controls are dials/buttons. Nowadays a strong feature point is a decent implementation of CarPlay/AndroidAuto in the vehicle. That requires a touchscreen.
- WillPostForFood 8y agoBMW does a good integration of CarPlay without a touchscreen. Select by turning the control knob, push down to click.
- r00fus 8y agoHow do they do maps integration? I assume they have a display somewhere...
- WillPostForFood 8y agoIt has a screen on the dash, but it has no touch capability so you interact with it solely through the wheel in the center console.
- JohnFen 8y ago> Nowadays a strong feature point is a decent implementation of CarPlay/AndroidAuto in the vehicle. I rather strongly prefer a car that lacks CarPlay/Android auto integration in the first place.
- thebeefytaco 8y agoIt's hard to keep your eye on the road and use a touch screen interface. There's no tactile feedback.
- dragontamer 8y agoYou can have both a touch-screen AND tactile feedback. Ex: have a volume nub AND a touch-screen. The touch-screen is almost a necessity with Apple Play and Android Auto. If you want to interact with your cell-phone apps with your car system, you better have a touch screen. But please don't get rid of my AC buttons or fan setting knob.
- m463 8y ago"make the system as simple as possible, but no simpler" I think designers get into a mindset, and then keep going (too far)
- kgwxd 8y agoSame reason touchscreen-only phones suck, and no one is doing anything about it :(
- joezydeco 8y agoAll new vehicles sold in the US after May 2018 were required to have a backup camera. https://www.iihs.org/iihs/sr/statusreport/article/49/4/4 https://www.iihs.org/iihs/sr/statusreport/article/49/4/4 If the automakers have to install a video display, it's not much of a leap to turn it into an infotainment system.
- aero142 8y agoThe backup camera in my 2010 Tacoma is embedded in to the backup mirror. The usability is nearly perfect because it's right next to where you were looking already and is tremendously useful.
- bb2018 8y agoI recently rented a u-haul that had this and couldn't believe all cars don't do this. It is very useful having the camera and the mirror viewable at the same exact time.
- SubiculumCode 8y agoMy 2010 Honda has the same. So much better than putting it on a console screen
- pi-rat 8y agoMost of them are still so slow, unresponsive and laggy that they break any illusion of "touch" when interacting with the UI. The iPad is almost 10 years old now.. come on..
- Dig1t 8y agoCar tech is _insanely_ bad; I don't understand why, but it boggles my mind.
- seabird 8y agoUS automakers are ridiculously wasteful, slow-moving, and don't really give a shit about anything. These companies are risk-averse for a reason, but you would be floored if you could experience first-hand the sort of bureaucracy and complacency you have to deal with when working with an automaker. I live somewhere that basically revolved around the auto industry until recently, and everyone else I've met that has dealt with automakers has had the same experience.
- itake 8y agoArmchair Electrical Engineer here: The parts used in cars need to handle a lot of vibration and heat and last 10+ years. The tech lags behind consumer electronics because consumer electronics don’t need to work in these difficult environments.
- deathanatos 8y agoMy phone will turn 9 this year, and the only reason I'll have to replace it will be the ever increasing bloated nature of mobile apps.
- kristopolous 8y agoThe software is terrible though. There is no vibration consideration that justifiably makes software horrible. Every vendor has their own telematics tech. You need to use their horrible app to unreliably access your car. Why not have a single standard api for say, lock and unlock, headlights on and off, etc ... The manufacturers think that by being covetous and proprietary it'll work out best for them in the end. It's a 1970s way of doing software: Zero open platforms, Zero open standards, Zero open source, blackbox machines with a completely proprietary pay-as-you-go manufacturer-specific system. I manage a fleet of Hyundais we got through a special partnership with Hyundai of South Korea and we weren't allowed to directly talk to their proprietary "BlueLink" technology. That was kept as a Manhattan-level company secret. Instead we had to go through a third-party authorized company who also wasn't given the information. They were the only ones authorized to reverse engineer it (and they were bozos). So we had to put our own telematics into the cars because Hyundai decided to be so covetous and secret about theirs. These cars ship with a USB port and 3.2GB free on their in-dash computers. It has "apps" on it but not really because you can't add any additional ones. Why isn't there a way for me to make my own apps? There isn't even some crippled Qualcomm BREW style way of doing things - there's nothing. Write software, place on USB stick, install on car. Why is this impossible? Come on now, we're almost 1/5th of the way through the 21st century. Then when it comes to Android/iPhone Auto it can't read OBD2 or CAN information such as battery voltage, fuel level, odometer, speed, no nothing. It can um, play music, take phone calls, and show maps. Whooppee. It's entertainment integration, not car integration - there's some apparently super secret firewall between the phone and actually getting useful information from the car, when plugged into the actual car. Why not just put up some permission request dialogs and only allow signed software? This has been a solved problem for 20 years. What on earth... We could do early mechanical failure detection, OTA software updates through the phones, data gathering to know if components are failing to avoid expensive recalls or wrongful death lawsuits. This would save Manufacturers billions. But they want to have their secrets as if they're shipping their own little enigma machines. It's like one of the iterations of the Internet TV ideas from the early 90s of how Comcast and Time Warner would write a bunch of shit software running on a tv appliance and that would be consumers interface to the internet. What a terrible idea. But with cars it's the reality we live in. Expensive, bloated, crappy products with aggressive vendor lock-in and required subscriptions. Just Awesome.
- british_india 8y agoWhen those touchscreens break–and they will-- it will cause all of the services in that car to stop working and the repair bill will be enormous. Thus, the 80 something percent of new cars that have touchscreens are a maintenance nightmare. Everyone who spends their money on a new car with a touchscreen will deeply regret it.
- umvi 8y agoI hate this trend. My ideal car: - buttons and dials I can feel with my hands without looking for climate/volume/etc. controls - Car has a well documented API that can be used to control all non-safety critical features of the car (climate, media, etc.) as well as get lots of read only stats (current speed, current gas levels, current GPS location, etc.) - mount on the center console where I can put my own touchscreen device if I so choose (iPad, Android, phone, etc) - Car has an official app that can talk to said API over bluetooth or whatever for iOS/Android. - Or I can write my own apps or programs, etc. that talk to the API. Maybe I want to listen to audiobooks on Tuesdays and my own app would know to push that to the speakers as soon as I start the car on Tuesdays Or maybe I want a raspberry pi in the trunk to log my car's current location and speed once per second because it's my teenager. Just stop forcing crappy touchscreens attached to crappy laggy computers into my car! I want to choose my own computer and I want to be able to replace it if it breaks without taking apart my whole car and paying someone $1000 in labor. A stock iPad is 10x more responsive than the crappy touchscreen in the Model S; just let me mount my iPad
- shredprez 8y agoI’m genuinely on board with most of this, but it reads like satire. On topic, it is wild how dated even brand new car consoles feel. Luxury brands do a bit better, but it’s still worse than my phone. Where do I sign up to overhaul vehicle UX?
- thatoneuser 8y agoLast time I got a new car the dipshit at the dealership was trying to get me to pay more cuz the car I wanted had a touchscreen. I told him I'd pay more if he'd take it out and put in one with buttons. Car consoles are such a gimmick...
- Skunkleton 8y agoYeah, but unless you get the screen, you get a shitty sound system and no heated seats.
- kevinconroy 8y agoAt CHI conference about a decade ago I spoke with some of the lead HCI researchers at Mitsubishi (which has long contributed to human factors research). During Q/A they said the single best thing you could do to improve safety was to NOT buy a car with a touchscreen interface. Lack of tactile feedback is a major problem. We all were quick to point out that they were selling cars with touchscreens. The HCI researchers said yes the company did, but their point still stood. You want to be able to do things like adjust heat and defrost without looking (just with hands).
- asaph 8y agoHow do you feel about using voice commands?
- Causality1 8y agoThey're great if you operate your car in complete silence. Personally I'm usually listening to something.
- r00fus 8y agoIn mine, it just pauses the audio when I trigger the voice control then resumes after.
- NikolaNovak 8y agoAgain, that sounds just awful. Why do we put up with this when we had a UI that worked perfectly, with no interruptions to music or family or taking our eyes off the road? Why are we putting up with these compromises? :<
- r00fus 8y agoSo you're saying you had good voice UI without muting other streams? Or you're saying you could listen and type in those commands while listening (and driving)? Because I would rarely want it to be the latter - especially knowing how dangerous it is.
- hodder 8y agoTouch screens are without a doubt more dangerous. You are forced to take your eye off of the road to navigate the screen menus. There is nothing I prefer more in a car than the classic 3 physical knob layout for heat/cold, vent/selector and music. I feel every car should start with that, and maybe add a touchscreen only for deeper interactions, usually needed when the vehicle is not in motion.
- kenhwang 8y agoHard buttons pretty much a hard requirement for me on a car. Thankfully they still exist and will probably continue to exist. The trend towards touchscreen everything is already starting to reverse.
- eMSF 8y agoI think by this point most center console displays are touch-enabled. That doesn't necessarily mean there's much besides drive computer data and radio controls in them, although bigger screens and less physical inputs is certainly where they are heading, for better and for worse. I don't find this diverse touch screen statistic all that interesting; it would be far more interesting to know how many of them don't have certain traditional physical inputs, e.g. for climate control.
- Shivetya 8y agopersonal experience, own a TM3, I rarely if ever need to use the screen. Not even for navigation. Some simple actions are almost automatic for me when I do want to toggle, muscle memory even works then. with regards to touch screens vs physical buttons, I tell friends at work who have mocked the TM3 display. put a sticker on every button then remove them as you use them on a drive. plus some cars put buttons in far worse places but as with most cars you adapt real quick. after all its not that you need more than a few buttons from the dash
- robertnealan 8y agoBefore buying my car I test drove a Mercedes that had what I assumed was a touchscreen. Upon trying to tap it the person working at the dealership said none of their cars have touchscreens because they don't make sense to operate when driving, and instead had a easily reached dial in the center console that controlled everything on the screen. Seems to be the case with any other German car I've been in. Takes some getting used to compared to just old fashioned knobs & buttons, but far and above better than all the cars we test drove with touchscreens.
- yardie 8y agoIt's the worst of both worlds. Rather than having dedicated dials for each function, or a touchscreen, you have a single dial and loads of menus to work through. Want to change the radio station first you have to make sure you are in the radio display context and then scroll through the stations until you find your desired station. Meanwhile, you're constantly taking your eyes off the road to work this dumb wheel.
- perl4ever 8y agoI've had cars with either, and I'm kind of ambivalent on BMW iDrive vs Honda touchscreen, but my main complaint with everything I've driven is the way Bluetooth will not connect reliably. Sometimes you have to restart your car or your phone to get it back, and once that didn't work and only unpairing it and repairing it worked. This is really, really, basic and I sometimes feel like screaming because when I was younger, whatever the flaws of a radio or CD player, at least they consistently worked every time you switched them on.
- yardie 8y agoI've heard Ed Sheeran's A-Team every time I start the car because the Bluetooth receiver thinks it has to play something and it's going to start at song 1 of my library.
- usrusr 8y agoThe main benefit (or supposed benefit, if you insist) of the big encoder knob system is that decision and action are decoupled: you can have a short glance at the narrow/deep menu, then take your time doing the next steps of finger work with the eyes back on the road. This is incredibly slow compared to interfaces designed for full attention, but the impact on driving ability is very low. It's kind of like a garbage collector that sacrifices throughput for shorter pauses. Touchscreens on the other hand lure the eyes into guiding the hand through the selection process, particularly when you lack a haptic reference point because the screen isn't handheld. And then the eyes are already focused on the screen when the next menu page shows up, so it's tempting to continue right there. I guess there must even be some threshold in UI slowness beyond which touchscreens are not quite as bad for safety as faster ones because one would quickly learn that there is plenty of time to focus on the road while the glacial computer's cogs are turning. Even physical per-function controls are worse once the number of functions gets too high. Volume up/down is easy, but how do you {insert any of the hundreds of functions that you can make safely discoverable, in time, with a slow menu}? Interrupting the process of scanning a wall of buttons with tiny symbols on them for a context switch back to traffic and then continuing the scan without generous re-scanning on resume is a skill that few people would ever develop without explicit teaching, so most would simply take their chances, keeping their mind in the scan. Throughput might still be higher than a deep menu, but the effective pauses are way too long (a quick glance up just to stifle the worst fears while the mind is still on the screen/scan does not count). I would not even be surprised of the annoying inclusion of some frequently used functions in the menu wasn't just penny-pinching or a misguided interior designer striving for cleaner lines, but a deliberate decision to train users in the interface system.
- codr7 8y agoThis used to be hilarious, but living it is about as much fun as predicted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA
- lapinot 8y agoAre cars still a topic? Who owns a car here? I don't and i really don't plan to. Public transports, bus, subway, train, carpooling, stuff like that seems more than enough for me, here in europe (france) at least. I think we need to shift the subject here: sure current cars are bad (low reparability mostly), but to what extend do we need personal cars (at least specifically for people living in urbanized areas).
- lapinot 8y agoNot sure about the downvotes, care to explain? I did not expect this would be seen as out of topic.
- RandomBacon 8y agoI did not downvote you, but I imagine it's partly because of this: > Are cars still a topic? Who owns a car here? I think that's very self-centered to imply cars aren't worth talking about just because you don't have one.
- perl4ever 8y agoI think it's perfectly fine to have that opinion, but if you're reading this thread, it's about cars, so it equates to "this thread shouldn't exist" which isn't very constructive.
- lapinot 8y agoI was simply trying to have a broader thinking, not only about how current cars are bloated with hitech but about the place of cars. I care about technology and consumer goods getting more and more opaque, littered with useless electronics (not all, abs and esp have proved themselves). But to have a complete picture one should also take into account their usage of cars, which use case they fulfill, and whether or not this could be done otherwise.
- 8y ago
- thatoneuser 8y agoOne more reason to not buy a new car I guess. Nothing like a latency ridden touch screen that some autist designed.
- erobbins 8y agoOne big reason I looked at (and bought) my current car is that it's got a sea of button and dials. I can't stand touch screens in cars, they are hard to use while driving.
- KorematsuFred 8y agoI find Jeep's Uconnect OS and Console to be pretty good but nowhere close to say iPad in 2015. I hoped Car play and Android Auto would be better but they suck too and have many bugs that make them unusable.
- orev 8y agoRegarding safety issues, many cars also come with an array of collision avoidance and other safety features that could potentially mitigate some of the risk of touch screens.
- NikolaNovak 8y agoI love how that sort of argument keeps coming up. We are going to take UI that works. We will instead make the UI that doesn't work. It'll be more expensive, more prone to failure, and it'll come with safety compromises. To address those compromises, we will install more software that's more expensive and more prone to failure. I understand I'm the minority user who just wants to drive his car safely and use buttons and dials that I can move without staring down at my knees while hurtling down the highway at 100kph while hoping that collision avoidance saves me and paying extra thousands of dollars for the privilege of poor UI. But I do wonder which planet everybody else is on...
- jimktrains2 8y agoHow well do these work if I have wet hands? Like, if it's rainy or snowy and i get in the car, will I be able to control the temperature? Turn on the defroster? Every smart phone I've owned would be anywhere betw 0% and 50% chance of it working.
- Causality1 8y agoI'll happily stick to using my phone mounted to the dash, a 3.5mm input, and a set of bluetooth controls mounted to the driver's side door.
- kitotik 8y agoI’d guess most of the interfaces we see in 2019 are roughly 2009 designs and implementations. I think it’s changing, but many of the manufacturers started out by putting software in the same test/certify cycle as the hardware.
- aussieguy1234 8y agoSoon, with self driving cars, a touchscreen will be all you will have to control the car
- megablast 8y agoAs if 40,000 deaths a year due to cars in the US isn't enough? How there not any laws about making cars more dangerous to drive?
- whenchamenia 8y agoIf my car is unsafe, to me, is it not my own risk assesment to judge? Should we ban extreme sports too? As an adult, I cherish the responsibility of choice.
- jrib 8y agoI don't think it should be only yours, no. If you were primarily only putting your own life in danger, sure. But with driving the way it is now, I do not think it's a leap to make the claim that distracted driving is a danger to not just yourself but to others on the road. It's exactly the kind of thing that the government should be regulating.
- JohnFen 8y ago> If my car is unsafe, to me, is it not my own risk assesment to judge? Not when you are endangering others on the road.
- SubiculumCode 8y ago82% of them were mistakes.
- m-p-3 8y agoNot a fan. Sure, a touch screen makes it easy to have an interface you can change on-the-fly all through software, but it requires eye-hand coordination which forces you to stop watching in front of you. How is this any better than trying to type on a cellphone while driving? I prefer proper dials and buttons in such a situation, which I can easily use without looking at them.
- t0astbread 8y agoDo cars these days also come with non-replacable non-free software or tons of tracking?
- dev_north_east 8y agoMy car has a touch screen and I hate it. Aside from being crap, I cannot safely use it while driving.
- JohnFen 8y agoTouch screen in vehicles are pretty bad, in my opinion. But worse is the whole "internet connected car" business.
- doctorRetro 8y agoMy 12 year old car (perhaps obviously) doesn't have a touch screen, and every time I drive a card that does have on, I find it to be either a complete distraction and/or a UI failure. Cars don't need to be gadgetized.