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You know, I think touchscreens are not preferable unless you need/want to be able to have controls for many different systems in the same space (e.g. a smartpho

You know, I think touchscreens are not preferable unless you need/want to be able to have controls for many different systems in the same space (e.g. a smartphone with multiple apps). If you are needing a dedicated control for a high-stakes system, the fact that it's a more modern-looking interface should not matter. Touchscreens are inherently inferior to a mechanical interface, if it's a single-system (i.e. doesn't need to morph into a different and back again).

jakear 7y ago
This is why I detest touchscreens for most car functions. Specifically AC, with old fashioned knobs I have full control over AC without taking my eyes off the road, but nowadays everyone wants to put it on their infotainment system, hidden beneath 4 other buttons.
- adestefan 7y ago
  I have knobs on the climate control on my car, but I still need to look at the screen. The problem is the knobs have no stops so I still need to look down to figure out what they're set to after they update the electronic display. On my old vehicle I knew the whole way to the left was fan blowing on feet, whole way to the right was defroster, and the 2 or 3 clicks in between were different settings of those extremes. Now I have no idea where it ends up when I spin the dial.
  - indigochill 7y ago
    I'm not sure why dials have stopped clicking. Maybe it had some direct mechanical function at one point, but even if that's no longer necessary, the haptic feedback of the click seems just as important. In fact, even on touchscreens there will often be some sort of audiovisual "click" effect, whether that's an icon lighting up, expanding, or making an audible click noise.
  - baroffoos 7y ago
    My method is to turn the knob back to when it stops moving and then it is now in a known state and I know how many clicks each setting is away.
    - adestefan 7y ago
      That’s the thing it doesn’t stop. It’s just a rotary dial with the lightest detents I’ve ever felt. You just spin it and it’s a circular buffer through every setting.
- mhandley 7y ago
  Yesterday I was driving back from Scotland to England, doing 70ish, when we ran into a really heavy thunderstorm. Went from good visibility to almost zero in seconds, and the only thing I could properly see was the crash barrier alongside the lane. I found myself desperately trying to see where the road was, simultaneously trying not to get rear-ended as I slowed up, switch on the rear fog lamps and hazards, max wipers, and select max demist because suddenly the windscreen had fogged up. Was one of those thankfully-rare maximum mental workload moments. Thank god for manual controls and muscle memory. Pretty such I wouldn't have had enough spare attention and/or brainpower left over for operating a touchscreen.
  - blackflame7000 7y ago
    You know, when you take your drivers test in the US, you have to demonstrate your ability to know where all those functions are before you even pull away to start your test.
    - vinay427 7y ago
      This depends on the state/region. There's no universal standard in the US, and some states definitely don't require the operation of all of these controls before the test.
      - blackflame7000 7y ago
        Just because it's not on your test doesn't mean you shouldn't know how to operate your car properly. There's a lot not covered in each test that is still a requirement to operate a vehicle. In California, it is a requirement and all the roads are connected. Blaming a change in weather is unsafe. This is why we have so many accidents when it rains. Do you freak out when it gets dark because there are 4 touchscreen buttons to press to turn your lights on? So why when it rains? If you wanna make excuses for "I got myself into a dangerous situation because I wasn't prepared" go ahead but when it endangers other drivers I have to be critical.
        7y ago
- Someone1234 7y ago
  This is often repeated but not the complete picture. Modern, knob based, vehicle climate control systems actually bury a lot of functionality. For example Toyota's "automatic" AC you can either pick between fully automatic or a subset of manual controls. That's because they ran out of space/complexity headroom for more controls. Touch screen climate control integrates better with voice (which you should be using while driving), offers better fine-grain control, more information (like CURRENT interior temp rather than just outside/target temp), and can offer new functionality (like profiles/pre-sets, additional automatic modes, memory climate, linked seat heat & cool/positional vents, etc). I dislike several touch screen based climate control systems I've used. But that's because they're BAD. Car manufacturers are bad at making touch screen systems. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's a lot of good reasons to go that direction, car manufacturers just need to work on UX a lot.
  - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
    I feel like you're making some very false choices between smarts/voice compatibility and physical controls. Physical buttons and dials for users to interact with that still can be changed by the system are wholly possible. For instance, a rocker switch that sits in the middle can be used to issue on and off commands, while being separate from say, a status light that lets you know whether the device is on or off. Which is to say, I think you're significantly limiting what you believe is possible with physical UX.
    - Someone1234 7y ago
      > Physical buttons and dials for users to interact with that still can be changed by the system are wholly possible. Sure, but irrational. One of the largest benefits of physical controls is physical feedback, like being about to feel if you've reached the max cold/hot ceilings or the state of the switches. To make them voice compatible you have to remove that physical association (e.g. infinite spinners, or blind switches), which means now you need to take your eyes off the road to use them, which was major perk of physical controls. Physical controls that have no physical state are the worst of both worlds. You've lost the physical and electronic control's advantages while adding the disadvantages to both.
- HomeDeLaPot 7y ago
  Absolutely agree. Controls with tactile feedback are literally lifesavers when you're trying to pay attention to the road. Touchscreens are cool, but all the basic controls should be presented as neat panels of knobs and buttons that don't require so much as a glance to operate.
- droithomme 7y ago
  > I detest touchscreens for most car functions Agreed. I consider them dangerous, a threat to public safety, they should be banned by the NTSB, and some cars that use them should be under recall to retrofit them with mechanical controls. Many states are now passing hands free laws that criminalize the use of phones or any other devices that use your hands while driving. The states provide exceptions for car touch screen use, but they shouldn't. They should criminalize the use of all touch screens when driving, not just some.
  - minitoar 7y ago
    This is a good idea but a recall is too much for this to be practical. At least the NTSB should be doing this for all new cars.
  - brewdad 7y ago
    I had this discussion with my teenage child this week and neither of us are sure. Our state requires handsfree phone use but has the car touchscreen exception. Would operating Android Auto or CarPlay be illegal or does it fall under the allowed exceptions?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - johnbrodie 7y ago
    For the life of me I can't understand why touch screens built in to a car are considered "different" than phones. Cities and states are finally waking up and making it a crime to use your phone while driving, how in the world are car touch screens any different?
    - userbinator 7y ago
      I suspect it's more because using your phone is almost definitely not controlling the car, while using a touchscreen that is part of the car's controls is still technically considered "operating the vehicle" and thus not a distraction, regardless of how difficult it is to actually operate.
- mcv 7y ago
  You're not the only one who detests touchscreens in cars. Mazda agrees with you[0]. I think touch screens are primarily useful for complex interfaces and interfaces that change every time. But driving a car needs to be as easy and reliable as possible, because you need those eyes and brainpower on the road, not trying to figure out an interface. [0] https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-purging-touchscreens-from-its-vehicles https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur...
- elihu 7y ago
  For what it's worth, Mazda recently decided that it doesn't want touchscreens in its cars anymore because they're a safety hazard. "Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200335
  - Keyframe 7y ago
    Old Panamera and new Panamera. Disgusting and disorienting touch controls. I honestly can’t tell why would anyone prefer touch controls. I also can’t honestly tell how is Tesla’s screen street legal.
  - sundvor 7y ago
    I had a top model Mazda 3 2014 before (manual Astina) as the #2 and everything about it was just first class usability wise. The rotary navigation knob let me do everything on the screen, and all the buttons for everything else were in intuitive places. Also a great radar cruise control, simple yet highly functional HUD, and things like rear cross alert which is amazing when backing out of 45 degree parking spots next to some big trucks. As much as I'd love a Tesla as my next car I'm not sure if their UI is where I want to go. Presently riding to save my health, and money.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  Plus GUIs are random in temrs of response time...
- rkagerer 7y ago
  I'm going to repeat a comment I made a couple times before as I think it's relevant: In one of the talks at Google I/O a few years ago a VP from Audi (or Volvo?) spoke in a thick and lofty German accent about how "ve haf completely oferhauled ze driver exzperienze". He played a sexy video clip showcasing their new Android infotainment system (something like https://youtu.be/h_7_fKJ0PNs https://youtu.be/h_7_fKJ0PNs), and the first thing I noticed is how they'd taken away my traditional temperature knobs and replaced them with digital touchscreen ones. They looked just like physical ones, and were in the exact same place you would expect (https://9to5google.com/2017/05/15/android-cars-audi/ https://9to5google.com/2017/05/15/android-cars-audi/). So, I've gained absolutely nothing, and now I have to take my eyes off the road and look down at the stupid console just to change the temperature. TLDR: Tacticle feedback is a Good Thing(tm) and designers should cultivate - not fight - muscle memory.
- wincy 7y ago
  There’s a part of me that misses T9 texting on my cell phones. There was a time that I was very good at T9, and because it was deterministic (with auto complete off) you could text without looking and it’d text exactly what you meant. Definitely can’t do that now, and voice controls aren’t as good.
  - batbomb 7y ago
    I can text without looking on iPhone 5/SE, but that went away with the 8
- tfha 7y ago
  The emergency brake. I really need that to be a mechanical lever and not an electrical one. If something is going wrong on the road I need a backup brake that takes me under a second to activate while in a state of panic with my eyes glued to the road and it had better be functional.
  - p2t2p 7y ago
    That’s the worst thing you could do. You block your wheels and you totally loose control over the vehicle. ABS enabled bakes do stop you quicker while maintaining control over the vehicle.
    - jakear 7y ago
      ABS is not much help when your breaks fail. I think that's what GP was referring to.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
paggle 7y ago
Well user familiarity is important but not paramount. The Navy uses Xbox controllers in submarines and found that the learning curve for 19-year-old men is much better that way
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  This is different. The issue here wasn’t the use of a general-purpose device itself but that the device they used (a touchscreen) wasn’t the best fit for the task at hand. Even worse, multiple screens were able to control the ship at the same time which to me seems to be the root cause of the accident. A single touchscreen still wouldn’t have been ideal, but it would’ve still prevented the accident IMO. In the case of using Xbox controllers it’s actually a great idea - these controllers were designed & refined over decades of intensive use by all kinds of people around the world - you wouldn’t be able to do better even if you tried with a custom design. There are obvious concerns regarding reliability of the hardware, but the design itself is in my opinion flawless.
  - amluto 7y ago
    I would add a major caveat: Xbox controllers don’t have physical feedback the way an actual throttle lever or steering wheel does. See, for example, the endless arguments over whether the Boeing control style (where the position of a control means something) is better or worse than the Airbus style (where the position of a control is just an input). If I were designing a destroyer control, I would probably make the throttle be some sort of device where the position of the device indicates the throttle state. But I would certainly make the throttle be a single-purpose device that controls nothing else.
  - bartread 7y ago
    Exactly: Xbox controllers are highly tactile and ergonomically designed so that they can be used effectively without ever having to look at them. In-car touchscreens are a menace, and a design fad that I cannot wait to see pass.
    - zrobotics 7y ago
Iv 7y ago
I really think that nowadays touchscreens are becoming the cheap option. To me when I see a machine with custom designed button I know they had to do some mechanical design, whereas a flat touch screen just says "we slapped a tablet there and hacked an interface on android".
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  Which is ironic because I'd happily pay more not to have one. I bought a replacement for my 10+ year old MP3 player. The new thing is so cool and slick and flat and sophisticated and plain complex, and it's horrible to use. It demands your attention for everything. My old MP3 player with its physical buttons and weird control lever, well, I could work it by touch and muscle memory.
  - arkh 7y ago
    It's why I like my Up!: they decided everyone already has their own touchscreen with infotainment. So you have a dock for your phone, a USB charger and a bluetooth enabled sound system. The rest uses mechanical controls.
  - maxmunzel 7y ago
    That reminds me of how great of a device my iPod shuffle was. To bad the battery died..,
  - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
    It's interesting that despite Apple's no-buttons obsession, even the latest iPhone still has a physical silent-mode switch and volume buttons.
    - toxik 7y ago
      I don’t think Apple is against buttons, just not on the screen. Gotta say I think it’s pretty weird they have a silent mode button, and a Do Not Disturb mode hidden in the controls? What is that duplication about?
hrktb 7y ago
As with everything it depends. Throwing a whole category of input under the bus because it failed when we tried in some uses would be short-sighted. Especially as we’ve had touchscreens for less than a few decades. > inherently inferior / single-system From the top of my head, maps work better on touchscreens. Navigating document trees. Making elements link together, group them. And there must be hundreds of uses not obvious now because we haven’t tried enough. Actually I don’t see how any input system would not have some high-stake single system where it’s a perfect fit. That would just be failure of imagination in my opinion.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  Right. For anything dynamic, an interface that can redraw itself in milliseconds has enormous advantages over mechanical knobs and levers. For managing permanent properties, I think mechanical interfaces are the best option, though of course vastly more costly.
  - hrktb 7y ago
    You are right, but I think it goes beyond that. Any control interface is by definition acting on something dynamic, so even pushing a physical button, we expect the some status to reflect the result instantly. I think touchscreen could be best used as a step above joysticks, when an action cannot just be summed by a on/off (or +/-) state, or a vector in one direction. Imagine in a military setting if you need to open a communication channel with 4 teams moving close to each other to warn them of a nearby enemy. Would you prefer to switch the “open communication” lever, check the team numbers, push the buttons 1, 5, 6, 12 and the “open channel” button. Or circle them directly on the map and click “open communication” on the right side panel? I also think that a lot of touchscreen interface are immature and ill thought, but it would be the same issue with stupid buttons like we can find in so many cars for instance (why would the parking brake switch be next to the A/C on/off ?)
    - other_herbert 7y ago
      I think you just talked me into making some sort of huge steampunk button controller for slack... Have a label with the contact name, an incandescent lamp for new message status then a button to chose that to go to the conversation... Hmmm now all I need to find is some time
jhayward 7y ago
I agree, and would add that a case where the UI is evolving and you want to be able to ship functional updates and changes easily is another 'use a touch screen' indicator.
enobrev 7y ago
This is a pretty old complaint, but my initial issues about the ipod, especially 2nd and 3rd gen was the lack of manual controls. At a younger age, a walkman or discman in my pocket with headphones in my ears was a constant, and I was able to find my way through whatever media was in there quickly and easily by thumb. With the iPod, I could manage sometimes but about half the time I ended up having to take it out and look at what i pressed because it just wasn't working by feel. I remember a couple mp3 players from the time made manual buttons with different sizes and placement and better feedback, but they weren't around for long.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  This seems unfortunately common across all industries. People focus on visual appeal only to the detriment of all other senses. Fruit gets larger and brighter, but the flavor and texture go down. Acoustic paneled ceilings are removed in favor of exposed ductwork and beams, but noise transmission between floors and echoes on the same floor get much worse. (I am torn about this one though) Buttons with tactile guidance feel great but look too 1990s so everything becomes a glass rectangle. I would really really like to see and participate in a renaissance of design that accounts for all of the human senses in all their forms.
Tomte 7y ago
Or if you need to clean/desinfect often. Touchscreens are good in hospitals.
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  Hospitals could also use hand controls made of metal with a high copper or silver content, or foot pedals. Maybe also autoclave-able interface boards, or disposable single-use plastic covers. Too many medical devices are designed to be operated by fingers, rather than a foot. Touchscreens help the problem of hand-transferred contamination, but that is the wrong problem to fix. The problem is that hands are being forced to touch things unnecessarily. No one cares about what feet touch, because feet don't touch patients, and shoe-clad feet can step through a shallow disinfecting bath if necessary.
Kapura 7y ago
This is absolutely correct. Humans are physical creatures living in a physical world and our brains have evolved to interact with that world in a physical way. Touch-screen interfaces, even good ones, necessitate a level of mental abstraction, which is going to make operating in a fatigued state even more difficult.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
  To add, we're analog creatures. For a human to interface with anything digital, we need to drop what we’re doing and fully engage the touch interface. Dangerous when driving, or similar. With analog interfaces, our hands know exactly where to go and what to do just on feel, keeping attention elsewhere. I’m glad the DOD made this decision and I hope others will follow. Just because you can chip it doesn’t mean you should.
  - SilasX 7y ago
    Heh, I just had a vision of some car manufacturer making the steering controlled by a touch screen. (Is there a reason that that would already be illegal?)
    - userbinator 7y ago
      Is there a reason that that would already be illegal? The FMVSS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Motor_Vehicle_Safety_Standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Motor_Vehicle_Safety_S... ) probably has some rule that states a car has to have a physical steering wheel that operates in a particular way, as well as a brake pedal to the left of the accelerator, etc., although I haven't actually looked; I do know, however, that it requires automatic transmissions to have the PRNDL shift sequence.
dustingetz 7y ago
Google Maps
elboru 7y ago
Then we have the “touch buttons”, which doesn’t have any of the benefits of touchscreens (mutability) nor the benefits of regular buttons (touch feedback).
- lucb1e 7y ago
  I agree, but isn't one (tiny, almost never worth it) benefit that it is not a mechanically moving part? Shouldn't it last longer?
smacktoward 7y ago
> i.e. doesn't need to morph into a different and back again The UX terminology for what you're describing is a modal interface: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(user_interface) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(user_interface) ... which is to say, an interface that works differently depending on what "mode" the interface is in. A classic example of a modal interface is vi/vim, where you have to explicitly switch into "editing" mode in order to actually insert text into the document. And a classic demonstration of why modal interfaces are undesirable can be produced simply by taking someone who's never used vi/vim before, sitting them down in front of it, and telling them to enter a line of text. They will start typing, and immediately become confused when the words they typed don't actually show up anywhere. (Or worse, when they happen to have typed a keystroke that corresponds to a vi command and weird stuff they didn't expect starts happening.) As you note, modal interfaces are particularly bad in situations where the user needs to operate the system under pressure -- such as (say) on a warship, where the life of the operator may literally depend on them being able to accomplish tasks quickly and accurately. Modal interfaces force the operator to first orient themselves as to what mode the system is currently in before they can do anything, which slows down even experienced operators, and pull away attention that could otherwise be applied elsewhere. What does all that have to do with touchscreens? Because how a touchscreen operates can be modified with only some programming, they tend to lure developers into building modal interfaces in an effort to cram as many features into them as possible. From a feature-checklist perspective that's great, but from a usability perspective it's a disaster. Anyone who's experienced a modern car infotainment system will understand why -- paging through menu screens to find the one mode with the feature you want while piloting a two-ton hunk of metal at 75mph is a bad combination.
- bagacrap 7y ago
  I don't think you can call modal interfaces inherently bad. I suppose Gmail is a modal interface because if you pull it up and start typing you'll be issuing commands instead of composing an email, until you enter "composition" mode. But what is the alternative? Have every button on the keyboard do the exact same thing regardless of what application or part of an application is currently in use? It's fine if you don't like vim but you don't have to pitch it as an objective universal truth that emacs > vim.
mcswell 7y ago
My Prius has manual controls for the A/C, but I get confused anyway...and, I think, for good reason. What I have: There's one button that toggles A/C on/off; when it's on, a green LED glows in the button (the button is flush at all times). There's an up/down lever that increases/ decreases the fan speed: hold it up, and the fan speed increases by a notch every second or two, and similarly for down. When you let go, the lever reverts to the middle position. The fan speed shows in a series of bars in a tiny display above that switch. There's another up/down lever that controls the temp setting, although exactly what that does depends on whether the A/C is on (I think). Its current setting shows as numbers above that switch. There's another controller that determines whether the air goes to the front seat only, or the front + back; the setting for that appears on the main console screen, but only for a few seconds after you change it--after that, the main console reverts to showing engine status or something, depending on how that's set. Whether it goes to the driver only, or to the driver + front seat passenger, is determined by whether the car thinks there's a passenger (which it determines by weight on the seat). There are two other controls that determine whether the defrosters are on; I can't remember how you tell what they're set for. What I wish: two knobs to control temp and fan settings; clockwise would be higher/ faster. A lever to determine air to the front/back seats. A toggle switch to turn the A/C on/off; up is on. Toggle switches for the front/rear defrosters. What I'm glad I don't have: touch screen controls for all this.

jakear 7y ago

This is why I detest touchscreens for most car functions. Specifically AC, with old fashioned knobs I have full control over AC without taking my eyes off the road, but nowadays everyone wants to put it on their infotainment system, hidden beneath 4 other buttons.

adestefan 7y ago
I have knobs on the climate control on my car, but I still need to look at the screen. The problem is the knobs have no stops so I still need to look down to figure out what they're set to after they update the electronic display. On my old vehicle I knew the whole way to the left was fan blowing on feet, whole way to the right was defroster, and the 2 or 3 clicks in between were different settings of those extremes. Now I have no idea where it ends up when I spin the dial.
- indigochill 7y ago
  I'm not sure why dials have stopped clicking. Maybe it had some direct mechanical function at one point, but even if that's no longer necessary, the haptic feedback of the click seems just as important. In fact, even on touchscreens there will often be some sort of audiovisual "click" effect, whether that's an icon lighting up, expanding, or making an audible click noise.
- baroffoos 7y ago
  My method is to turn the knob back to when it stops moving and then it is now in a known state and I know how many clicks each setting is away.
  - adestefan 7y ago
    That’s the thing it doesn’t stop. It’s just a rotary dial with the lightest detents I’ve ever felt. You just spin it and it’s a circular buffer through every setting.
mhandley 7y ago
Yesterday I was driving back from Scotland to England, doing 70ish, when we ran into a really heavy thunderstorm. Went from good visibility to almost zero in seconds, and the only thing I could properly see was the crash barrier alongside the lane. I found myself desperately trying to see where the road was, simultaneously trying not to get rear-ended as I slowed up, switch on the rear fog lamps and hazards, max wipers, and select max demist because suddenly the windscreen had fogged up. Was one of those thankfully-rare maximum mental workload moments. Thank god for manual controls and muscle memory. Pretty such I wouldn't have had enough spare attention and/or brainpower left over for operating a touchscreen.
- blackflame7000 7y ago
  You know, when you take your drivers test in the US, you have to demonstrate your ability to know where all those functions are before you even pull away to start your test.
  - vinay427 7y ago
    This depends on the state/region. There's no universal standard in the US, and some states definitely don't require the operation of all of these controls before the test.
    - blackflame7000 7y ago
      Just because it's not on your test doesn't mean you shouldn't know how to operate your car properly. There's a lot not covered in each test that is still a requirement to operate a vehicle. In California, it is a requirement and all the roads are connected. Blaming a change in weather is unsafe. This is why we have so many accidents when it rains. Do you freak out when it gets dark because there are 4 touchscreen buttons to press to turn your lights on? So why when it rains? If you wanna make excuses for "I got myself into a dangerous situation because I wasn't prepared" go ahead but when it endangers other drivers I have to be critical.
      - 7y ago
Someone1234 7y ago
This is often repeated but not the complete picture. Modern, knob based, vehicle climate control systems actually bury a lot of functionality. For example Toyota's "automatic" AC you can either pick between fully automatic or a subset of manual controls. That's because they ran out of space/complexity headroom for more controls. Touch screen climate control integrates better with voice (which you should be using while driving), offers better fine-grain control, more information (like CURRENT interior temp rather than just outside/target temp), and can offer new functionality (like profiles/pre-sets, additional automatic modes, memory climate, linked seat heat & cool/positional vents, etc). I dislike several touch screen based climate control systems I've used. But that's because they're BAD. Car manufacturers are bad at making touch screen systems. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's a lot of good reasons to go that direction, car manufacturers just need to work on UX a lot.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  I feel like you're making some very false choices between smarts/voice compatibility and physical controls. Physical buttons and dials for users to interact with that still can be changed by the system are wholly possible. For instance, a rocker switch that sits in the middle can be used to issue on and off commands, while being separate from say, a status light that lets you know whether the device is on or off. Which is to say, I think you're significantly limiting what you believe is possible with physical UX.
  - Someone1234 7y ago
    > Physical buttons and dials for users to interact with that still can be changed by the system are wholly possible. Sure, but irrational. One of the largest benefits of physical controls is physical feedback, like being about to feel if you've reached the max cold/hot ceilings or the state of the switches. To make them voice compatible you have to remove that physical association (e.g. infinite spinners, or blind switches), which means now you need to take your eyes off the road to use them, which was major perk of physical controls. Physical controls that have no physical state are the worst of both worlds. You've lost the physical and electronic control's advantages while adding the disadvantages to both.
HomeDeLaPot 7y ago
Absolutely agree. Controls with tactile feedback are literally lifesavers when you're trying to pay attention to the road. Touchscreens are cool, but all the basic controls should be presented as neat panels of knobs and buttons that don't require so much as a glance to operate.
droithomme 7y ago
> I detest touchscreens for most car functions Agreed. I consider them dangerous, a threat to public safety, they should be banned by the NTSB, and some cars that use them should be under recall to retrofit them with mechanical controls. Many states are now passing hands free laws that criminalize the use of phones or any other devices that use your hands while driving. The states provide exceptions for car touch screen use, but they shouldn't. They should criminalize the use of all touch screens when driving, not just some.
- minitoar 7y ago
  This is a good idea but a recall is too much for this to be practical. At least the NTSB should be doing this for all new cars.
- brewdad 7y ago
  I had this discussion with my teenage child this week and neither of us are sure. Our state requires handsfree phone use but has the car touchscreen exception. Would operating Android Auto or CarPlay be illegal or does it fall under the allowed exceptions?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- johnbrodie 7y ago
  For the life of me I can't understand why touch screens built in to a car are considered "different" than phones. Cities and states are finally waking up and making it a crime to use your phone while driving, how in the world are car touch screens any different?
  - userbinator 7y ago
    I suspect it's more because using your phone is almost definitely not controlling the car, while using a touchscreen that is part of the car's controls is still technically considered "operating the vehicle" and thus not a distraction, regardless of how difficult it is to actually operate.
mcv 7y ago
You're not the only one who detests touchscreens in cars. Mazda agrees with you[0]. I think touch screens are primarily useful for complex interfaces and interfaces that change every time. But driving a car needs to be as easy and reliable as possible, because you need those eyes and brainpower on the road, not trying to figure out an interface. [0] https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-purging-touchscreens-from-its-vehicles https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur...
elihu 7y ago
For what it's worth, Mazda recently decided that it doesn't want touchscreens in its cars anymore because they're a safety hazard. "Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200335
- Keyframe 7y ago
  Old Panamera and new Panamera. Disgusting and disorienting touch controls. I honestly can’t tell why would anyone prefer touch controls. I also can’t honestly tell how is Tesla’s screen street legal.
- sundvor 7y ago
  I had a top model Mazda 3 2014 before (manual Astina) as the #2 and everything about it was just first class usability wise. The rotary navigation knob let me do everything on the screen, and all the buttons for everything else were in intuitive places. Also a great radar cruise control, simple yet highly functional HUD, and things like rear cross alert which is amazing when backing out of 45 degree parking spots next to some big trucks. As much as I'd love a Tesla as my next car I'm not sure if their UI is where I want to go. Presently riding to save my health, and money.
agumonkey 7y ago
Plus GUIs are random in temrs of response time...
rkagerer 7y ago
I'm going to repeat a comment I made a couple times before as I think it's relevant: In one of the talks at Google I/O a few years ago a VP from Audi (or Volvo?) spoke in a thick and lofty German accent about how "ve haf completely oferhauled ze driver exzperienze". He played a sexy video clip showcasing their new Android infotainment system (something like https://youtu.be/h_7_fKJ0PNs https://youtu.be/h_7_fKJ0PNs), and the first thing I noticed is how they'd taken away my traditional temperature knobs and replaced them with digital touchscreen ones. They looked just like physical ones, and were in the exact same place you would expect (https://9to5google.com/2017/05/15/android-cars-audi/ https://9to5google.com/2017/05/15/android-cars-audi/). So, I've gained absolutely nothing, and now I have to take my eyes off the road and look down at the stupid console just to change the temperature. TLDR: Tacticle feedback is a Good Thing(tm) and designers should cultivate - not fight - muscle memory.
wincy 7y ago
There’s a part of me that misses T9 texting on my cell phones. There was a time that I was very good at T9, and because it was deterministic (with auto complete off) you could text without looking and it’d text exactly what you meant. Definitely can’t do that now, and voice controls aren’t as good.
- batbomb 7y ago
  I can text without looking on iPhone 5/SE, but that went away with the 8
tfha 7y ago
The emergency brake. I really need that to be a mechanical lever and not an electrical one. If something is going wrong on the road I need a backup brake that takes me under a second to activate while in a state of panic with my eyes glued to the road and it had better be functional.
- p2t2p 7y ago
  That’s the worst thing you could do. You block your wheels and you totally loose control over the vehicle. ABS enabled bakes do stop you quicker while maintaining control over the vehicle.
  - jakear 7y ago
    ABS is not much help when your breaks fail. I think that's what GP was referring to.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

paggle 7y ago

Well user familiarity is important but not paramount. The Navy uses Xbox controllers in submarines and found that the learning curve for 19-year-old men is much better that way

Nextgrid 7y ago
This is different. The issue here wasn’t the use of a general-purpose device itself but that the device they used (a touchscreen) wasn’t the best fit for the task at hand. Even worse, multiple screens were able to control the ship at the same time which to me seems to be the root cause of the accident. A single touchscreen still wouldn’t have been ideal, but it would’ve still prevented the accident IMO. In the case of using Xbox controllers it’s actually a great idea - these controllers were designed & refined over decades of intensive use by all kinds of people around the world - you wouldn’t be able to do better even if you tried with a custom design. There are obvious concerns regarding reliability of the hardware, but the design itself is in my opinion flawless.
- amluto 7y ago
  I would add a major caveat: Xbox controllers don’t have physical feedback the way an actual throttle lever or steering wheel does. See, for example, the endless arguments over whether the Boeing control style (where the position of a control means something) is better or worse than the Airbus style (where the position of a control is just an input). If I were designing a destroyer control, I would probably make the throttle be some sort of device where the position of the device indicates the throttle state. But I would certainly make the throttle be a single-purpose device that controls nothing else.
- bartread 7y ago
  Exactly: Xbox controllers are highly tactile and ergonomically designed so that they can be used effectively without ever having to look at them. In-car touchscreens are a menace, and a design fad that I cannot wait to see pass.
  - zrobotics 7y ago

Iv 7y ago

I really think that nowadays touchscreens are becoming the cheap option. To me when I see a machine with custom designed button I know they had to do some mechanical design, whereas a flat touch screen just says "we slapped a tablet there and hacked an interface on android".

tempguy9999 7y ago
Which is ironic because I'd happily pay more not to have one. I bought a replacement for my 10+ year old MP3 player. The new thing is so cool and slick and flat and sophisticated and plain complex, and it's horrible to use. It demands your attention for everything. My old MP3 player with its physical buttons and weird control lever, well, I could work it by touch and muscle memory.
- arkh 7y ago
  It's why I like my Up!: they decided everyone already has their own touchscreen with infotainment. So you have a dock for your phone, a USB charger and a bluetooth enabled sound system. The rest uses mechanical controls.
- maxmunzel 7y ago
  That reminds me of how great of a device my iPod shuffle was. To bad the battery died..,
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  It's interesting that despite Apple's no-buttons obsession, even the latest iPhone still has a physical silent-mode switch and volume buttons.
  - toxik 7y ago
    I don’t think Apple is against buttons, just not on the screen. Gotta say I think it’s pretty weird they have a silent mode button, and a Do Not Disturb mode hidden in the controls? What is that duplication about?

hrktb 7y ago

As with everything it depends. Throwing a whole category of input under the bus because it failed when we tried in some uses would be short-sighted. Especially as we’ve had touchscreens for less than a few decades. > inherently inferior / single-system From the top of my head, maps work better on touchscreens. Navigating document trees. Making elements link together, group them. And there must be hundreds of uses not obvious now because we haven’t tried enough. Actually I don’t see how any input system would not have some high-stake single system where it’s a perfect fit. That would just be failure of imagination in my opinion.

BurningFrog 7y ago
Right. For anything dynamic, an interface that can redraw itself in milliseconds has enormous advantages over mechanical knobs and levers. For managing permanent properties, I think mechanical interfaces are the best option, though of course vastly more costly.
- hrktb 7y ago
  You are right, but I think it goes beyond that. Any control interface is by definition acting on something dynamic, so even pushing a physical button, we expect the some status to reflect the result instantly. I think touchscreen could be best used as a step above joysticks, when an action cannot just be summed by a on/off (or +/-) state, or a vector in one direction. Imagine in a military setting if you need to open a communication channel with 4 teams moving close to each other to warn them of a nearby enemy. Would you prefer to switch the “open communication” lever, check the team numbers, push the buttons 1, 5, 6, 12 and the “open channel” button. Or circle them directly on the map and click “open communication” on the right side panel? I also think that a lot of touchscreen interface are immature and ill thought, but it would be the same issue with stupid buttons like we can find in so many cars for instance (why would the parking brake switch be next to the A/C on/off ?)
  - other_herbert 7y ago
    I think you just talked me into making some sort of huge steampunk button controller for slack... Have a label with the contact name, an incandescent lamp for new message status then a button to chose that to go to the conversation... Hmmm now all I need to find is some time

jhayward 7y ago

I agree, and would add that a case where the UI is evolving and you want to be able to ship functional updates and changes easily is another 'use a touch screen' indicator.

enobrev 7y ago

This is a pretty old complaint, but my initial issues about the ipod, especially 2nd and 3rd gen was the lack of manual controls. At a younger age, a walkman or discman in my pocket with headphones in my ears was a constant, and I was able to find my way through whatever media was in there quickly and easily by thumb. With the iPod, I could manage sometimes but about half the time I ended up having to take it out and look at what i pressed because it just wasn't working by feel. I remember a couple mp3 players from the time made manual buttons with different sizes and placement and better feedback, but they weren't around for long.

nitrogen 7y ago
This seems unfortunately common across all industries. People focus on visual appeal only to the detriment of all other senses. Fruit gets larger and brighter, but the flavor and texture go down. Acoustic paneled ceilings are removed in favor of exposed ductwork and beams, but noise transmission between floors and echoes on the same floor get much worse. (I am torn about this one though) Buttons with tactile guidance feel great but look too 1990s so everything becomes a glass rectangle. I would really really like to see and participate in a renaissance of design that accounts for all of the human senses in all their forms.

Tomte 7y ago

Or if you need to clean/desinfect often. Touchscreens are good in hospitals.

logfromblammo 7y ago
Hospitals could also use hand controls made of metal with a high copper or silver content, or foot pedals. Maybe also autoclave-able interface boards, or disposable single-use plastic covers. Too many medical devices are designed to be operated by fingers, rather than a foot. Touchscreens help the problem of hand-transferred contamination, but that is the wrong problem to fix. The problem is that hands are being forced to touch things unnecessarily. No one cares about what feet touch, because feet don't touch patients, and shoe-clad feet can step through a shallow disinfecting bath if necessary.

Kapura 7y ago

This is absolutely correct. Humans are physical creatures living in a physical world and our brains have evolved to interact with that world in a physical way. Touch-screen interfaces, even good ones, necessitate a level of mental abstraction, which is going to make operating in a fatigued state even more difficult.

qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
To add, we're analog creatures. For a human to interface with anything digital, we need to drop what we’re doing and fully engage the touch interface. Dangerous when driving, or similar. With analog interfaces, our hands know exactly where to go and what to do just on feel, keeping attention elsewhere. I’m glad the DOD made this decision and I hope others will follow. Just because you can chip it doesn’t mean you should.
- SilasX 7y ago
  Heh, I just had a vision of some car manufacturer making the steering controlled by a touch screen. (Is there a reason that that would already be illegal?)
  - userbinator 7y ago
    Is there a reason that that would already be illegal? The FMVSS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Motor_Vehicle_Safety_Standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Motor_Vehicle_Safety_S... ) probably has some rule that states a car has to have a physical steering wheel that operates in a particular way, as well as a brake pedal to the left of the accelerator, etc., although I haven't actually looked; I do know, however, that it requires automatic transmissions to have the PRNDL shift sequence.

dustingetz 7y ago

Google Maps

elboru 7y ago

Then we have the “touch buttons”, which doesn’t have any of the benefits of touchscreens (mutability) nor the benefits of regular buttons (touch feedback).

lucb1e 7y ago
I agree, but isn't one (tiny, almost never worth it) benefit that it is not a mechanically moving part? Shouldn't it last longer?

smacktoward 7y ago

> i.e. doesn't need to morph into a different and back again The UX terminology for what you're describing is a modal interface: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(user_interface) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(user_interface) ... which is to say, an interface that works differently depending on what "mode" the interface is in. A classic example of a modal interface is vi/vim, where you have to explicitly switch into "editing" mode in order to actually insert text into the document. And a classic demonstration of why modal interfaces are undesirable can be produced simply by taking someone who's never used vi/vim before, sitting them down in front of it, and telling them to enter a line of text. They will start typing, and immediately become confused when the words they typed don't actually show up anywhere. (Or worse, when they happen to have typed a keystroke that corresponds to a vi command and weird stuff they didn't expect starts happening.) As you note, modal interfaces are particularly bad in situations where the user needs to operate the system under pressure -- such as (say) on a warship, where the life of the operator may literally depend on them being able to accomplish tasks quickly and accurately. Modal interfaces force the operator to first orient themselves as to what mode the system is currently in before they can do anything, which slows down even experienced operators, and pull away attention that could otherwise be applied elsewhere. What does all that have to do with touchscreens? Because how a touchscreen operates can be modified with only some programming, they tend to lure developers into building modal interfaces in an effort to cram as many features into them as possible. From a feature-checklist perspective that's great, but from a usability perspective it's a disaster. Anyone who's experienced a modern car infotainment system will understand why -- paging through menu screens to find the one mode with the feature you want while piloting a two-ton hunk of metal at 75mph is a bad combination.

bagacrap 7y ago
I don't think you can call modal interfaces inherently bad. I suppose Gmail is a modal interface because if you pull it up and start typing you'll be issuing commands instead of composing an email, until you enter "composition" mode. But what is the alternative? Have every button on the keyboard do the exact same thing regardless of what application or part of an application is currently in use? It's fine if you don't like vim but you don't have to pitch it as an objective universal truth that emacs > vim.

mcswell 7y ago

My Prius has manual controls for the A/C, but I get confused anyway...and, I think, for good reason. What I have: There's one button that toggles A/C on/off; when it's on, a green LED glows in the button (the button is flush at all times). There's an up/down lever that increases/ decreases the fan speed: hold it up, and the fan speed increases by a notch every second or two, and similarly for down. When you let go, the lever reverts to the middle position. The fan speed shows in a series of bars in a tiny display above that switch. There's another up/down lever that controls the temp setting, although exactly what that does depends on whether the A/C is on (I think). Its current setting shows as numbers above that switch. There's another controller that determines whether the air goes to the front seat only, or the front + back; the setting for that appears on the main console screen, but only for a few seconds after you change it--after that, the main console reverts to showing engine status or something, depending on how that's set. Whether it goes to the driver only, or to the driver + front seat passenger, is determined by whether the car thinks there's a passenger (which it determines by weight on the seat). There are two other controls that determine whether the defrosters are on; I can't remember how you tell what they're set for. What I wish: two knobs to control temp and fan settings; clockwise would be higher/ faster. A lever to determine air to the front/back seats. A toggle switch to turn the A/C on/off; up is on. Toggle switches for the front/rear defrosters. What I'm glad I don't have: touch screen controls for all this.