27 ms·
I work for an avionics manufacturer and I can assure you most of our upcoming comercial systems (and even a healthy portion of government ones) feature touch sc
by CivBase 7y ago
I work for an avionics manufacturer and I can assure you most of our upcoming comercial systems (and even a healthy portion of government ones) feature touch screen inputs.
- hnarn 7y agoWhat exact type of input is being grabbed by these screens? "Critical pilot systems"? Touchscreens already exist in airliners, for systems used by crew and passengers, but that's beside the point.
- chc 7y agoCritical driver systems (i.e. steering, signaling, acceleration and brakes) aren't controlled by touchscreen in any car I know of either, so if non-critical systems are beside the point, what is the criticism here? Or are you thinking of some particularly extreme cars that are even more reliant on touchscreen than the Model 3?
- hnarn 7y agoI was just trying to make an illustrative example of why I think static interfaces are safer and therefore better, at the end of the day it comes down to subjectivity for the part of a positive user experience, but when it comes to safety the trend is, to me, worrying. I also imagine that there are other reasons for both airliners and cars to replace buttons with touchscreens, namely that of cost instead of prioritizing safety and stability, and in general I am not a fan of that trade-off. But I'm also not claiming to be representative of the automobile market in general.
- light_hue_1 7y agoIf you believe that aviation not having touch screens means that cars should not either, then evidence to the opposite should change your mind. The A350 and 777X both have touch screens now. It's not just Boeing, who you accused of being backwards who are doing this, Airbus is too, along with every other manufacturer. Garmin and BendixKing now offer touch screens and it's clearly the future of GA as well not just commercial aviation. Everyone believes that this will increase safety. That showing only the relevant information in a tunable and interactive way will decrease distractions and help focus on what matters. The idea that this is to save money is totally absurd! A 777X is $350 million dollars. Any accident would cost an astronomical amount compared to the cost of switches. Even leaving that aside. The touchscreens are actually far more expensive than the old instruments. This is just a way for Honda to cover up the fact that they can't write software, can't design a reasonable UX, don't want to spend money on it, and want to live as if it's 1999 forever.
- burfog 7y agoI'd pay extra for a 1999-style car. That year was near the peak for car design quality. Fancy cars hit the peak around 1995, and cheap ones hit the peak around 2010 or 2015.
- ClumsyPilot 7y agoWho is this everyone that believes touchscreens will increase safety? I could not find any reputable sources for this claim. Furthermore, tactile feedback is safety. The fact that each switch has a feel, a size, a position - that let's your brain know what you are doing without having to take eyes off the road.
- Retric 7y agoI have seen side mirrors controlled by touch screen, as well as some headlight functions. Which is are critical safety systems, though rarely an issue. Still, if you’re borrowing your wife’s car it’s easy to realize you don’t have great blindspot visibility at which point looking at a touch screen is very distracting.
- pc86 7y agoI fly recreationally and all the higher end gear has touch screens. Some of them are redundant with paths using hardware controls or not. But that's definitely the minority. There are a slew of critical operations that I simply cannot complete without interacting with a touch screen. Not saying it's right or wrong but your original post is 100% incorrect.
- WalterBright 7y agoMy iphone touch screen won't work if my fingers aren't clean and dry.
- pc86 7y agoThey are not capacitive
- GuB-42 7y agoAre these things certified? Many recreational pilots fly with uncertified gear (GPS in particular), and even regular smartphone/tablet apps. They also have the required paper documentation and certified instrument but that's just to cover themselves, and as a backup.
- andrewg 7y agoGarmin has quite a few certified touchscreens these days, some intended for panel upgrades (e.g. https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/67886 https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/67886) and even some in new light jets (e.g. https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/66916 https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/66916). Also, some airlines now have officially certified iPads as EFBs, meaning pilots no longer need to carry paper backups.
- pc86 7y agoYes this has all been in Pipers and Cessnas.
- hyperbovine 7y agoNo offense intended, but the sector as a whole has been doing all sorts of dumb sh*t recently when it comes on-board electronics (787 batteries, 737max MCAS, A380 wiring, F35 ... everything). This doesn't exactly refute OP's point, is all I'm saying. Maybe airspace firms shouldn't be taking their design cues from Cupertino.
- arcticfox 7y agoOP was making an appeal to authority, that avionics manufacturers know what they're doing and decided against touchscreens. So IMO it does strongly refute OP's argument. (That's not to say that OP is wrong, of course, just that their argument isn't really a valid one. My belief is that touch screens would suck for flying a plane, but I'm not a pilot.)
- hnarn 7y agoWhat I was trying to say was more that avionics are by nature risk averse, so if they're doing something it's probably worth understanding why. So it's not so much "it's safe because it's in an airplane", I was more going for "consider why this very safety-focused environment looks different". So sure, I might be in the wrong if what I said was interpreted as a simple appeal to authority, but I was trying to get a point across that people spent a lot of time trying to make and keep these systems secure, so let's try to learn from that instead of invalidate it as being simply old or outdated (which Boeing themselves ironically seem to be guilty of).
- barkingcat 7y agoIt is very clear that the aviation industry is NOT risk averse. They are averse to losing money (via needing to spend money to redesign systems, recertify interfaces, re-train pilots, rebuy new equipment and simulators, all of those reduce risk but are capital intensive). But they are no longer risk averse. They might never have been risk averse at all - the roots of the aviation industry is exceedingly risk seeking in the first place (to fly is itself a risk seeking activity - and that's something understood by all pilots and all aviation and aerospace engineers on day 1 of wanting to fly) You can say the civilian oversight groups that seek to regulate the industry are risk averse, but the companies that build the planes themselves, if they had their say, we'd be flying mach 3 upside down all day.
- sizzle 7y agofunction (buttons) > form (touch screen) Usable inputs save lives.
- est31 7y agoIn airplanes touchscreens are less of an issue than in cars. In cars you have to have a hand on the wheel 99% of the time, and your gaze on the road. You can't afford interaction with a complicated non-haptic touch screen menu. In airplanes it's different. Here, outside of takeoff and landing, it's OK to look at a screen for 10 seconds while interacting with it with a hand.
- vwcx 7y agoNot necessarily. There are many moments during the operation of an aircraft where full attention is paramount. Yes, you see a pilot leaving the cockpit to use the lavatory while the co-pilot is monitoring the autopilot, but the margins are just as small as operating a motor vehicle.
- thoraway1010 7y agoAbsolutely not true. In cruise, stabilized, especially with AP - the margins are MUCH MUCH higher. Pilots have fallen asleep (two of them) - overflown airports still landed etc.
- saiya-jin 7y agoI think major difference is commercial airliner vs say fighter jet. As a layman it still seems pretty wrong to make most of the screen highly dynamic. Maybe designated one on the side. Back to the topic - in car, unless specifically intended for other passengers, driver should never stare on some stupid screen in a place way off the line of sight for driving. Whenever I do that even for a split second in my 15-year old bmw (checking if that knob is really for what I want), there can be an atomic blast in front of me and I wouldn't see it.
- sudosysgen 7y agoFighter jets are starting to use touchscreens, too.
- rhizome 7y agoTouch screens for all purposes? Probably good to distinguish if some things, even at your company, should not be dynamic (are they dynamic?). Some life-critical thing that is vulnerable to an uncovered sneeze?
- gcb0 7y agoI guess you work for garmin. Garmin have ZERO experience with avionics. They just sell large screen GPS that everyone want because GPS is an output device. The fact that you can zoom/etc with touch is just because garmin have ZERO experience with avionics, and even then, there are some few hardware buttons there already. My guess is that the second or third version will have many more. Another consequence is that the large GPS screen have to replace many components on the dashboard of a 2 seater plane, because they originally didn't have space for a large screen (most private planes flown today were made in the 70s!). by consequence, everyone gives up their radio etc with decent buttons because they really, really want a GPS with a huge screen, and garmin knowing this have to include a crappy radio etc in their unit. But given the option, everyone would want a bigger/modern dashboard instead and dedicated devices. Just because something is selling it is not because it is good. See the "doctor killer" planes.
- PaulHoule 7y agoA plane isn't a good analogy for a car. Airplanes have keypads that control complex functions on a screen, going from that kind of keypad to a touchscreen is logical. In the case of cars, a touchpad is overkill for controlling the cabin temperature, stereo volume, etc.
- yason 7y agoI wonder about the temperature settings. I have manual dials but I basically set them to 21C for winter and 19C for summer. Other than that, I don't readily touch the hvac panel at all: I could certainly do those rare adjustments over a touchscreen. I can imagine people would need to tune a radio panel more often, so at least basic functionality would be good to have as physical inputs. But even then basic radio functions are usually accessible via steering wheel buttons.
- astrodust 7y agoIt's logical? It's absurd. You can usually pull over a car and get out in the case of a critical hardware failure. There is rarely such a luxury in a plane.
- mc32 7y agoThat’s too bad. Imagine unresponsive touchscreen due to dry skin or wearing gloves, or hands are too sweaty.... or the controller goes out, etc. Flight plans is one thing but controls are all together a different sort of thing. Why ask for trouble?
- joyj2nd 7y agoTouchpads can't even be operated by a cat https://ask.metafilter.com/91541/Why-cant-Godfrey-work-the-trackpad https://ask.metafilter.com/91541/Why-cant-Godfrey-work-the-t...
- robocat 7y agoActually the thread showed they can. The theory I thought was reasonable for why the OP had troubles, was that Mac touch pads are sensitive enough to treat the separate pads of the paws as multitouch. Testable: try with individual pad of paw on a Mac touchpad.
- klibertp 7y agoI have no idea how, but my smartwatch touchscreen remains responsive underwater, in a bathtub or swimming pool. It was with on every workout, and it both endured the energetic movements and sweaty hands were not an issue. The thing has more RAM and CPU power than my desktop in first half of the 90s, runs Linux, and is programmed with JS (well, there's gotta be some faulty part in every design). Anyway, if I can buy such a thing for a few hundred dollars, then - unless there are some physical limitations I'm not aware of - it should be possible for people who build the planes.
- xt00 7y agoThe sad but real reason a ton of this is happening is one very big word that is typically not present in things like car / airplane design: flexibility... flexibility to change the user controls, flexibility to fix problems, flexibility to let the SW team work up until the last minute to get stuff working, and the second part that goes with this is cost. Touchscreens mean increased flexibility for the design and better control over cost to deliver features. Unfortunately, if the display dies and you can't see anything, then the car or plane may crash... so sadly it will probably take a couple of those events happening for this to be changed to have some kind of redundant systems that the pilot can use when the display dies suddenly.
- dirtyid 7y agoPlanes have multiple screens which provides more redundancy vs broke physical switches.
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y agoYou'll often see screens surrounded on all sides by physical buttons. The screen can be updated and changed over time but the interaction is still physical.
- im3w1l 7y agoUser controls should never change. It leads to people getting confused and making mistakes.
- paulyg 7y agoIf something needs that much flexibility in it's UI that people are messing with it at the last minute it doesn't belong as something people should be messing with while driving. The OP talks about HVAC controls. How much flexibility do you really need for that? The interface has been standardized for a long time. It's a known quantity both from a design perspective and user perspective. Ditto for common audio controls like volume, pause/play, skip.
- cerebellum42 7y agoThere already are redundant systems like the ones you want. Multiple displays. Most planes that are heavily reliant on screens for instruments/navigation, touchscreens or not, have two of them at least. If one fails, there is a button you press which condenses the information previously shown distributed over both screens on each individual screen (so, the remaining one if one has failed).
- squarefoot 7y agoTouch screens add multiple points of failure to a device that, if properly built, would last decades. A single glitch in a software driving a screen could render useless all touch inputs displayed on it, information loss aside. I'm all for mechanical switches everywhere. As for potentiometers, sliders etc, we already have optical and mechanical encoders that hardly fail, or if/when they do, it happens gracefully leaving enough time for replacement. To me, the reason for touch screens is either cost or aesthetics, or both.
- vel0city 7y agoIn many of the newer systems, all those physical dials and switches are just inputs to the computer system which ultimately decides to do what the user is requesting. A bug which would prevent inputs from working right on a touchscreen could also happen on reading inputs on other systems. Not that I'm arguing for touchscreen controls, just that these days having a physical knob does not mean you're directly manipulating things. Software glitches can still muck up physical controls.
- twomoretime 7y agoIs this a good place for redundant microservices? Each service handles data from a handful of physical of physical knobs. At least that way you don't have the UI as a single point of failure.
- mattmanser 7y agoThere is no good point for "redundant" microservices. They are, by very definition, an additional point of failure as you're always adding an additional interface. They're good for scaling, not for redundancy, and even that's wishful thinking for most applications. EDIT: You could argue that microservices might free up the UI thread from locking mistakes, but if your team is going to make locking mistakes, you're also going to make mistakes in the microservice interfaces, so what's the point?
- 7y ago
- jdmg94 7y agoI wouldn't fly on a touchscreen plane, imagine Boeing going corporate with their airplane screens, nope, nope, nope.
- astrodust 7y agoAdding "touch screen calibration failure" to the list of things that can kill you.
- prox 7y agoI pray you all read the ux bible About Face on interaction design.
- jacquesm 7y agoBig mistake, imnsho. It will work fantastic right up to the point where you actually need that control in an emergency and then it will fail you because it is impossible to hit the right area consistently in a bucking aircraft. It also requires visual confirmation rather than tactile confirmation, which requires you to take away your attention from the surroundings, something you do at your peril in aircraft.
- boznz 7y agoand all SCADA systems
- chiefalchemist 7y agoSo in due time we can be almost certain to hear about a crash due to a bad touch or a wonky screen. New isn't always better.
- api 7y agoThe big driver for this is reducing the number of components and thus manufacturing cost, and secondarily being trendy.
- dr-detroit 7y agoAngular or React?
- LMMojo 7y agoWhat happens during turbulence when you can't accurately touch a specific point on the screen? It doesn't take much turbulence, either, as I cannot reliably use the GPS on my phone, while driving, when it's in its (very stable) mount, and I'm on an average paved road. Touch screen looks awesome on Star Trek, but in actual use it's an inaccurate, attention-magnet, nightmare.
- numpad0 7y agoWhich control do you exactly need to adjust in the middle of a turbulence?
- omegant 7y agoMost of them, as you find turbulence in all fases during the flight.
- nettdata 7y agoRoll? Pitch? Yaw? Engine RPM? Prop pitch? Those are “most” of the controls... none of which require touchscreens. What controls are you referring to specifically?
- averros 7y agoRadios and navaid settings. Flight plan. Selected approach. When you're flying on instruments you're twisting knobs and pushing buttons rather frequently.
- jacobwilliamroy 7y agoMurderers!
- rswail 7y agoThere's lots of discussion here about the benefits or otherwise of analog switches etc, but it's not about the failure or otherwise of the input device, it's about the affordance to the pilot. Well designed physical UI allows pilots to use touch and haptic feedback independent of sight. Whether the switch/dial/whatever is analog behind the scenes or is a digital input to the control infra is not the important thing.
- gameswithgo 7y agoplease tell then to stop
- averros 7y agoTry to punch stuff into touch screen when a/c is bouncing around in moderate chop. Then you really wish for hardware buttons and something to rest your fingers on like a bezel. The trend towards touchscreens on avionics is idiotic - apparently no actual pilots were asked for their opinion. (And, yes, I'm an instrument-rated pilot).
- mihaaly 7y agoI hope this is known to the manufacturer: "The US Navy will replace its touchscreen controls with mechanical ones on its destroyers After a deadly 2017 crash between a destroyer and an oil tanker" https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/11/20800111/us-navy-uss-john-s-mccain-crash-ntsb-report-touchscreen-mechanical-controls https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/11/20800111/us-navy-uss-john...