4 ms·

I'd be interested to hear of cases where touch screens are an obvious win. Zooming a map is great, but you don't need touch for that. Physical controls.

vinay427 6y ago
I find zooming/panning/rotating maps without a touchscreen to be awkward on even the most modern car interfaces that I've tried with trackpad joysticks. IMO there's an obvious win there for touchscreens which can do all three in the same fluid movement.
kevincox 6y ago
The biggest advantage of touch screens is that they are infinitely reconfigurable. So things like phones where you can have dozens of different types of applications running in the span of a day they provide a clear win. Another advantage is that you can share control space with display space but I think this is rarely a big advantage (other than the benefits described above in that you can reconfigure what is control-space and display space). For most devices that aren't general purpose computers I don't think touchscreens are beneficial. For example in a car there isn't that much variability in what you do so there is little benefit of a touchscreen so it doesn't outweigh the downsides.
- pixelbash 6y ago
  > The biggest advantage of touch screens is that they are infinitely reconfigurable Not sure I buy this line of thought. A computer keyboard is an example of an infinitely configurable physical interface
  - kevincox 6y ago
    Keyboards aren't really configurable at all. I mean sure, you can decide what each button does in a given context but at the end of a day you have a fixed number of buttons. With a touchscreen you can change the size of the buttons, because if you have fewer options you can make them easier to hit. Or you can have (limited) other forms of control. You can have "analog" sliders and rotating dials. Additionally you can configure between output and input which is valuable when you are space constrained. (which is probably not an issue in cars)

vinay427 6y ago

I find zooming/panning/rotating maps without a touchscreen to be awkward on even the most modern car interfaces that I've tried with trackpad joysticks. IMO there's an obvious win there for touchscreens which can do all three in the same fluid movement.

kevincox 6y ago

The biggest advantage of touch screens is that they are infinitely reconfigurable. So things like phones where you can have dozens of different types of applications running in the span of a day they provide a clear win. Another advantage is that you can share control space with display space but I think this is rarely a big advantage (other than the benefits described above in that you can reconfigure what is control-space and display space). For most devices that aren't general purpose computers I don't think touchscreens are beneficial. For example in a car there isn't that much variability in what you do so there is little benefit of a touchscreen so it doesn't outweigh the downsides.

pixelbash 6y ago
> The biggest advantage of touch screens is that they are infinitely reconfigurable Not sure I buy this line of thought. A computer keyboard is an example of an infinitely configurable physical interface
- kevincox 6y ago
  Keyboards aren't really configurable at all. I mean sure, you can decide what each button does in a given context but at the end of a day you have a fixed number of buttons. With a touchscreen you can change the size of the buttons, because if you have fewer options you can make them easier to hit. Or you can have (limited) other forms of control. You can have "analog" sliders and rotating dials. Additionally you can configure between output and input which is valuable when you are space constrained. (which is probably not an issue in cars)