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> I noticed my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. eh I'm in my 30s and am angry at car dashboards that clearly ha

> I noticed my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. eh I'm in my 30s and am angry at car dashboards that clearly have GUI buttons on them but can only be used by the corresponding physical button on the side, or in some random other place nearby. Be nice if they did both if use while driving and not looking at that interface is the concern. I want to sink all of those cars. Like, in the ocean.

barrkel 6y ago
Similarly but contrariwise, I want to sink those driving devices which have removed physical buttons and mandated screen taps precisely because they can't be used without taking your eyes off the road. You can feel physical buttons. If the UI has a consistent menu system and a reset mechanism (e.g. a home button), you can navigate it blind. If it has different input modalities (switches, dials, toggles of different shapes and sizes) for different functions, even better.
randomdata 6y ago
The car I have allows both touching the elements on the screen as well as using physical knobs and levers to control the same elements. When it was new, I found myself reaching for the screen, but now that it has some age on it, the physical controls win every time. Which leads me to believe that touch is better for discoverability, but not general use. Which kind of mirrors my experience using computers with physical input devices versus touchscreen tablets/phones.
- enobrev 6y ago
  I feel like a hybrid would be excellent. A big, advanced system built into a touchscreen UI, with a series of physical buttons and knobs around / beneath that can control that UI - with the ability to adjust presets for those physical knobs and buttons to driver-preference Edit: Of course I think it's been well proven that most car companies tend to write bad UIs so I don't imagine this will work as well as I envision it.
jerrysievert 6y ago
for a while I was traveling quite a bit, which meant a lot of rental cars (I drove so many cars in the fleet that I'd often get duplicates that my phone was already set up in). the most annoying thing that I ran into was a ford running an early version of Microsoft's car dashboard (I think it was sync?) - when a popup came up in front of the speedometer with an "ok" button to dismiss it. it was on the freeway, and it wasn't until I made it to campus that I was able to get it to go away by powering down and powering up the car (rebooting it). it wasn't a touchscreen, so no idea why anyone thought a dialog box was needed, and it was cut off, so I still don't know what it wanted me to do.

barrkel 6y ago

Similarly but contrariwise, I want to sink those driving devices which have removed physical buttons and mandated screen taps precisely because they can't be used without taking your eyes off the road. You can feel physical buttons. If the UI has a consistent menu system and a reset mechanism (e.g. a home button), you can navigate it blind. If it has different input modalities (switches, dials, toggles of different shapes and sizes) for different functions, even better.

randomdata 6y ago

The car I have allows both touching the elements on the screen as well as using physical knobs and levers to control the same elements. When it was new, I found myself reaching for the screen, but now that it has some age on it, the physical controls win every time. Which leads me to believe that touch is better for discoverability, but not general use. Which kind of mirrors my experience using computers with physical input devices versus touchscreen tablets/phones.

enobrev 6y ago
I feel like a hybrid would be excellent. A big, advanced system built into a touchscreen UI, with a series of physical buttons and knobs around / beneath that can control that UI - with the ability to adjust presets for those physical knobs and buttons to driver-preference Edit: Of course I think it's been well proven that most car companies tend to write bad UIs so I don't imagine this will work as well as I envision it.

jerrysievert 6y ago

for a while I was traveling quite a bit, which meant a lot of rental cars (I drove so many cars in the fleet that I'd often get duplicates that my phone was already set up in). the most annoying thing that I ran into was a ford running an early version of Microsoft's car dashboard (I think it was sync?) - when a popup came up in front of the speedometer with an "ok" button to dismiss it. it was on the freeway, and it wasn't until I made it to campus that I was able to get it to go away by powering down and powering up the car (rebooting it). it wasn't a touchscreen, so no idea why anyone thought a dialog box was needed, and it was cut off, so I still don't know what it wanted me to do.