5 ms·

The Great Button Purge is continuing unchecked. In the future we will ask ourselves how we could be so foolish to exchange the wonderful tactility of buttons me

The Great Button Purge is continuing unchecked. In the future we will ask ourselves how we could be so foolish to exchange the wonderful tactility of buttons merely to have slightly cleaner and infinitely more frustrating cockpits. Other issues with computers in your car include annoying beeping noises and every once in a while the car thinks it knows how to drive better than you. (i'm not really being fair, without ABS i'd probably be toast by now)

bradleyjg 6y ago
If we get level 3+ self driving cars, which seems fairly inevitable at this point, the importance of a UX that can be used without stealing the driver’s focus becomes much less important.
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  that's not my point. For some reason having 3 dials that can control the whole climate system in the car, and which can be precisely configured in moments isn't enough. Instead we throw the dials away, and we must use an array of buttons, menus, clicker wheels and temperature readouts instead. why car manufacturers decided to go that way, i'm not sure.
  - bonoboTP 6y ago
    Probably something to do with promotions and career incentives. You need to design something novel and complex to demonstrate your value to the company and move ahead. Simply leaving things as they were doesn't demonstrate that you're actively creating new stuff as a project manager/engineer/designer. Also these designs tend to look good and futuristic and innovative on PowerPoint slides and tend to impress higher ups. Similar to how introducing new tech and new dependencies, complicated architectures etc. in a software project seems to be rewarded as long as you jump ship quickly enough before the mess you created blows up.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    It's following smartphone culture. They're not made to phone and it takes efforts and time to call someone. Market dynamics for you. The thing is I'm sure if you try to sell buttons to customer your sales will be lower.
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    It looks modern and "luxury" now. It won't in 10 years. Also saves on component costs, and pushes manufacturing and design issues into software. It's terrible, and I'm hoping there is a reaction against it. This is the #1 thing that stops me from having any interest in buying a Tesla.
    - marshmallow_12 6y ago
      you are right of course. Do you remember around 10 years ago when there was a big push into integrating phones to the touchless infotainment. You are left with dreadful looking things like the Fords with millions and millions of tiny buttons corresponding to nearly every letter of the alphabet. They look hideous, of course. I would pay money just to avoid those awful things. Actually i'm starting to understand the tesla logic a bit...
  - bradleyjg 6y ago
    I agree in my middle age curmudgeon way. But on a nest thermostat this is annoying rather than dangerous. Whereas until we get autonomous vehicles the car version is both.
- youngtaff 6y ago
  I'm not convinced… Think it becomes more important as drivers will be engaging less but it will become more important to do it quickly and easily when they need to
Grakel 6y ago
SEATBELT! - Yes, the car is stopped, I'm dropping my wife off at work and she clicked out one second too soon. SEATBELT! - Hold on, she's trying to tell me something. SEATBELT! - Ok, doing some destructive maintenance when we get home.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  I've been in cars with multiple people who would just ignore the warning when it was a few dings per minute, I assume they are responsible for that change.
  - marshmallow_12 6y ago
    if you ignore the Car, it will punish you by removing further privileges like control of the steering wheel? The logic sounds confusing, the car tells you you must wear a seat belt for safety, you ignore it, so it deafens you and proceeds to steer you into the nearest object. You are not wearing your belt, of course, so you die instantly. This sounds like some conspiracy to enslave all drivers to their sentinent vehicles.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      Equating the replacement of the radio with an annoyance to deafening you and forcing you to crash is a bit extreme.
      - marshmallow_12 6y ago
        read the other comment about this persons experience with lane assist. I think the technologies are connected.
nosianu 6y ago
> every once in a while the car thinks it knows how to drive better than you A few months ago I took a rental car - I don't drive much any more so I don't own one. On the (German) Autobahn there always is a lot of construction going on. There are yellow stripes overriding the white ones for where the lanes are, because often they reroute one or two lanes to the opposite side so the lanes get a lot more narrow for all. You still have four lanes but only 2/3rd of the width, while they work on the now free and unused part. Unbeknown to me my car had active lane keeping assistance and I had a really hard time when it tried, with not insignificant force especially when it surprises you, to keep the car within the white stripes. I could have collided with the car next to me with a little bad luck there. It was not easy to force the steering wheel, against the power of the active system, with only one hand while using the other one to navigate the menus to turn off that darn dangerous system. Or find one of the 50 buttons to do it. The most dangerous part was the initial seconds when I crossed over to the lanes, following the yellow stripes, and suddenly somebody, some force, took the steering wheel and steered in the opposite direction. It took me a few seconds to understand what was going on, I did not expect that there would be a turned-on active system. I had only had experience with passive systems that would not interfere with steering, cruise control and distance-to-car-in-front control as the only active systems. But taking my steering wheel from me???
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  there should be an active button that disables all electronic assists with 1 press. I have no idea how such a dangerous system passed safety regs. Was it a mercedes by any chance?
  - emteycz 6y ago
    I had this experience in a Volvo.
  - nosianu 6y ago
    It was a French model. I forgot which one.
- NoOneNew 6y ago
sircastor 6y ago
As someone who works in automotive on interface and infotainment, and can tell you it’s not continuing unchecked. We’re constantly looking at whether or not it makes sense to put something on a screen and why, and what other options exist for interacting with a feature.
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  I appreciate that but IMHO the options available 20 years ago are still perfectly adequate. Can you explain to me the logic behind obscuring heater controls behind touchscreens and those touch slider things?
  - sircastor 6y ago
    I can’t speak for the whole I industry, can you give me an example? Also, in my experience it doesn’t really matter if it’s a touch screen, a touch control, or a tactile button. People don’t know their dash controls, even if they’ve owned a vehicle for years (and I’m talking about systems that are 100% physical switches). As an exercise, try drawing out what the center stack of your vehicle is, where all the switches are and what they do. Alternatively, the next time you drive try setting the HVAC to something specific without taking your eyes off the road, at all. How long does it take? How much of your attention has shifted from driving?
    - marshmallow_12 6y ago
      yes, but there's a world of difference between a quick glance at the dials and navigating menus, pressing the same buttons multiple times, and constantly having to check you've got the right button/part of the screen. once, to turn up the temperature in a car, all that was needed was a twist of a wheel, now, you are required to go through every single degree celsius to do the same.
      - sircastor 6y ago
        What manufacturer are you thinking of?

bradleyjg 6y ago

If we get level 3+ self driving cars, which seems fairly inevitable at this point, the importance of a UX that can be used without stealing the driver’s focus becomes much less important.

marshmallow_12 6y ago
that's not my point. For some reason having 3 dials that can control the whole climate system in the car, and which can be precisely configured in moments isn't enough. Instead we throw the dials away, and we must use an array of buttons, menus, clicker wheels and temperature readouts instead. why car manufacturers decided to go that way, i'm not sure.
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  Probably something to do with promotions and career incentives. You need to design something novel and complex to demonstrate your value to the company and move ahead. Simply leaving things as they were doesn't demonstrate that you're actively creating new stuff as a project manager/engineer/designer. Also these designs tend to look good and futuristic and innovative on PowerPoint slides and tend to impress higher ups. Similar to how introducing new tech and new dependencies, complicated architectures etc. in a software project seems to be rewarded as long as you jump ship quickly enough before the mess you created blows up.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  It's following smartphone culture. They're not made to phone and it takes efforts and time to call someone. Market dynamics for you. The thing is I'm sure if you try to sell buttons to customer your sales will be lower.
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  It looks modern and "luxury" now. It won't in 10 years. Also saves on component costs, and pushes manufacturing and design issues into software. It's terrible, and I'm hoping there is a reaction against it. This is the #1 thing that stops me from having any interest in buying a Tesla.
  - marshmallow_12 6y ago
    you are right of course. Do you remember around 10 years ago when there was a big push into integrating phones to the touchless infotainment. You are left with dreadful looking things like the Fords with millions and millions of tiny buttons corresponding to nearly every letter of the alphabet. They look hideous, of course. I would pay money just to avoid those awful things. Actually i'm starting to understand the tesla logic a bit...
- bradleyjg 6y ago
  I agree in my middle age curmudgeon way. But on a nest thermostat this is annoying rather than dangerous. Whereas until we get autonomous vehicles the car version is both.
youngtaff 6y ago
I'm not convinced… Think it becomes more important as drivers will be engaging less but it will become more important to do it quickly and easily when they need to

Grakel 6y ago

SEATBELT! - Yes, the car is stopped, I'm dropping my wife off at work and she clicked out one second too soon. SEATBELT! - Hold on, she's trying to tell me something. SEATBELT! - Ok, doing some destructive maintenance when we get home.

boomboomsubban 6y ago
I've been in cars with multiple people who would just ignore the warning when it was a few dings per minute, I assume they are responsible for that change.
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  if you ignore the Car, it will punish you by removing further privileges like control of the steering wheel? The logic sounds confusing, the car tells you you must wear a seat belt for safety, you ignore it, so it deafens you and proceeds to steer you into the nearest object. You are not wearing your belt, of course, so you die instantly. This sounds like some conspiracy to enslave all drivers to their sentinent vehicles.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    Equating the replacement of the radio with an annoyance to deafening you and forcing you to crash is a bit extreme.
    - marshmallow_12 6y ago
      read the other comment about this persons experience with lane assist. I think the technologies are connected.

nosianu 6y ago

> every once in a while the car thinks it knows how to drive better than you A few months ago I took a rental car - I don't drive much any more so I don't own one. On the (German) Autobahn there always is a lot of construction going on. There are yellow stripes overriding the white ones for where the lanes are, because often they reroute one or two lanes to the opposite side so the lanes get a lot more narrow for all. You still have four lanes but only 2/3rd of the width, while they work on the now free and unused part. Unbeknown to me my car had active lane keeping assistance and I had a really hard time when it tried, with not insignificant force especially when it surprises you, to keep the car within the white stripes. I could have collided with the car next to me with a little bad luck there. It was not easy to force the steering wheel, against the power of the active system, with only one hand while using the other one to navigate the menus to turn off that darn dangerous system. Or find one of the 50 buttons to do it. The most dangerous part was the initial seconds when I crossed over to the lanes, following the yellow stripes, and suddenly somebody, some force, took the steering wheel and steered in the opposite direction. It took me a few seconds to understand what was going on, I did not expect that there would be a turned-on active system. I had only had experience with passive systems that would not interfere with steering, cruise control and distance-to-car-in-front control as the only active systems. But taking my steering wheel from me???

marshmallow_12 6y ago
there should be an active button that disables all electronic assists with 1 press. I have no idea how such a dangerous system passed safety regs. Was it a mercedes by any chance?
- emteycz 6y ago
  I had this experience in a Volvo.
- nosianu 6y ago
  It was a French model. I forgot which one.
NoOneNew 6y ago

sircastor 6y ago

As someone who works in automotive on interface and infotainment, and can tell you it’s not continuing unchecked. We’re constantly looking at whether or not it makes sense to put something on a screen and why, and what other options exist for interacting with a feature.

marshmallow_12 6y ago
I appreciate that but IMHO the options available 20 years ago are still perfectly adequate. Can you explain to me the logic behind obscuring heater controls behind touchscreens and those touch slider things?
- sircastor 6y ago
  I can’t speak for the whole I industry, can you give me an example? Also, in my experience it doesn’t really matter if it’s a touch screen, a touch control, or a tactile button. People don’t know their dash controls, even if they’ve owned a vehicle for years (and I’m talking about systems that are 100% physical switches). As an exercise, try drawing out what the center stack of your vehicle is, where all the switches are and what they do. Alternatively, the next time you drive try setting the HVAC to something specific without taking your eyes off the road, at all. How long does it take? How much of your attention has shifted from driving?
  - marshmallow_12 6y ago
    yes, but there's a world of difference between a quick glance at the dials and navigating menus, pressing the same buttons multiple times, and constantly having to check you've got the right button/part of the screen. once, to turn up the temperature in a car, all that was needed was a twist of a wheel, now, you are required to go through every single degree celsius to do the same.
    - sircastor 6y ago
      What manufacturer are you thinking of?