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When I worked in the auto industry at Buick/Oldsmobile/Cadillac Engineering , I got to see one of these while it was in prototype stage. One reason this didn't

When I worked in the auto industry at Buick/Oldsmobile/Cadillac Engineering , I got to see one of these while it was in prototype stage. One reason this didn't take hold is that they found that this interface forced a driver to take their eyes off the road to do basic functions like changing the climate settings. When I got to ride in this, there was a maintenance screen you could pull up by pressing three of the buttons. This screen had functions like displaying and modifying the throttle angle, fuel-air mixture, etc. While driving around, we were able to change the fuel air mixture such that the car started running badly and we could smell gas.

romwell 5y ago
>One reason this didn't take hold is that they found that this interface forced a driver to take their eyes off the road to do basic functions like changing the climate settings. ...which still applies today just as well as it did back then.
- Arrath 5y ago
  Yet now the common sense reasoning is ignored.
  - leoh 5y ago
    Yes, but — we now have far richer, more colorful, displays with skeumorphic design. They can be more distracting, but it also can mean that it's much easier to figure out how to do what out of the corner of one's eye.
    - theodric 5y ago
      Guess they can put that on my tombstone as I fiddle with the touchscreen or BMW iCrash trying to turn down the airco in traffic
    - Arrath 5y ago
      I sincerely hope you're being sarcastic.
    - IncRnd 5y ago
      And a person still needs to take their eyes off of the road to look at that wonderfully designed touchscreen.
    - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
      Android Auto and Apple CarPlay generates worse reaction times then driving drunk. [0] The large touchscreen trend in automotive is a unnecessary risk for everyone on the road and needs to be reverted. [0] R Ramnath, N Kinnear, S Chowdhury, T Hyatt, (2020) 'Interacting with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay when driving', TRL, Transport Research Foundation, UK https://trl.co.uk/publications/interacting-with-android-auto-and-apple-carplay-when-driving https://trl.co.uk/publications/interacting-with-android-auto...
      - simondotau 5y ago
        Not defending automotive touchsceeens, but there’s a fairly sizeable difference between being “worse than drunk” for a few seconds and being actually drunk for the entire journey. Most people are not terrible at judging risk and generally limit use of touchscreens in moments of elevated risk (e.g. intersections). If it really is a problem we should be able to see it in real world crash statistics.
        DoingIsLearning 5y ago
        > Most people are not terrible at judging risk This is perhaps something you self-perceive that you can do well so others must also be able. It reminds me of those studies of how sleep deprived people do poorly in cognitive tests but still self-assess as having performed well. > world crash statistics Until we start seeing police and investigators actually requesting for manufacturer's infotainment logs, I would question the statistics on this matter. Arguably very few people would admit to have crashed because of infotainment screens unless there was video footage to prove it.
        simondotau 5y ago
        I chose my words carefully. I didn't say that people are good at perceiving risk, I said they were not terrible at it. In the context of this discussion, being the relative levels of risk within different moments of a single driving journey. Most people aren't navigating a touch screen while steering a complex intersection. People are famously bad at assessing disparate risks. The unit micromort is useful for clarifying mortality risk of various behaviours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort ——————— With respect to crash statistics, obviously we're not going to ask people why they crashed. I would have thought this is so self-evidently flawed as a methodology that it didn't warrant pointing out. It's probably safer to assume that most people will lie about why they crashed. Fortunately, the statistical question is much simpler than it might seem: are people crashing newer cars more than older cars? Where answering this question becomes complex to answer accurately is when isolating this from both environmental change and vehicle age, because you can't isolate both variables at the same time.
  - 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
    Common sense in tech went out the window with touchscreens on phones. They even make the cases out of glass now. So not only do they break immediately, they slip out of your hands easier.
    - ddingus 5y ago
      Basically, case required. I gave up, and went for a battery back case. Once I got used to the size, it's all good and I pretty much do not care what they make the phones out of. That said, man... I sure miss my Note 4. Plastic back, plastic all over the place. Great phone, removable battery, fast, the works! Cat peed on it. Total loss.
      - devoutsalsa 5y ago
        I’m gonna have to stop hiding my phone in the litter box.
        throwanem 5y ago
        Some cats are just like that. They know it's yours and they're irked with you for some reason, and this is how they make their point. An ex years back had a cat with that kind of attitude. I had this really nice surround receiver that I'd rescued off a curb and recapped, getting a $600+ unit back into service for about twenty bucks in parts and a few hours' work, and while I wasn't really getting the most out of it, it made a splendid headphone and speaker amp for my office. This cat took a liking to sleeping on top of it, for the warmth of the ventilation slots. No problem - until she got in a mood one evening, looked me dead in the eyes, and proceeded to throw up into the thing. It went bang and sent up a sad little wisp of smoke, and that was all she wrote - cats may not laugh, but they sure as hell smirk. She was probably pissed because my cat had beat her up again, but it wasn't as if she or anyone else could blame him for that; she'd made his kittenhood a living hell, and he carried the grudge all the way into adulthood and twenty pounds of muscle. She couldn't take it out on him any more, but everyone in that house knew I was his person, so she took it out on me. Dogs are a bit smarter, I think, most times - some dogs, anyway. But cats in my experience are considerably more subtle.
  - bullfightonmars 5y ago
    I am a big fan of the approach Mazda has taken. There is a nice sized cetralized screen with no touch controls. All climate and car controls are physical. All infotainment controls are physical and driven by a console dial and shortcuts. It’s the best modern physical ux I have used.
    - Arrath 5y ago
      This sounds like the interface in a slightly older (late 00's, I think?) Audi I once drove. The infotainment system was controlled from a scroll wheel akin to an ipod's, it also functioned as a directional pad for panning around the map. It was just about perfect.
- evilbob93 5y ago
  I would say that we have learned, collectively, some strategies that work, for various definitions of "work".
theodric 5y ago
FFWD to 20xx and we've learned nothing, cf. Tesla, et al.
- ddingus 5y ago
  Oh, we learned it. That's not really the discussion, in my view. It's all about revenue and marketing. The perceived value of those exceeds potential costs and liabilities.
riffic 5y ago
There's nothing like good physical controls. I believe designers call these "affordances", don't they?
- cf100clunk 5y ago
  I have a shopping list of wishes for new cars: physical controls that are shaped/textured/otherwise laid out in ways that make them recognizable by feel or distance from the steering wheel. Don't make me have to try to figure out which rocker switch in an identical row of them performs the task I desire. Likewise, a set of steering wheel mini-paddles similar to those on new Subarus would be appreciated, but especially if they are reassignable by the driver. As for radios, go back to the old paradigm of a left volume knob and a right tuning knob, with concentric controls for reassignable features like balance, fade, bass, treble, etc. that can be easily achieved without scrolling through all of them first.
  - rpmisms 5y ago
    I feel like we could do way better with tactile interfaces for infotainment control. There's got to be some better way than a massive array of single-purpose buttons.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    Yes. I like older cars for these reasons. Basically, if one can drive at night, no cab illumination beyond a dim dash, the controls make sense. They make better sense when fewer of them are not modal.
    - cf100clunk 5y ago
      >They make better sense when fewer of them are not modal. I love vi but not on the dashboard while I'm driving! :D
      - ddingus 5y ago
        Totally! In state terms, a flat model is best. Store as little state in our heads as possible, so the driving, things we don't control have the grey matter resources and capacity necessary to travel safely. Frankly, I like it when my cars don't do much. Some things, like ABS, traction controls are good. They are just on, and with a test or two, I know what they will do, and when they won't do it, I am notified clearly so I can fall back to more manual mode, no automation driving mode gracefully.

romwell 5y ago

>One reason this didn't take hold is that they found that this interface forced a driver to take their eyes off the road to do basic functions like changing the climate settings. ...which still applies today just as well as it did back then.

Arrath 5y ago
Yet now the common sense reasoning is ignored.
- leoh 5y ago
  Yes, but — we now have far richer, more colorful, displays with skeumorphic design. They can be more distracting, but it also can mean that it's much easier to figure out how to do what out of the corner of one's eye.
  - theodric 5y ago
    Guess they can put that on my tombstone as I fiddle with the touchscreen or BMW iCrash trying to turn down the airco in traffic
  - Arrath 5y ago
    I sincerely hope you're being sarcastic.
  - IncRnd 5y ago
    And a person still needs to take their eyes off of the road to look at that wonderfully designed touchscreen.
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    Android Auto and Apple CarPlay generates worse reaction times then driving drunk. [0] The large touchscreen trend in automotive is a unnecessary risk for everyone on the road and needs to be reverted. [0] R Ramnath, N Kinnear, S Chowdhury, T Hyatt, (2020) 'Interacting with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay when driving', TRL, Transport Research Foundation, UK https://trl.co.uk/publications/interacting-with-android-auto-and-apple-carplay-when-driving https://trl.co.uk/publications/interacting-with-android-auto...
    - simondotau 5y ago
      Not defending automotive touchsceeens, but there’s a fairly sizeable difference between being “worse than drunk” for a few seconds and being actually drunk for the entire journey. Most people are not terrible at judging risk and generally limit use of touchscreens in moments of elevated risk (e.g. intersections). If it really is a problem we should be able to see it in real world crash statistics.
      - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
        > Most people are not terrible at judging risk This is perhaps something you self-perceive that you can do well so others must also be able. It reminds me of those studies of how sleep deprived people do poorly in cognitive tests but still self-assess as having performed well. > world crash statistics Until we start seeing police and investigators actually requesting for manufacturer's infotainment logs, I would question the statistics on this matter. Arguably very few people would admit to have crashed because of infotainment screens unless there was video footage to prove it.
        simondotau 5y ago
        I chose my words carefully. I didn't say that people are good at perceiving risk, I said they were not terrible at it. In the context of this discussion, being the relative levels of risk within different moments of a single driving journey. Most people aren't navigating a touch screen while steering a complex intersection. People are famously bad at assessing disparate risks. The unit micromort is useful for clarifying mortality risk of various behaviours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort ——————— With respect to crash statistics, obviously we're not going to ask people why they crashed. I would have thought this is so self-evidently flawed as a methodology that it didn't warrant pointing out. It's probably safer to assume that most people will lie about why they crashed. Fortunately, the statistical question is much simpler than it might seem: are people crashing newer cars more than older cars? Where answering this question becomes complex to answer accurately is when isolating this from both environmental change and vehicle age, because you can't isolate both variables at the same time.
- 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  Common sense in tech went out the window with touchscreens on phones. They even make the cases out of glass now. So not only do they break immediately, they slip out of your hands easier.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    Basically, case required. I gave up, and went for a battery back case. Once I got used to the size, it's all good and I pretty much do not care what they make the phones out of. That said, man... I sure miss my Note 4. Plastic back, plastic all over the place. Great phone, removable battery, fast, the works! Cat peed on it. Total loss.
    - devoutsalsa 5y ago
      I’m gonna have to stop hiding my phone in the litter box.
      - throwanem 5y ago
        Some cats are just like that. They know it's yours and they're irked with you for some reason, and this is how they make their point. An ex years back had a cat with that kind of attitude. I had this really nice surround receiver that I'd rescued off a curb and recapped, getting a $600+ unit back into service for about twenty bucks in parts and a few hours' work, and while I wasn't really getting the most out of it, it made a splendid headphone and speaker amp for my office. This cat took a liking to sleeping on top of it, for the warmth of the ventilation slots. No problem - until she got in a mood one evening, looked me dead in the eyes, and proceeded to throw up into the thing. It went bang and sent up a sad little wisp of smoke, and that was all she wrote - cats may not laugh, but they sure as hell smirk. She was probably pissed because my cat had beat her up again, but it wasn't as if she or anyone else could blame him for that; she'd made his kittenhood a living hell, and he carried the grudge all the way into adulthood and twenty pounds of muscle. She couldn't take it out on him any more, but everyone in that house knew I was his person, so she took it out on me. Dogs are a bit smarter, I think, most times - some dogs, anyway. But cats in my experience are considerably more subtle.
- bullfightonmars 5y ago
  I am a big fan of the approach Mazda has taken. There is a nice sized cetralized screen with no touch controls. All climate and car controls are physical. All infotainment controls are physical and driven by a console dial and shortcuts. It’s the best modern physical ux I have used.
  - Arrath 5y ago
    This sounds like the interface in a slightly older (late 00's, I think?) Audi I once drove. The infotainment system was controlled from a scroll wheel akin to an ipod's, it also functioned as a directional pad for panning around the map. It was just about perfect.
evilbob93 5y ago
I would say that we have learned, collectively, some strategies that work, for various definitions of "work".

theodric 5y ago

FFWD to 20xx and we've learned nothing, cf. Tesla, et al.

ddingus 5y ago
Oh, we learned it. That's not really the discussion, in my view. It's all about revenue and marketing. The perceived value of those exceeds potential costs and liabilities.

riffic 5y ago

There's nothing like good physical controls. I believe designers call these "affordances", don't they?

cf100clunk 5y ago
I have a shopping list of wishes for new cars: physical controls that are shaped/textured/otherwise laid out in ways that make them recognizable by feel or distance from the steering wheel. Don't make me have to try to figure out which rocker switch in an identical row of them performs the task I desire. Likewise, a set of steering wheel mini-paddles similar to those on new Subarus would be appreciated, but especially if they are reassignable by the driver. As for radios, go back to the old paradigm of a left volume knob and a right tuning knob, with concentric controls for reassignable features like balance, fade, bass, treble, etc. that can be easily achieved without scrolling through all of them first.
- rpmisms 5y ago
  I feel like we could do way better with tactile interfaces for infotainment control. There's got to be some better way than a massive array of single-purpose buttons.
- ddingus 5y ago
  Yes. I like older cars for these reasons. Basically, if one can drive at night, no cab illumination beyond a dim dash, the controls make sense. They make better sense when fewer of them are not modal.
  - cf100clunk 5y ago
    >They make better sense when fewer of them are not modal. I love vi but not on the dashboard while I'm driving! :D
    - ddingus 5y ago
      Totally! In state terms, a flat model is best. Store as little state in our heads as possible, so the driving, things we don't control have the grey matter resources and capacity necessary to travel safely. Frankly, I like it when my cars don't do much. Some things, like ABS, traction controls are good. They are just on, and with a test or two, I know what they will do, and when they won't do it, I am notified clearly so I can fall back to more manual mode, no automation driving mode gracefully.