31 ms·

A UX designer walks into a Tesla Bar

• wilg 5y ago
  The redesign is generally fine, but they definitely moved a few features to places that are less convenient. It's not a major issue for me, but I do find the climate controls more annoying now. They haven't done another update yet, so fingers crossed that they incorporate some of this feedback.
  • tremon 5y ago
    On the other hand, I'm one of those luddites that thinks that having to operate a touch screen while driving is by definition bad design. I dread the day when I can't operate my car by touch anymore, so the more people complain about these things, the better my chances when buying my next car.
    • wilg 5y ago
      I simply do not agree with you. But the good news is nearly every car has one million buttons.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• GoOnThenDoTell 5y ago
  I hope someone comes out with an aftermarket physical buttons panel for common operations
  • Hamuko 5y ago
    The Model S is now what, 10 years old? If it hasn't happened now, I'm not that confident in someone making it.
    • jpalomaki 5y ago
      Slightly related, just saw on Youtube video about Model 3 dashboard replacement which adds display behind the steering wheel. I was quite surprised to find out this kind of modifications exist and how well it seemed to fit there. Video: https://youtu.be/mQM8PH9VLI8 https://youtu.be/mQM8PH9VLI8 Product page: https://the-evshop.com/products/integrated-dashboard-heads-up-display-for-tesla-model-3-y https://the-evshop.com/products/integrated-dashboard-heads-u...
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• floatingatoll 5y ago
  I hope they filed an NHTSA complaint, as they’re describing a software update that will increase the risk of collisions, injuries, and/or deaths if left uncorrected. US Tesla owners, if your Tesla is affected by this issue, and you believe that removing the one-tap defroster button is a safety risk to your driving, please report that ASAP: https://www.nhtsa.gov/report-a-safety-problem https://www.nhtsa.gov/report-a-safety-problem
  • notacoward 5y ago
    That's similar to my own thought. An update that affects controls for safety-relevant features - and defrost certainly qualifies - should require prior approval just like a physical update to each year's model would. This update should never have reached cars on the road.
    • floatingatoll 5y ago
      That’s not our call to make when filing a safety complaint. The NHTSA is tasked with evaluating safety complaints from drivers, interpreting the rules and law, and reaching a judgment on whether a response should occur. Our part in the NHTSA process is to file the safety complaint, not to tell them how to do their job in response to it. For those of you that file a complaint, please maintain your focus on the safety issues the update has created in your driving, rather than verging into specific demands of outcome. “I can’t find my front defroster while I’m driving since XYZ software update” is really great and specific, “so therefore Tesla and NHTSA should do ABC” is unhelpful and does not strengthen your case. No need to backseat-drive the NHTSA, just please do get the safety report filed.
      • notacoward 5y ago
        > when filing a safety complaint Please try to widen your focus beyond that one single act. NHTSA and other bodies have a general responsibility to ensure safety of vehicles on the road, including preemptive as well as retrospective actions. That's what I was referring to. I see from other comments that you've been made aware (especially by Syonyk) of the relevant standards and procedures. Ignoring them now seems like just a way to pick a fight with someone who probably agrees with you on the general principle. > No need to backseat-drive the NHTSA That's an unnecessarily and counter-productively pejorative phrasing (and it's not particularly clever wordplay either BTW). We as citizens do indeed have a right (if not a duty) to express opinions about the regulations imposed by our government agencies. The fact that Tesla's update affecting safety could go out with no oversight is simply wrong. Raising that awareness - not just within NHTSA via a safety complaint - is part of making the wrong right.
• runnerup 5y ago
  Assuming vehicle manufacturers even need context switching (apparently they do...) I'd love to see an innovation to use OLED pushbuttons[0]. Some companies make these specifically for automotive applications even though I don't think any brands are using them at the moment. You can make the physical button/key show any icon you want, and it can change so you can have menu-style systems without losing the physical pushbuttons. 0: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/nkk-switches/ISC15ANP4/2039171 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/nkk-switches/ISC1...
  • floatingatoll 5y ago
    Is the front defroster so significant a safety concern that it must always be possible to activate with one touch/press/turn? If so, then Tesla would need to dedicate one such button to the front defroster regardless of menu state.
    • cameldrv 5y ago
      It’s pretty important. The windshield will sometimes fog up suddenly while driving. The driver needs to utilize extra care and pay more attention looking out a partially fogged windshield at the exact moment that they are forced to go through menus in a touch screen.
    • Syonyk 5y ago
      IMO, yes. Defrost behavior and timing is "serious business" in the car business. Not only is it specifically discussed in the vehicle regulations (https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.103 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.103), it has specific SAE standards for testing (https://www.sae.org/standards/content/j381_202006/ https://www.sae.org/standards/content/j381_202006/). I don't know if any of them specifically require a certain number of presses or such - I've never had an "old style" knob climate system that would automatically turn the blower to max in the defrost position, though that certainly helps the process. But neither have I ever run into a vehicle where the functionality is actively hidden. Scan for the defrost logo, front and rear, interact with the proper controls. To remove this obvious behavior from a car randomly speaks to an insane level of disconnect between the designers (who mostly operate on the concept of change for the sake of change, because any change makes it look new) and users (who, generally, would rather things stay where they were). I don't care if my car UI wins international design awards for Excellence in Minimalism (ExMn) or something. I care that I can use it to make the various systems do what I want, or put them in a sane "Automatic" mode that then does reasonable things with them. And, further, I very much do care that they don't randomly change on me between trips in the vehicle.
• steele 5y ago
  Holiday 2021 update regressed Tesla UI to Android 1
• mft_ 5y ago
  I'm usually a defender of the single screen on the Model 3/Y, but on this, the author is right: the new UI (v11) is terrible compared to the previous one (v10). Not only does it hide commonly-used safety-relevant functions behind extra taps in sub-menus (as detailed), it was apparently done to free up space to offer a 'dock' of app buttons - three permanant and three 'recently used'. I struggled to choose three apps I needed enough to fill the permanant spaces - and certainly don't need quick access (when I'm driving!) to Netflix, or games, or whatever is popping up in 'recently used' today. I would like the driver profile menu to be quickly available, but alas that's been hidden too. It's a total cluster-f*ck that makes no logical sense when considering the need of drivers, and I hope they listen and revert at least this aspect of the UI.
  • sschueller 5y ago
    Interesting how a software update can make a car less safe without any option for the owner to go back. Sadly we see such things more and more. For example a 3 year old TV looses apps such as Netflix or Skype which where specifically advertised on the box.
    • GeorgeTirebiter 5y ago
      To me, it's difficult to believe this is legal. Compare with: FCC Certification. If you change something that could affect the 'intentional emitters' in your product, you need to re-certify! There ought to be an option to 'stay' at any 'version' you want. Only permit bug fixes. You know, LTS....
      • sen 5y ago
        It’s not legal in Australia at least. It would make you eligible for a full refund no matter how old the product is. I’ve used this law to return various things that got software updates that removed or significantly changed advertised features. Doing it with a car is a whole different level though. I’m pretty sure it’d still fall under the same laws but returning cars is very tricky even when you have a legal reason.
• fortran77 5y ago
  My husband just upgraded his P100D to a "Plaid" so I took the P100D as a hand-me-down instead of us trading it in or selling it. I had been driving a "Volt" and was happy with it. This is the first car, in my 42 years of driving (I'm 59) that I had to read the manual and "study" the UI before I could use it. And I still have trouble adjusting the temperature, etc, while I'm driving. It's way too confusing. I suppose I'll get used to it, but it's too much time with my eyes away from the road. If I say anything about this to Tesla "true believers" (or even the folks on Hacker News!) it's always my fault.
  • floatingatoll 5y ago
    It’s not your fault. I find Teslas so confusing that I am visibly anxious to approach them and ride in them as a passenger. In an emergency, I would rather land a plane than try to operate a Tesla.
    • tyingq 5y ago
      The Tesla that crashed in The Woodlands, Texas, is frightening in this respect. It seems like the occupants couldn't figure out the manual/emergency door latches, and so died in the battery fire.
  • joshgachnang 5y ago
    For what it's worth, I often use the voice interface for a lot of things like temperature. I don't want to take my eyes off the road to turn the temperature up. Now, that comes with caveats (needs data connection, ugh), but I generally prefer that to my old car with physical buttons for temp now.
    • MBCook 5y ago
      But that should be a choice, not sort of forced on you by bad design.
    • fortran77 5y ago
      I need to get comfortable with that. I see other Tesla drivers doing everything that way.
• wffurr 5y ago
  Every time I think I ought to test drive a Tesla in order to do my due diligence for an electric car, I read another thing like this. Or it's autopilot crashing again. Or more reliability issues. I think I will hold out for a more traditional design. My Bolt's touchscreen isn't terribly obnoxious, and it still has physical controls for a lot of things, including the defroster. If only it could charge faster on road trips, max is 50 kW. Typical is 40.
  • mft_ 5y ago
    There's no harm in trying one. Outside of the minority of cars with reliability issues, they're great cars IMO - and that's coming from a life-long 'car person'. Once you learn to use it appropriately (as in, what it's capable and not capable of, and that you do need to stay engaged in the driving process despite it) even Autopilot is pretty useful too.
    • 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
      >Once you learn to use it appropriately But we just want a normal car with an electric engine!
      • ineedasername 5y ago
        Yep, ditch all the shiny bells & whistles, autopilot, massive screen, etc., and in turn drop the price by $3k to $5k. But I'm not sure that's the market Tesla want to be in that market. Other automakers might get there though.
        • rsynnott 5y ago
          Having traditional controls would probably increase the price. There's a reason that so many car manufacturers are adding touchscreens; it's _cheap_.
      • practice9 5y ago
        You are not required to use the Autopilot though
• Someone1234 5y ago
  I still remember the days when buttons were meant to look like buttons, and that was actually something we specifically aimed for and got [correctly] criticized on when we got it wrong. Back when Skeuomorphism was in vogue, it was far easier to train users to use computing devices. These days you "just have to know." And, no, it isn't just Tesla. All the major tech companies have given up on usability (e.g. remember when Microsoft had a usability research lab and improved the products using lessons learned?).
  • tgv 5y ago
    But I don’t drive an ipod at 70mi/hr.
  • kunai 5y ago
    I still remember the days when buttons actually were buttons.
  • froh 5y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph "A skeuomorph is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original. Skeuomorphs are typically used to make something new feel familiar in an effort to speed understanding and acclimation."
  • lbriner 5y ago
    To be fair, flashy UIs sell well so it is a strange place to be when you need to decide between "engineering good" and "flashy and saleable"
• 58x14 5y ago
  Reminds me of Google's icon redesign. Is it just me, or does it feel inevitable for behemoth organizations to converge towards UX anti-patterns that sacrifice functionality for style?
  • eloisant 5y ago
    That, and companies that size have people with bullshit jobs who feel the need to do an unneeded "overhaul" for the sake of putting that in their achievement list and get a promotion.
• krm01 5y ago
  I work on UX/UI for startups. Have both worked for big tech companies and have many designer friends in big Tech co’s. The pattern I unfortunately see is that many of the larger firms somehow think they need dozens (a few cases: hundreds) of product designers who are all fiddling in the exact same interface. It’s absolutely nuts. It becomes an internal battle of who finds a more clever way to present a design in a meeting to a product manager. I’m sure all of OP’s complaints sounded like very clever solutions in meetings. But that’s not where your users are. Please. Keep your design team to a minimum. Design is not like engineering. More designers working on a single piece of software is counter productive.
  • mortenjorck 5y ago
    I think you’re hitting on a real problem, but one that’s slightly adjacent to what you describe. The size of the design team is correlated with, but not the cause of dysfunctional product and design management. A large team where responsibilities and ownership have clear delineation, and ideas are validated through research, shouldn’t result in cleverness competitions.
  • steelstraw 5y ago
    Too many cooks in the kitchen.
    • bobthepanda 5y ago
      There's that, and there's the fact that once you show up to the meeting it's basically open season for anyone with eyeballs to give their hot takes about design as well. At least in a restaurant, there's not a line of people who've just finished your food who are about to tell you how you should actually cook it.
      • redisman 5y ago
        Pretty sure you’ll also get fired if your pitch for the must-happen-political-busywork UI revamp is “let’s keep it how it is now”
  • 5y ago
• csours 5y ago
  > "The problem isn’t really that complicated: originally the defroster icon was visible on the bottom. With the latest December 2021 update it is now hidden behind the temperature indicator. Tapping the temperature brings up a sub-window with the defroster icon." Even after reading that, I had to look at the pictures again, and read the paragraph again to find where you are supposed to tap. When they simplified the UI, they also removed the degrees symbol and the fan. Seeing as how 60-70 are both reasonable temperatures in Fahrenheit and speeds in miles per hour, it is not at all clear at a glance what that number means. (Disclosure, I work for GM)
  • MBCook 5y ago
    I read the description and the whole article too. I don’t think I would have EVER tapped on the temperature without reading about it somewhere. It doesn’t look tappable, as the article says. It’s not a common thing to tap on in other systems I’m aware of. I think the writer’s guess of the car icon is excellent. That probably would have been my first guess too. (I’ve also never used a Tesla)
    • bagels 5y ago
      This was my reaction as well when the update happened. I had foggy windows and had to watch a youtube video to figure it out before I could drive the car.
      • a9h74j 5y ago
        Well, that's one path to monetizing your UX.
      • sn1de 5y ago
        lol'd at this one. i have a new tv, I have gone to youtube several times now to figure stuff out, and I am well versed in a/v.
  • mortenjorck 5y ago
    > When they simplified the UI, they also removed the degrees symbol and the fan. This, I believe, is the real point of failure. The value of reorganizing the icons into sub-menus can be debated, but some of the details that were removed in the course of this change appear to have been critical. There is a concept in UX design called "information scent" – the combination of spatial, contextual, and cultural cues that clue a user in to where they can find what they're looking for. Simply keeping the fan icon next to the temperature display/button might have been enough to make the mental connection for the OP (and likely countless others). Of course, this is the kind of thing that tends to shake out in user testing, and I'm very surprised that this appears not to have shown up in the testing I would assume Tesla must do with any change to the dashboard, certainly one this fundamental.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• imglorp 5y ago
  Can some UX person please splain me why hiding things behind menus is such a trend? Even if there is a fixed window and a ton of whitespace (like this car), everyone wants to hide most frequent click targets behind a hamburger or dot or gear or wrench icon somewhere. Why?
  • dusted 5y ago
    It must be "clean" is what I've heard, and there's nothing cleaner than a big empty space with one single nondescript icon behind which everything has been carelessly thrown. The burger menu is a great example of this "pattern"
    • f6v 5y ago
      It’s not enough that I see the burger on my iPad with plenty of room, I also sometimes see it on a desktop. God forbid the user be able to do what they want. Google cloud is my favorite example. For some reason they’ve hidden the button that starts the instance - one thing that you actually want to do. But at least the interface is “clean”.
      • dachryn 5y ago
        yeah but at least it is also better than those blades you get in microsoft Azure. Now that is a clusterfuck. The 'beauty' of GCP is that I can effectively use my ipad's browser to manage some stuff on the go, or keep google cloud open in a small browser window on a secondary monitor, with full flexibility and full featureset. On azure, the pages don't always work, or break, and the app has way less functionality. The best thing would be naturally a design that adapts better to display size than what they currently have, but I would call it badly optimized instead of bad design.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • Nition 5y ago
      Microsoft went the opposite way with the Ribbon, but then went the same way with the Windows 11 right-click menu.
• m3kw9 5y ago
  In the old days it’s equivalent to moving the defrost button inside the coin box.
• yalogin 5y ago
  I fully agree. Hiding those icons is terrible. I would go a step further d say it’s a safety issue. The defroster is usually needed very urgently in most cases. No one would expect the icon to be hidden and in the moment of need taking eyes off the road to find it could be dangerous.
• somenewaccount1 5y ago
  I'm a Tesla to and the new design is horrible UX. I hate to say it, but I think auto safety regulations will now have to incorporate basic interior functions as accepted e criteria. Corporations are too greedy and will compromise safety for money at any time (presumably app buttons could be a revenue stream, and that's why they want to promote it)
  • stanzheng 5y ago
    fan / owner? you missed a word "I'm a Tesla to and the new design is horrible UX."
    • pantalaimon 5y ago
      FSD has finally gained consciousness
    • timando 5y ago
      maybe the car has gained the ability to comment here.
  • rootusrootus 5y ago
    PRNDL is regulated, so there's precedent for setting a minimum standard for UI.
  • MBCook 5y ago
    I would agree it should be regulated, along with quite a few other things around controls. But I seriously wonder if any of the legacy auto makers would do this. I feel like they’re all way too conservative to do something this radical.
    • belval 5y ago
      Oh please like legacy automakers are resistant to implenting consumer hostile features to increase their revenues. https://techxplore.com/news/2021-05-ford-infotainment-screens-ads-local.html https://techxplore.com/news/2021-05-ford-infotainment-screen...
• gambiting 5y ago
  This is absolutely unacceptable. I wish the relevant regulatory body would pull out the type approval for all Teslas until this update is rolled back, it's that bad.
  • floatingatoll 5y ago
    If you own a Tesla, file an NHTSA complaint and say as much to them. They could well do so tomorrow if they can find sufficient rulings already on the books about this and enough legitimate owner complaints are filed.
    • floatingatoll 5y ago
      (I don’t like my advice here, now that I’ve had something to. File a safety complaint, not a feature rollback request. They’re more likely to listen that way.)
  • ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    The fact that Teslas have been permitted on US roads at all since Autopilot rolled out is clear proof the regulatory body isn't functioning as it should. Teslas should be illegal on US roads until Autopilot is removed, renamed, and retooled, and significant oversight is put into place in Tesla's production and software release processes. Ten years after I bought it Toyota warned me about the possibility some third party service people might've installed an improper part which could cause a problem. Tesla sometimes ships their cars from the factory with pieces of wood in them they got at Home Depot. "Move fast and break things" is an absolutely intolerable attitude for a car manufacturer.
    • shrimpx 5y ago
      It's funny how much Elon trashes US regulatory agencies for interfering, when in fact that they let him do whatever he wants.
      • heavyset_go 5y ago
• wackget 5y ago
  The mere CONCEPT of a car manufacturer being able to push UI changes to the car that I drive is equally disgusting and terrifying. I will never, ever own a Tesla or any similar garbage.
  • maxdo 5y ago
    Not sure why it's the problem when update is an improvement. Lets say tesla pushed an update that let me schedule start charging and stop charging at a certain time. That saves me $600-800/a year. Or a special controls for noise of the car for kids. There are good examples and bad. Last tesla update is not good, even it's not horrible, and let you customize many things.
    • notacoward 5y ago
      Whether a particular person objects to a particular update does not affect the validity of a general rule that safety-related changes should require oversight and/or consent. Those rules exist to protect all users, and even other drivers on the road who could be affected when unintended actions or unnecessary distraction cause an accident. Maybe you haven't been burnt yourself yet, but regulating such changes is what keeps you from getting burnt next time.
    • FireBeyond 5y ago
      They've pushed updates that introduced phantom braking. Now is it a problem? They pushed a fix. Well, good. (Although given how quick the fix came out, I worry about the lack of testing). Oh, now there's a slightly different phantom braking issue. There's potential for significant problems (particularly with Tesla's ... laissez-faire ... attitude to certain things), as well as benefits.
  • joshribakoff 5y ago
    You have to pull the update, all that they push is an icon that shows up that you can click to download the update
• mentos 5y ago
  Been working in UI for about 10 years now. Using my moms Tesla for the first time last year I had so many issues (chief among them is every icon is so small) and was tempted to write them down but assumed that Tesla must know and be working on it. Maybe not? Saw the last update hasn’t addressed any of the foundational issues and now it seems it’s created a few more. I think the UI needs a complete overhaul. Mood board for the new UI should be a fisher price toy. (https://www.mattel.com/products/rock-a-stack-gkw58 https://www.mattel.com/products/rock-a-stack-gkw58)
• itisit 5y ago
  I have zero tolerance for a dynamic UI in a situation that doesn’t require it. Knowing how to do basic operations and what the state of the vehicle is should be, short of a recall, a one and done affair. Consistency/predictability and safety go hand in hand.
• trav4225 5y ago
  > These people know literally nothing about human perception I'm sure there's a legitimate way to interpret this statement, but it still made me scratch my head a bit. :-)
• dusted 5y ago
  Fuck. Screens. In. Cars. I know my buttons and dials by heart, I reach and touch and control them without looking at them. I used to be able to fire off SMS messages on my phone while driving, without looking at the screen, because I knew my contact list and keyboards had that little dimple for feeling where 5 is (like your numpad does, if you're not too hipster to go without). Sure, sometimes I got it wrong and texted something weird or to the wrong person, but by far, it was successful. Maybe it's just me, but I've still not been successful in learning how to write on a touchscreen keyboard, sure, I can type a message or using that swipey kinda thing, but I still have to look where I'm touching, no tactility, it's terrible.
  • iknowstuff 5y ago
    This has been replaced by voice commands, dictation, and voice messages.
    • rad_gruchalski 5y ago
      Which completely ignores the fact that mute people can also drive cars.
      • dusted 5y ago
        And also people who find it more difficult to formulate the explaination of what needs to be done, than to just do it.
  • u320 5y ago
    I'm 100% convinced this fad will pass and you will only see screen-only UIs in low-end cars. Premium cars will all have physical controls for the most important features.
    • dusted 5y ago
      You have more faith in humanity than I do, friend. But I hope you're right, while I find it difficult to convince myself that a touch screen is cheaper than physical buttons, it probably is a premium product in this brave new, software defined world.
• dec0dedab0de 5y ago
  I really want a cyber truck when they're available, and the lack of buttons is the only thing making me question it. Has anyone used an API or something to build physical buttons and knobs? I'm still mad at the lack of physical keyboards on smart phones. Sometimes it feels like every innovation of the last 15 years has been a step backwards.
  • hamburglar 5y ago
    I’m in the same boat. I’ve felt the author’s panic when on the highway in a rental car with a shitty touchscreen UI and I can’t imagine paying money for a car that forces that on me in the name of … apps? I really want driving my car to be about driving my car, guys, not about what kind of bs you can fit on the screen while ignoring the basics. It is ironic to me that carmakers are so enamored with the smartphone experience that they want it to take over the dashboard, when we are explicitly disallowed from using them while driving for safety reasons.
  • Syonyk 5y ago
    > Sometimes it feels like every innovation of the last 15 years has been a step backwards. A step backwards, for which party in the exchange? The past 15 years have seen vastly huge improvements in the ability of user interfaces and such to collect widespread behavioral data that can be mined for prediction products! That you're upset with thus and such change, as noted by your interaction with the device and accelerometer data, is really important for better predicting what will sell to you! But, yes, the past 15 years have seen a turn of consumer tech against the consumer. Now, the question isn't (shouldn't be?) "What can this thing do for me?" - it's, "What am I giving up by using this thing?"
  • heavyset_go 5y ago
    > Sometimes it feels like every innovation of the last 15 years has been a step backwards. That's because most of our recent consumer tech "innovations" don't first serve to make users' lives better, but to make shareholders wealthier. Users are an afterthought or acceptable collateral damage.
• AceJohnny2 5y ago
  Tangentially, the tie-breaker that got me to buy a 2020 Ford Escape Hybrid over the competition in that size-range (2020 Toyota RAV4, 2020 Honda CR-V) was on how much I liked its dash, and its smart choices of hard buttons vs touch-screen. I particularly liked that the Escape had hard play/back/next (and a screen off!) buttons, and good use of screen-space. The CR-V wastes precious screen-space to always-present app shortcuts, as well as precious dashboard vertical space for just the volume/power button. The RAV4 has a bunch of function shortcut physical buttons around the screen which I think are also a waste of space: once you're in Android Auto/Apple Carplay, there's little reason to go back to the car's apps. I think we're still in a pit of bad car dashboard design, after a precipitous fall into touchscreen madness. Tesla's the worst offender, but I'm pretty impressed by Ford's design. (for comparison of RAV4 vs CR-V, see dash photos in this article: https://www.garberhonda.com/blog/2020-vehicles/2020-honda-cr-v-vs-2020-toyota-rav4/ https://www.garberhonda.com/blog/2020-vehicles/2020-honda-cr... )
• eyelidlessness 5y ago
  It’s wild to me that: - this hasn’t caused serious accidents (edit: which I’ve heard about) - for all of Tesla’s (and other automakers’) focus on automating driving, they haven’t picked the much lower hanging—incredibly valuable—fruit of automating more non-driving tasks drivers must/likely will perform - availability of basic safety-related controls isn’t regulated in a way that would have blocked this UI change - the touchscreen-ification of car controls hasn’t attracted the same level of revolt and vitriol as has flat design on those same screens (guess what looks and feels like a button?)
  • heavyset_go 5y ago
    > - this hasn’t caused serious accidents (edit: which I’ve heard about) We aren't going to hear about it unless someone files a lawsuit or otherwise makes a big attempt at publicizing it. It's something that we might hear about a few years after it shipped after a dozen or so people die in situations where literally everything else but the UI are eliminated as causes for the crashes.
• gorgoiler 5y ago
  You will not see a finer example of climate control layout than the Audi TT Mk3: https://images.hgmsites.net/lrg/2018-audi-tt-coupe-2-0-tfsi-temperature-controls_100619913_l.jpg https://images.hgmsites.net/lrg/2018-audi-tt-coupe-2-0-tfsi-... Big knobs for varying things. Push them to toggle things. Important shortcuts — the aforementioned defogger being one of them — on the real buttons inbetween. Physically rotate the whole unit to control direction and a physical flow control switch for every vent to allow per-passenger comfort. Industrial design bliss.
  • pcurve 5y ago
    I love the design, but I personally find it less intuitive than conventional hvac controls like this, because Audi had to squeeze things into 3 circular LCDs. https://www.mazda3revolution.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,onerror=redirect,width=1920,height=1920,fit=scale-down/https://www.mazda3revolution.com/attachments/mazda-3-climate-button-jpg.278652/ https://www.mazda3revolution.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,o... But as a design guy, I think it's a beautiful design, and the one that doesn't make too much compromise with UX. I'd be happy to take either.
    • csunbird 5y ago
      While I am not a BMW fan, they got the interfaces almost close to perfect with their MINI Countryman cars. The screen is a touchscreen one, but, touchscreen is optional as there is a physical idrive controller, with shortcuts, and it works with carplay as well. All important stuff, defroster/AC/seat heaters are physical buttons! I love it. https://cdn.bimmertoday.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/2017-MINI-Countryman-F60-Cooper-S-35.jpg https://cdn.bimmertoday.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/2017-M... original article: https://www.bimmertoday.de/2016/10/25/mini-countryman-2017-f60-alle-offiziellen-bilder-und-infos/#image-2 https://www.bimmertoday.de/2016/10/25/mini-countryman-2017-f...
      • pcurve 5y ago
        I agree, that's a very intuitive interior layout. Within a minute, I've figured out the entire car, including steering controls. Thanks for sharing!
• mabbo 5y ago
  I would be downright excited to go out and by a Tesla if I was allowed to pay a bit extra and have physical buttons to control things. I get that Tesla wants to save money, both in assembly costs and "lower cost = more potential buyers", but there has to be a large market of people who are willing to pay more for a more usable car.
  • Nition 5y ago
    The new Volkswagen ID.3 has the same issue. Would be great if it had some more physical buttons (although it already has more than a Tesla).
    • shrimpx 5y ago
      It's crazy that "electric cars" == "buttons are replaced by touch screens". VW makes non-electric cars that have a lot more knobs, but in their electric offerings they have to flock with Tesla with an all-glass UI, for some reason. I wonder if it's driven by market research or mostly fear-based: "We might look outdated compared to Tesla, let's just do what they do."
      • Nition 5y ago
        Maybe the latter plus they also want to have a ton of features, which gets hard to fit into a traditional button layout. But there's no reason an electric car has to be high tech either.
        • shrimpx 5y ago
          Yeah, the concept of "high-tech" has been conceptually bundled with the electric engine type. I for one hope those get disentangled because the limit for "high-tech" cars looks like a shitty idiocratic dystopia.
      • thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
        There are also some "physics" reasons for this - the source of electric current in an ICE car is usually a 1kWh lead-acid battery - obviously not always at 100% state of charge. Even if the designers wanted to put an awesome infotainment system into such car, the battery won't be able to power it for long before jeopardizing driving-related critical functionality. As an example - keeping Tesla's sentry mode on (screen on and cameras recording), drains about 250W - enough to completely kill a classic car battery in 4 hours Electric cars, with their batteries in 30-100 kWh range, lift this constraint - so designers have a field day
• a-dub 5y ago
  personally i have never been a fan of the aesthetics of large computer screens. i find that at home they tend to dominate a scene, and similarly this happens on the dashboards in teslas, which is a shame because they have some pretty nice design hiding behind that big hulking computer monitor. physical switches are best when on the go. a good example of this is the original ipod clickwheels (and even their touch sensitive replacements) which were way easier to operate in the car than competing audio players that hid everything behind menus.
• contravariant 5y ago
  I think both are a bit cluttered, but at least the first one contains useful icons. What on earth do those 4 icons in the middle of the new UI even mean? My best guess of their meanings is "Phone, Audio, Radar, More" but that doesn't seem right. Also how am I supposed to know that "random number" refers to temperature?
  • duxup 5y ago
    For a moment I thought one was an RSS feed…
• kuboble 5y ago
  Is this update also happening in Europe? I would assume that there is a certain legal minimum of actions that have to be accessible to a driver via universally recognizable icon. Literally every car I ever saw have this defrost button, anti-fog lights, emergency lights, etc. I have a hard time believing the safety car features hidden somewhere in menu would pass Eu car regulations.
• ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  Scott Jenson is great. It’s sad that he got so trolled. I hope the folks at Tesla paid attention. He’s one of the top UX people in the world. His book, The Simplicity Shift[0], was one of the seminal UX books in my career. I still use many of the insights that I gleaned from it. It’s a real short read (and a free download, now). It was written when everyone was still using flip phones, and was very useful in doing a brutal UX triage. [0] https://jenson.org/The-Simplicity-Shift.pdf https://jenson.org/The-Simplicity-Shift.pdf
  • mark-r 5y ago
    Thank you for the link to the book. It reminds me of a product I worked on. The first version was command-driven, because that's what us programmers were used to. When our own sales people proved unable to do a demo without messing it up, we knew it was time to go back to the drawing board. We tucked the keyboard away in a drawer where you would pull it out only when needed, and replaced it with 6 buttons. Those buttons let you pick from a preconfigured menu, which walked you through the process step by step once you selected something.
• duxup 5y ago
  It would really upset me if my car interface changed without my choice. I need to go places, not dork with a new UI.
• cmckn 5y ago
  I drove a Tesla in December for the first time, too; but it was before this update. I wasn't blown away. I rented it for a medium-length road trip, and was looking forward to autopilot on the highway. I found the features really lack-luster and difficult to use. You had to enable separate autopilot features individually, and they constantly disengaged for various reasons. My newish Honda honestly provides more of an ~~autonomous~~ driving experience with just adaptive cruise control + lane-keep assist. The control center was surprisingly complex and obtuse, and I missed carplay. The experience made me really excited about buying something electric in the future, but I doubt it will be a Tesla.
  • typon 5y ago
    You probably can't rent one right now to try, but I purchased a Hyundai Ioniq 5 and I think this car is the one to convince drivers of the EV future. It's just futuristic enough to be interesting and fun and traditional enough to be safe and comfortable.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• ok123456 5y ago
  Doesn't obfuscating the location of the defroster control run afoul of the NTSB safety regulations since a window defroster has been required safety equipment in all cars since the early 70s? Relevant statute: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.103 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.103
  • floatingatoll 5y ago
    Statute inherits from SAE J902A which costs $89 to read, so we don’t know from the statue alone.
    • ok123456 5y ago
      https://archive.org/details/gov.law.sae.j902a.1967/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/gov.law.sae.j902a.1967/mode/2up Even if they don't explicitly say it has to be an obvious button on the dash, it's a huge liability changing how basic safety equipment is operated.
      • userbinator 5y ago
        That seems like it's more about how well the defroster should work, but says nothing about how it should be activated.
        • ok123456 5y ago
          Yes. The defroster is basic safety equipment. If your smoke detector manufacturer changed how the test button worked with an over the air update, and as a result you failed to correctly test it, who would be liable? Much in the same way, if someone cannot figure out how to use their defroster because a UX engineer decided to make it just so, the Tesla owner just drives off with a mostly iced up windshield because, and the Tesla owner gets into a crash because it's 7:00am on a cold winter Monday and they're running late, does Tesla share some liability for changing how basic safety equipment works?
          • 5y ago
• alistairSH 5y ago
  I’m airlifted there isn’t more push back against all-touch interfaces in cars. Honda put a volume knob back on its 2021+ Ridgeline. Might not have been consumer feedback, but people hated the touch volume control in pre-21 models. I loathe having to navigate menus and screen to find basic functions. My Honda had touch radio, with access to some set-up options, but daily functions are physical buttons. I like it this way. I’ll likely never buy a Tesla.
  • vitaflo 5y ago
    Hell, Honda put ALL the knobs, buttons and switches back into the new Civic. They've done a 180 on car controls because they realized everything being touch was bad.
    • tartoran 5y ago
      Good move on them. They probably realized they were destroying their own market and that they don’t need to move fast and break things, other brands do that and if something comes out of it they can carefully copy it. The only reason I respect Tesla is for pushing hard on electric. Other than that their offer is not for everyone.
    • thedrbrian 5y ago
      Mazda is taking touchscreens out of the vehicle completely https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-purging-touchscreens-from-its-vehicles https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur...
      • jmkni 5y ago
        I have the current gen Mazda 3 and I absolutely love it. Don't miss the touch screen at all.
  • userbinator 5y ago
    "New! Fresh! Shiny! Modern!" UI is like fashion. Practical matters seem to be ignored, but it's desirable on novelty alone. I fully expect the trend to reverse once it becomes "old and boring". And, "airlifted"? I've not heard that expression before.
• mishkovski 5y ago
  Most used controls should be behind physical buttons. Touchscreen UX in cars is terrible. Furthermore, it is a safety hazard.
• sayak 5y ago
  I am very surprised by all the negative comments regarding the Tesla UI. To me if you have any sense of taste, Tesla is the only option for you. All the car UIs are awful. Cars today are almost as bad as phones were before the iPhone. Tesla's UI is not perfect by any means, but at least it's not disgusting like everyone's else.
  • GoOnThenDoTell 5y ago
    It might look pretty, but having used one for a few months now I’m pretty dissatisfied with the overall feel. Would prefer if they ripped the whole screen out and put a small clock in with some push buttons and dials
  • Karupan 5y ago
  • TheSocialAndrew 5y ago
    You might be thinking of the UI as of a month ago. They've updated it last month and botched both the look and the experience, that's what this thread is mostly about.
  • MBCook 5y ago
    You can have the prettiest UI in the world but if it’s not functional when you need it it’s pointless.
    • sayak 5y ago
      I consider the Tesla UI quite functional.
  • FireBeyond 5y ago
    LOL, what? https://imgur.com/a/LBjOg2d https://imgur.com/a/LBjOg2d Two images. One from a vehicle systems display on a Tesla, the other an Audi RS. Tell me in an objective sense how one is "tasteful" and the other "disgusting". You can certainly have a preference for one over the other, and there are nice aspects to both. But yeah, I'm not seeing it.
• Eddy_Viscosity2 5y ago
  I want my buttons and knobs back for basic controls.
• abledon 5y ago
  Its already a touchscreen... can you make it any more dangerous? YES! LETS ADD THE "..." icon to open a context menu!
• shimms 5y ago
  v11 update was the straw that broke this Tesla owner's back. We just purchased a new EV from another manufacturer and are selling the Tesla. I'm so glad there are an increasingly larger range of EVs to choose from. In Australia the choices are comparatively limited still, but more and more are becoming available. When we got our Tesla the choices were really Tesla or cars with really limited range. I used to think I'd get used to the touch screen and muscle memory would allow me to do things while driving easily. Hasn't happened - I use the steering wheel buttons for changing the temperature, but everything else requires taking my eyes off the road for too long. Test drove the new car and was surprised by how better physical buttons were. The cognitive load to drive it was so much less. After years of Tesla touch screen land, I think I'd forgotten how much easier and usable traditional interfaces are.
  • yholio 5y ago
    So not only that you need special training to ride the Tesla pony, but it's also objectively worse even for those who put in the effort. It's not even like switching to Dvorak, it's like switching to Qwerty in a world where everybody uses Dvorak.
    • heavyset_go 5y ago
      It's like using QWERTY if every once in a while an update changes it to something like QWRETY.
      • yholio 5y ago
        I don't srr that as a peoblrm, auto-updatrs aer a gerat way to disteibute softwaer fratuers.
    • Handytinge 5y ago
      As an alternative viewpoint, I also have a Tesla and a "normal" car, and I don't find the Tesla requires any "special training" or is objectively worse. Things are in different places in different cars. Switching keyboard layouts would be significantly more complex.
• pedalpete 5y ago
  On a car with as much technology as Tesla has, is a defroster icon even necessary? Can't the car know the windows needs to be defogged/defrosted and just turn it on for the driver. This isn't like temperature, where somebody has a preference to see. Is my windshield clear of fog or ice? No? Turn on defroster.
  • joshribakoff 5y ago
    It does if you have the AC on “auto”. There’s also another UI element that displays “defogging limited by settings” if you make manual adjustments and it detects the need
    • Corrado 5y ago
      That's interesting. I keep my A/C on "auto" and it doesn't seem to detect a fogged up windshield. This mostly happens on colder days after a workout at the gym. I'm hot and sweaty and I get in a cold car and the glass fogs up pretty quickly. I'll have to make sure I have it configured correctly and see how the car reacts next time. I've also not seen the "defogging limited by settings" warning; then again, the text is so small on the warnings I might have seen it but not been able to read it.
  • davewritescode 5y ago
    If it works as well as their automated wipers you’ll probably still want the button. Tesla has to do everything differently, including replacing rain sensors that every manufacturer uses with a camera based AI that works less well than any car I’ve ever driven.
    • pedalpete 5y ago
      That's a very good point, but there really isn't a reason to not have both. The button can be a bit hidden at that point if it's considered a "backup".
• userbinator 5y ago
  The manufacturer changing the UI of a car after you bought it should be illegal or at least highly restricted. I think many of us have been incensed by UI changes in software we use for our daily work, and that's already bad enough; but IMHO this really crosses a line. There were jokes when Apple changed the scroll direction, comparing it to the steering wheel of a car suddenly working opposite to what everyone is used to; I'm not sure if it's possible to do that with a Tesla or other modern car, but it's disturbing that we seem to be headed down that path. What an absurd reality. The icons-only UI is also a huge regression; would it really take much extra effort to add a text label? I know people often mention localisation when it's brought up, but much of the world knows English, this is an American car sold in English-speaking regions, and changing the text in software is much easier than a separate part with different printing. (I drive a 50-year-old land yacht that's received many upgrades, but all under my control; so my perspective may be slightly biased...)
  • yumraj 5y ago
    > The manufacturer changing the UI of a car after you bought it should be illegal or at least highly restricted I cannot agree more. A lot of safety in driving comes from muscle memory and doing without needing to look so that focus is on the road. No wonder Tesla fans are fan of self driving and afraid of human driving, the effing Teslas seem like a usability nightmare.
    • abustamam 5y ago
      puts on tin foil hat This might be a "feature": make cars so confusing to manually drive that humans become worse at driving, so that Tesla doesn't need to improve its driving software. I don't actually believe this, of course, but it seems we're headed in that trajectory.
  • perryizgr8 5y ago
    I truly believe that UI in software must be done by an external consultant, on a one-time contract basis. Don't hire them full-time, they will fuck it up eventually. It is extremely limiting for a designer to work on the same app, same design every day. They will always try to bring in a new UI every couple years, just to maintain their own sanity. But it's not good for the product and its users. So let designers work on various different products.
• yholio 5y ago
  I have no idea why Tesla tries to revolutionize the user interface of cars at the same time with their powertrains - as if they don't have enough risk on their plate. There is a reason every car built in the last 50 years looks drives roughly in the same way: it's a highly tuned design language that has evolved incrementally alongside the drivers, so that everyone can get into any car and drive it, without risking to find out the brake and acceleration pedals are reversed. How does a radically new interior design help Tesla and their long term growth targets? Is it much cheaper to manufacture? Does it give drivers that learn the new paradigm a phenomenally better experience (no, it does not)? If my opinion has any relevance, they should stick to improving performance, range and efficiency, price and vehicle reliability. Just leave the damn dashboard be already, a UX revolution is a turnoff for an bitter old fart like me, not a selling point.
  • userbinator 5y ago
    It's more like 80 years now, if we're talking about things like the steering wheel, order of the pedals, and the directional indicator stalk.
• sanj 5y ago
  I’ll note that the head of UX at Tesla during this design’s testing window had a very short tenure there. Though it is unclear is they were at fault or just fallguy.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• scroot 5y ago
  All these electric car companies putting everything into touchscreens is the height of stupidity. What's the first thing you're supposed to avoid when driving? Not everything needs to have the sheen of being hi-tech. Sometimes a knob or a switch is the best choice. Double true in cars.
  • baobabKoodaa 5y ago
    Manufacturers are fully aware that knobs are superior to touchscreens. This is merely a cost cutting measure.
• irthomasthomas 5y ago
  ≥If you have two buttons, there is a third ‘object’ created, the decision a user must make on which button to tap. This cognitive load is invisible and rarely discussed but it can be a real source of confusion. I was just making this argument on a kde mailing list about the kburgermenu. It hides the main menu, that I've been using for 30 years, behind a burger. It adds a surprising amount of cognitive load, and you don't need to be a UX professional to feel it. To their credit, the digikam team have so far resisted hiding the menu by default, but the first day you accidentally press ctrl±m will be a bad one, when you notice that menu missing. And it is becoming fashionable now to drop the main menu altogether. Why, to save 10 pixels? Darktable and rawtherapee both have a lot of awesome features, but no menu bar. So they each have there own ideas on how best to reimagine the UI, and then you have to search the internet to learn how to do the equivalent of File ≥ Save As. It's cool to be sleek, stylish and unique. But not in dangerous machine interfaces. FFS. I even heard that Musk got rid of the yellow/black striped safety tape from his factories, because they didn't fit his aesthetic aspirations. And I honestly don't know if that is a myth or not. Given this latest evidence, it is believable. What is interesting is the fact that so much research, and expensive lessons in engineering and design are now ignored so easily. I wonder if it stems from a deeper societal phenomenon of denigrating the past? The younger generations, caricatured in the media as angry Greta Thumbergs, seem to have declared their undying enmity towards an generation they blame for their apocalyptic fate. So they also reject, instinctively, symbols of those people, the visible signs of the past, and the lessons handed down. This may be a meandering rant, but I do feel that there is a real problem in UX and UI that is hurting us all. And fixing that requires some questioning of the root causes. Why did we collectively forget good UI paradigms and accessibility best practices?
  • Dylan16807 5y ago
    When you always start with the hamburger to do menu things, I don't think that adds any cognitive load. Whether it's worth it depends on the program and how often you touch the menu. For my web browser I go hours between menu uses so I prefer the space.
  • heavyset_go 5y ago
    I feel like UI/UX is having a postmodernist moment, and the burger menu is the equivalent of Duchamp's The Fountain. Today, I'd even gladly take the ribbon UI over burger menus every time.
• maxdo 5y ago
  Their application is also rather a downgrade. They promised fixes. Lets see. It's not super bad, but definitely a step back. "Data proven decision" is just an excuse. I didn't use defrost button for almost a year. Yesterday I had a snow storm and I wasn't able to find defrost function. It's appears you have to swipe up in climate settings of the app to see extra options. Why? Make it at least contextual. If I enable HI heat mode, suggest me these options if you think such option in hot countries is redundant, don't blame data. Now just imagine an owner is not millennial on Gen Z, they will never find this option. So with one simple update you turn them from proud tesla owners who heat up the car from snow from a warm sofa to a frustrated blocked by snow user. Even though the hardware is amazing.
  • ourmandave 5y ago
    Now just imagine an owner is not millennial on Gen Z, they will never find this option. ::sigh:: Edit: This comment is tiresome. My dad owns a lot of the latest stuff and has no problem with it.
    • Aachen 5y ago
      Good on your dad! I also got my grandma to use a smartphone and she's even on Signal. But that's about the limit. My other grandma can't use anything that didn't exist in her life less recently than twenty years ago (DECT phones are the most hi-tech things she can use, even a dumbphone is too complicated). My parents as well as most parents I know struggle somewhere between the level of me and the former grandma. Between age and tech-savviness there is most definitely a correlation, strong enough that I wonder about causation (with exceptions of course, though those usually have an interest and extensive exposure or practice). One exception doesn't make every >50yo a tech wizard who'll know how to explore new design patterns with confidence. I would assume that's why someone downvoted your comment (though it'd be nice if the people that do can give feedback by themselves...)
• PickledHotdog 5y ago
  All of a sudden three sea shells doesn't seem so far fetched
• borski 5y ago
  This is exactly why I’m so happy that the Lucid Motors UX team decided to have a dedicated screen on the left side of the car for the most common controls; not to mention a few physical switches for HVAC, music, and cruise control. https://youtu.be/vxE4P85DSBw&t=2m https://youtu.be/vxE4P85DSBw&t=2m
• Arch-TK 5y ago
  On a tangentially related note. Do people really use the deFROST feature to deFOG their windows? If the fog is on the inside, turn on AC (note, this is not equivalent to saying "make your car cold"). The AC will reduce the humidity of the air and get rid of the fog (works quite quickly in my experience). P.S. I am of course aware that heating the windows will also get rid of the fog, it just seems like an unusual solution to me.
  • chockablock 5y ago
    Hitting that button on any modern car (like say my 2018 Volvo) will turn the fan on max heat, directed at the windshield and side windows. and also enable the AC. IIRC a 1998 Camry I drove had the same functionality. Confirmed in the ‘98 Camry manual: “Turning the air flow control knob to wind- shield position turns on the defroster− linked air conditioning. At this time, the ”A/C” button indicator comes on regard- less of whether or not the ”A/C” button is pressed in. This is to clean up the front view more quickly.” Like the manual, I have always just called that functionality ‘defrost’, never defog.
  • userbinator 5y ago
    Some cars have both a de-fog and de-ice position: https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/990674-1967-cadillac-deville-std.jpg?ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads...
• oxplot 5y ago
  > but in a car with lives at stake, they can’t be so cavalier Oh man, my hair will go white soon if I have to tell people who keep making these kind of statements : either show this is causing accidents or lives with numbers or you’re talking out of your intuitive ass. I agree with the rest - the new interface isn’t as intuitive and multiple interactions is required for various things that needed one tap before. It’s definitely worse and I hope it gets better. What’s not intuitive to non-Tesla owners is that Tesla owners use the voice command extensively to get things done. Here’s a few of my day to day usage: - Turn on recirculate - Lower the temperature - Play song X by Y - Navigate to supermarket - Fold the mirrors (for when parking in tight spots) - Turn wiper high (no longer use this as the auto setting is almost perfect as of late) You initiate the voice command by pressing a physical button on the steering wheel under your thumb. For majority of what I’ve listed above, you’d have to take your eyes off the road to either operate a physical button or tap on awfully unresponsive touchscreens in other cars. So as far as I’m concerned, I’m more road alert in Tesla than I’ve been in any other car. Add autopilot in the mix and nothing else comes close.
  • jakear 5y ago
    Does activating the voice control cause music to stop/decrease in volume? This has always really bothered me — if I’m jamming to a song the last thing I want is for it to stop/drop away, and if the car is creating the noise shouldn’t it know pretty damn well how to separate my signal from the noise?
    • oxplot 5y ago
      It completely stops everything else playing. I think they need multiple microphones to do the signal separation (like Homepod and Google Home do) but I'm not sure if the car has multiple microphones inside (new Model S and X certainly do as they have active noise cancellation for outside noise).
      • jakear 5y ago
        Well that’s going to be a hard no from me then. I wonder whether I’m an outlier here. The engineering investment to make zero-disruption voice control seems relatively minuscule, at least compared to all the other big-league AI/ML they’re up to. I’d rather have that than… just about anything.
• matthewfcarlson 5y ago
  I'll chime in on this thread that as a model Y owner, I quite like the v11 update. Yes the defroster is annoying and the user profile thing is quite annoying. But it also fixed some things that drove me nuts.
• mavu 5y ago
  The problem starts even earlier. Touchscreens (or touch surfaces) should not be used for any kind of vehicle function. period. If you need to take your eyes away from the road, it is a shit ui. If you can't feel but have to look to see the result of your interaction, it is a shit design. If you need to look at the center console and down, it is even worse. There is only one reason to get rid of all the buttons and switches, and that is design. because "ape goes ohhhh!". And that should not be a consideration that is prioritized over safety.
  • baobabKoodaa 5y ago
    There is a second reason as well: it is much cheaper for the manufacturers to install a touchscreen instead of physical knobs.
    • jonnycomputer 5y ago
      Is it though? And by how much?
      • justsomehnguy 5y ago
        > Is it though Depends. SKU count is lower for sure. Wire count is less too. And in Tesla's case (Model S) where there is no real dashboard with a speedometer at all - it really would make a difference. Didn't found how much Tesla pays for it's screen, but at $300 and even $500 I wouldn't be surprised if it would be still cheaper.
        • rekoil 5y ago
          The Model 3 is the one without a dashboard, the Model S has a secondary screen for a dashboard.
      • brk 5y ago
        Can't comment on this specific cost, but ~20 years ago when I worked at Ford I remember seeing a little poster on the wall celebrating how they value engineered $200 or so out of a Taurus by replacing or eliminating a lot of small parts and pieces. Tesla is bumping up against 1M cars built per year. Saving $10/car can add up to real money.
• Farbklex 5y ago
  I am so annoyed by UI updates in general that this allone would be a reason to not buy a Tesla. I rather stick to real buttons in a car.
• jiggawatts 5y ago
  This is the key point: > It’s the context and the severe consequences that make it far more impactful than a poorly designed phone app. Tesla is making their "two ton death machines" (to quote Elon himself) even more dangerous by making the controls unintuitive. The "yoke" is what turned me off ever buying a Tesla motor vehicle. The designers have been allowed to run rampant, with nobody keeping their "experimental interfaces" in check. I'll wait until Toyota makes an all-electric car. It'll be simpler, cheaper, and "just work" in the sense that I won't have to hunt around for basic controls just because some dingbat in California thought it made the dash look "cleaner" or whatever.
  • FireBeyond 5y ago
    > The "yoke" is what turned me off ever buying a Tesla motor vehicle. The designers have been allowed to run rampant, with nobody keeping their "experimental interfaces" in check. In check? I'd be willing to wager some money that the yoke was Elon's idea, or heavily encouraged by him based on his questionable sense of what is 'cool'. The Cybertruck is to me the next step behind The Homer (https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer).
• adhesive_wombat 5y ago
  My Volvo has a panel screen. The defroster is still a button, thankfully, as that's crucial to be able to hit instantly. The rest of the climate control is behind a button on the screen and requires to look and see what it's doing. It's infuriating and actually feels pretty unsafe compared to twiddling a knob. Honestly I expected Volvo to do better.
• endymi0n 5y ago
  Thing is, it‘s not just Tesla. Old economy carmakers are taking a page from the playbook by now to skip to the front line — and it‘s exactly the wrong one. Having driven the VW ID3 a few times, it‘s truly horrible in this regard. The climate settings (yes, including fast defrost!) are „not available“ until the systems have booted up which takes forever. Auto-Hold as a critical driving feature which had a hardware button before took me (as an engineer) a whopping 10 minutes to find in the third page of a random submenu. The voice control is located as a touch-not-press button at the outer edge of a steering wheel so when (not if) you accidentally touch it in narrow turns, the confused useless voice blasts full volume at you while you‘re in the most complex driving situation. It‘s as nobody had driven or user tested their cars before. And here I am, an early technology adopter of two decades, feeling like an old man yelling I want my hardware buttons back.
  • frosted-flakes 5y ago
    What is auto-hold? Cruise control?
    • rad_gruchalski 5y ago
      When you come to a full stop, the car remains standing after letting off the brake. Also prevents rolling backwards on uphill start. That’s auto hold.
      • driverdan 5y ago
        And OP is calling that critical? That is in no way a critical driving feature. People drove cars just fine for almost 100 years without it.
        • bener 5y ago
          I've owned over 20 different vehicles and none of them have had auto hold. Just hold the brake on!
          • 5y ago
• maxkaplan 5y ago
  I was lucky enough to also experience this insane UX nightmare. Driving in a snow storm unable to locate the defrost or tire pressure gauge is frustrating and dangerous.
• bearcobra 5y ago
  I’m surprised more automakers haven’t adopted something like an Elgato Stream Deck where physical buttons can be mapped to custom icons for each desired function. It seems like it would be much safer while also allowing for new changes as software updates happen
• LeoPanthera 5y ago
  I own a Tesla, but the attitude of the Twitter/Tesla bros makes me ashamed that I do. They seem to genuinely think that mocking anyone who dare criticize the almighty Elon is a justifiable action. Instead, it makes them, and by extension all Tesla owners, look like children. I've had my Model X for a year, and so far it's been in service for a total of 14 days. Of the 18 (!) issues my car has, they've only managed to fix 8. (!!) And it's not because they're mysterious, complex problems. They just don't give a shit. They pretend that obvious issues are normal, or blame software for hardware problems, anything they can do to get rid of me. I would never recommend a Tesla to anyone, now. I've never hated a car more.
  • smoldesu 5y ago
    Technology apologism has got to stop. Watching people defend the butterfly keyboard's consistent failure, try to justify vendor-locking GPU features, explain away Windows' lack of meaningful updates, listing all the reasons why the iPhone shouldn't load the apps you want... it all drives me insane. At least with open source the attitude de-facto is "this software sucks, how can we fix it?". Even if the overall user experience is poor, improvements come from interested parties instead of a FAANG employee who's pager just lit up with a "rewrite x" alert.
  • sfifs 5y ago
    Wouldn't a lemons law apply for cases as extreme as yours?
    • LeoPanthera 5y ago
      California's lemon law requires a car to be in service for at least 30 days in the first 18 months if the problem does not affect the drivetrain.
      • FireBeyond 5y ago
        At this point, I'd ask them to give it back to you just so you can have it in your driveway "in service" for 16 days and then file a lemon complaint.
• pronlover723 5y ago
  A UX designer needs to walk into an Apple Home app bar too. And even more, a Google Nest Hub bar. Both are a complete mess of broken stuff.
• brian-armstrong 5y ago
  It seems like the real problem here is people living in colder climates, not the user interface? If people moved to somewhere warmer like California then this wouldn't be an issue.
  • maximus-decimus 5y ago
    If all of Canada moved to California, think of all the things we could achieve!
• causality0 5y ago
  God I adore having an all-analog dashboard. Everything takes a single action. Everything can be done by touch. Instead of freezing or blowtorching the car trying to hit some goal climate, the air is always the exact temperature I want when it hits my face. There is no screen to wash out, no vent motors to break. It's glorious.
• voakbasda 5y ago
  This kind of BS is why I have lost interest in ever buying a Tesla. For a long time, I was very enthusiastic and convinced others they were great. Then Tesla proceeded to demonstrate time and time again that no one that purchased their vehicles actually owns them. In fact, Tesla can upgrade and modify the car without permission, and they have repeatedly done so in ways that would terrify me. Either love that modus operandi, or don’t buy their vehicles. I don’t want my vehicle’s controls to change — ever - without my explicit consent. I thus never expect to own a modern car, because it seems that every manufacturer is now guilty of these kinds of shenanigans. They have all lost my business. It’s the aftermarket for me.
  • userbinator 5y ago
    I suspect you would've implicitly given them permission somewhere in the EULA, but I agree that this is definitely eroding the concept of ownership.
  • heavyset_go 5y ago
    > Then Tesla proceeded to demonstrate time and time again that no one that purchased their vehicles actually owns them. In fact, Tesla can upgrade and modify the car without permission, and they have repeatedly done so in ways that would terrify me. Either love that modus operandi, or don’t buy their vehicles. I think the most egregious example of this is that paid upgrades like FSD don't transfer with the sale of the car. Those features are pinned to accounts, and you can't sell them. That way, Tesla gets to double dip by forcing both owners to buy the same upgrade.
• twobitshifter 5y ago
  The rivian generally seems very neat but even they started going down this road. If you want to adjust the directions of your vents, it through the touch screen
• bartimus 5y ago
  So it was probably the Tesla UX designer who put the button behind the temperature indicator.
• danhab99 5y ago
  I asked my teams UX designer what he thought about Tesla's change. He told me a story about how he tried to pull a similar stunt for his client, he thought it would improve the "sleakness" or some shit. He got fired... This guy should too.
• bcrl 5y ago
  This is not just limited to Telsa these days. Virtually all application / operating systems developers have become infected with the "let's change the user interface" disease. A long time ago, it was pretty much bog standard for all applications to have menus up at the top of the screen. Letters were underlined to indicate the keyboard shortcut, as keyboard users were still considered to be a significant part of the common use-case. These days I'm lucky if there are keyboard short cuts for half of the functionality an application has. I'm now forced to stare at icons that don't give me a visual hint for what the keyboard shortcut might be. My iPhone expects me to know about brand new unguessable gestures just because I was forced to upgrade from a perfectly fine iPhone SE to a 12 because the screen died. An iOS update last night made my streaming music app stop working when the screen is locked and I had to infer what settings to change because all the help entries on the topic were for when settings were in different places. I wish discoverability of user interfaces was still a thing, but clearly I am deemed to be in the unworthy of consideration minority. It's sad that things have gone so far backwards over the past 20 years that younger people don't even know what they're missing.
• NoblePublius 5y ago
  i was so excited for the holiday update this year but it completely ruined my model y driving experience. had one of my UI designers presented to me an interface mockup including multiple black icons on a black background, i would have made them present these designs to the entire company so that they could be laughed at and mocked by everyone. such design sins are so bad they must be confronted with public ridicule and shaming.
• notyourwork 5y ago
  Personally I find the inside of Tesla’s unappealing and not something I would willingly pay money for.
• GuB-42 5y ago
  The worst part is that the car is smart enough to be creative with touch controls and submenus, but not smart enough to automatically and reliably turn on the defroster when needed. Is auto-defrost such a hard problem for a company that pretends to make self driving cars? Maybe it is, but if that's the case, don't make life harder on the driver by hiding the controls.
• noipv4 5y ago
  When I was a student in SoCal, I hardly had to use the windshield defogger. After I moved to Texas near the gulf of Mexico, I had to use the defogger regularly in the winters. I have now moved to Switzerland and the defogger button was very handy, especially when exiting the Gotthard tunnel to the other side of Alps, when the temperature drops down from 20C to negative 5 to negative 10 all of a sudden and everything fogs up. Some buttons really need to be hard-coded and presented to the driver properly for safety reasons. Another interesting omission with my 3 is that the headlight fogs up and then ices over. There is no headlight cleaning / defogging system in this car, I have to pour warm water to make the headlight function properly.
• efitz 5y ago
  Tesla has an unhealthy obsession with minimalism[1]. As noted elsewhere even in this conversation, the ability to locate a control via touch alone allows drivers to keep their eyes on the road (I realize that "where your eyes are pointed" != "where your attention is focused", I'll leave the research to others whether there is sufficient scientific evidence for this reason for tactile controls). Additionally, physical controls might still be operable even in circumstances where the touch screen is rendered inoperable, and arguably can be made more durable than a big piece of glass. It's commonly believed that the reason that Tesla cars only have a physical emergency hazard light button is because of US regulations (SAE J910 from Jan 1966[2]); the design minimalists at Tesla have moved it to the center of the ceiling console on the Model 3, to the point where there are many forum discussions of owners asking where the button is. IMO this pretty much proves the "minimalism gone too far" theory, if a critical safety control cannot be located by a nontrivial number of drivers. Similarly, the emergency brake in early Model S and X is a gesture on the shifter (direction control stalk), which is completely non-discoverable without RTFM. I love Tesla. I've owned a 2015 Model S and a 2018 Model X. I sold the latter yesterday in anticipation of my new Model X that will be delivered in two weeks. My point is, I'm a fan. That said, I'm concerned about my new Model X because of reports that they've removed even more physical controls (this time, they've removed the shifter) and are depending either on heuristics or touch screen interactions to set the direction that the car will go. The steering wheel has become a yoke (my uninformed guess is that this is more of designers trying to minimize the fact and appearance of driving controls and trying to visually convey the idea of a self driving car). One weird note: For wanting to get rid of so much clutter, why haven't Tesla designers incorporated a HUD? [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=minimalist+design+of+tesla&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=minimalist+design+of+tesla&... [2] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2011-19595/p-73 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2011-19595/p-73
• phendrenad2 5y ago
  Perhaps the most important lesson here is: HAVE A UX DESIGNER. The world is full of people who will fight very hard for bad designs. Make no mistake, you UX WILL be designed, and you can either have a professional do it, or one of the thousands of people who chimed in to defend Tesla's perfectly-bad interface here.
• pabs3 5y ago
  I'm surprised the Tesla didn't automatically detect the fogging and enable the defogger.
  • FireBeyond 5y ago
    The same way its rain sensors detect the rain? Please, no.
    • pabs3 5y ago
      Are the rain sensors inaccurate or something? (I've never seen a Tesla, let alone driven one)
      • FireBeyond 5y ago
        Yeah. While every other manufacturer uses cameras and light reflection, Tesla proudly touts an often broken AI model for recognizing rain. It is a huge source of complaint - the auto function doesn't work with any degree of reliability for many users.
        • pabs3 5y ago
          The light reflection method sounds like it should be perfect, does it work well in practice?
          • FireBeyond 5y ago
            Pretty well. The only challenge I've ever seen on my cars (Nissan, Jaguar, multiple Audis, not at the same time) is when its standing water on the windshield and often grey mornings, when there's not much light to trip the light reflection aspect. But that's a small price to pay. My current Audi has variable intermittent wipers (i.e. there's off, intermittent*, steady, fast, where intermittent has three settings in itself) where you can toggle between timer-based intermittency and rain sensor-based (that toggle is via the MMI console, the rest is on the stalk).
• hk1337 5y ago
  A UX designer walks into a Tesla Bar. After regaining his composer asks, “Why was that bar set so low?”
• JustSomeNobody 5y ago
  Why is there no regulatory body reviewing software UI changes before they go live?
  • heavyset_go 5y ago
    Regulators are asleep at the wheel.
• billpg 5y ago
  If your car has a touchscreen to be used by the driver, your design is already a failure. Quit car design and take up embroidery or something. Cars using a driver touchscreen need to fail their annual roadworthiness test. Take these cars off the road.
• HomeDeLaPot 5y ago
  Is even having all this stuff on a center console touch screen such a good idea? I drive an old Civic with no touch screens and I know every function by feel—hardly have to take my eyes off the road. Driving my wife's car or parents' car, both with touchscreens, I've occasionally found myself cruising down the interstate at 80 mph tapping through nested menus... I've never driven a Tesla, but I'm skeptical that a giant touchscreen has better UX than the usual array of knobs and buttons, all the more so if I have to use it for basic things like defrosting and the UI is revised on occasion.
  • crooked-v 5y ago
    It's a bad idea. It's just cheaper than physical controls.
    • kunai 5y ago
      Yep, it worked when Tesla was a scrappy startup and had to cut corners when they could. They're an absolute behemoth of a company now, they should at the very least spend some time making an interior that's actually nice to spend time in. The 2022 Honda Civic is a masterclass in how to do automotive design right. It's a throwback when it needs to be, forward-looking when it should. The interior is beautiful and I predict it will age much better than these all-screen layouts (which may end up going the way of the phosphor display gauges common on many American cars in the 80s)
• manquer 5y ago
  On a tangential note, is it not possible to automate defrosting with today's tech? Measuring visibility seems not all that difficult? Had this come with automatic triggers for defrosting it may be have been okay
• MadWombat 5y ago
  "This is why automotive UX is so hard. It’s the context and the severe consequences that make it far more impactful..." I see what you did there :)
• phendrenad2 5y ago
  I just want a car with big clunky buttons. I want to feel like I'm docking a soyuz with the space station when I press the buttons.
• epgui 5y ago
  I’m not going to defend any of the design choices, but you know what’s dangerous? Operating a 2000kg machine at high velocity without having RTFM. Edit: I'm also not exclusively blaming the author, I think when controls change Tesla should have a responsibility for retraining the vehicle operator. Obviously a painful user experience, but at least it would be a disincentive to move buttons around for no reason.
• rkagerer 5y ago
  So, yes it’s just 2 taps vs 1, but that can’t be that bad right? 1 tap is too many. These need to be physical knobs or buttons that stay in the same place so you can develop muscle memory.
• dd444fgdfg 5y ago
  everything goes in cycles. one day it will be hip again to have physical buttons for everything, and a bunch of cars will be release with innovative buttons with direct access to the function, no need to use the screen!
• tsujp 5y ago
  I think the touch display within Teslas is dangerous. Physical buttons and dials allow me to feel around and not take my eyes off the road whereas a touch display has no such method of feedback. Sure it can vibrate and sure there are voice commands but now instead of pressing a button I know exists physically at location X I need to have a conversation with my car to turn heating on and off or I need to remember exactly where my finger is in space, and adjust that for UI updates and how the UI changes in each submenu. What if the sun is really, really bright today well now it's harder to see the contents of the display and we're back to conversation mode. Close your eyes and navigate through the settings menu on your phone down a few menus to toggle a setting. I doubt you could do that first time beyond only opening the settings app itself. Why do we allow this to be implemented in cars where your attention on the road defines whether or not (in a non-trivial amount of cases) you or someone else lives or dies.
• bschwindHN 5y ago
  You can literally be the richest man in the world, but you apparently can't buy good taste or design.
• makecheck 5y ago
  They also seem to design everything as if you’re going to press downward like some iPad in your lap. That’s wrong: since the screen is completely vertical, there’s a good chance your finger won’t accurately land on the spot you’re trying to reach. The area recognized for each button needs to be a lot bigger vertically, including the area above and below the icon/label. (The Apple Watch has a similar problem; when you try to press on it when tilted on your wrist, it is a lot harder to touch vertically-narrow buttons.) What I want to see are very “tall” buttons WITH BORDERS ON THEM that are large enough to still hit when my finger slips down a bit, as it often does on such a display.
• wolrah 5y ago
  > Most importantly, in 99% of cars on the road today, I don’t need to RTFM to turn steer, accelerate, brake, use the turn signals, or turn on the damn defroster. That’s why these things are standardized. There are lots of things I will likely need the manual for but not these basics. cough cough vim users... In 99% of text editors I don't need to RTFM to open, save, find/replace a string, or exit the damn editor. There are lots of things I might need the manual for but not the basics.
  • approxim8ion 5y ago
    Haha, that's fair. But also, is this the case in 99% of "modal" text editors? Because that's why these things are the way they are in vim. There's nothing different about the modality of operation of a Tesla. You could switch the touchscreen to a physical console and not lose anything, but modality is central to how vim operates, and becomes more valuable as you get used to it and need it more.
• roldie 5y ago
  I had a similar experience. I'm a ux designer, and I drove a friend's Tesla for the first time recently. Going in, I already hated the trend of touchscreens taking over vehicle control panels. But I didn't quite anticipate how difficult the Tesla experience was. I kept worrying that I was going to crash because I couldn't figure out how to do anything. Or if I did know how to do it, it took concentration and significant cognitive load to do it. Changing climate control settings, any audio setting more advanced than volume up or down, etc. Even shifting into forward or reverse was difficult because you have to swipe forward to go forward and backward to go in reverse. While this may be intuitive on a purely touchscreen interaction only level, it is 100% backward from the standard shifter layout of literally every other car on the planet. On a different note, the driving experience was also a bit unexpected. Normal driving was actually kind of tough because I didn't get used to the single pedal regenerative braking in the short time I drove it. It was hard to keep the car at a steady speed. But it's still very fun to drive overall, mostly because of the insane acceleration and torque.
  • CorrectHorseBat 5y ago
    I agree on all that but the regenerative braking. I got used to it in minutes, much faster than I expected. But maybe that's because I'm used to drive manual and it resembles motor braking? One thing I really don't get some companies put in electric cars(, even sometimes without option to turn it off!) is creep. It's an abomination that has no place in an electric car.
• alexb_ 5y ago
  The entire concept of everything being a touchscreen is an absolute cancer to all automobiles. People are taking the Steve Jobs "I hate buttons" mindset into a space where you NEED to feel around, you NEED to be able to adjust a dial, push a button, slide something around, etc. With a touch screen, you get no feedback from feeling around - you have to take your eyes off the road, and do the equivalent of looking at your phone for a second just to do something as simple as turn on the defroster.
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• space_rock 5y ago
  Reading the author tweet he comes across as silly. Not surprised at the negative reactions. I don't like the Tesla update but a Tesla UI is a huge improvement over other vehicles New UI is not good compared to the old one. But I'd take a Tesla UI any day of a maze of buttons
• deleted 5y ago
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• gchokov 5y ago
  Despite living in Europe and having some great car brands - that we are somehow loyal to - I was considering buying a Model 3 to my father. The UI and the single control screen is a huge turn off - he can't operate it. it's really bad. So bad, that he is actually unwilling to learn it - it's more like a hassle than convenience. So.. Tesla 3 is a no-go.
• helsinkiandrew 5y ago
  Forget about self driving - surely a Tesla should detect that the windscreen is fogged up and start defrosting it automatically. Once they've done that (and it works, well) they can hide the button to do it manually in whatever submenu they wish.
• FpUser 5y ago
  I just hope that someone will sue the f.. out of Tesla for changing UI and getting rid of standard icon image. Oh well, not my problem and I will never buy "smart" car until there is nothing else available.
• brailsafe 5y ago
  Having never driven a Tesla, it baffles me why people are chill with just a giant screen in the first place.
• sdze 5y ago
  While I agree with the points made by the author I am wondering why this fancy tesla cars fogging up? My Ford Focus with auto aircon never fogs up.
• nottorp 5y ago
  I drove a Tesla before this update. Even then, whoever designed the UI had never adjusted basic controls while driving. Also, the rear left door was misaligned from the factory. Musk may deserve praise for dragging the auto industry into the electric era, but I'm not buying that thing. Edit: thinking further, I think we can call it the "designed by nerds in California" disease. Tesla is designed for the tech commuter on a freeway. Also in an area with a relatively mild climate and flat. They have no idea that the weather can change in 10 minutes as you go around the next hill. Even the turn signals are so smart they can't cover some situations more complex than a 90 degree crossroads. Smartphones and laptops (especially Apple's) are mostly designed for a tech dude spending most of their time in a climate controlled office. Iphones shut down when they're too hot/too cold. What if you have no choice because that's how the area you're in is? The Apple laptops with the emoji keyboard were never tested outdoors, or they wouldn't get killed by the tiniest speck of dust.
• huffmsa 5y ago
  And here I've been complaining that my WRX has one switch for sunroof tilt and a different one for opening and closing it. Inefficient, but I can operate it without having to come to a complete stop
• mgrund 5y ago
  Absolutely terrible UX (and bugs) after the new update. A few additional annoyances: - When holding the steering wheel in the 10 and 2 position, my right hand covers the HUD and lane change camera - Rear cam now has significant lag and stutters, so you never know if you are actually about to hit something (no, I don’t think it’s caused by the cable issue in the recall, came with v11) - The infamous temperature control pop up covers the cam and HUD as well
• Yizahi 5y ago
  Over the years I gradually got to be a fan of Tesla cars (virtually, never owned one), and then back to indifference. Design decisions are mind boggling, in no particular order: - yoke "wheel" - no turn stalk - gearbox on touch screen - centered display with no HUD or smaller driver panel - this update - increasing amount of complaints about car quality
• rswail 5y ago
  Why aren't insurance companies enforcing the equivalent of UL listing for human factor engineering in cars? Cars will not be self-driving for a number of years, so trying to evolve the UX/UI before that happens is setting up for disasters. I guess it will take what all safety laws do, people have accidents and getting injured or dying because of the flaws. And inevitable lawsuits and more intense regulation than would have applied in the first place.
  • rsynnott 5y ago
    They probably will at some point. This sort of thing is reactive, and the trend of putting dreadful touch UIs in cars is largely pretty new.
• elif 5y ago
  Strange how he spends zero time discussing the UI which he actually used: the voice control, which i treat as the primary interface to my car and my house. I get that he really wants a button as a guest in a car. But as an owner of a car, I would loathe 10 buttons I never want to push.
  • brk 5y ago
    As a counterpoint, I loathe voice control, I just want to push a button. I'm not saying this just as an counterpoint-for-the-sake-of-arguing, I don't use voice control on anything - phone, TV, home automation, car, etc. I know many people like it, and that's great, but I do not think at this point it has eclipsed hard buttons in things like vehicles where it should be considered the primary interaction method.
  • approxim8ion 5y ago
    Voice control tech is still very patchy, especially if you have an accent or a speech defect, or if it is not capable of handling colloquialisms or you calling a feature by a different name as intended. All of these things are common enough in practice, and the last thing I need when I am driving is to have to bark a command thrice to get what I need activated, and then bark more commands to undo whatever the car actually did by misunderstanding my commands.