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Tricky thing about "data driven" / behaviour observation is: App/icon X may be the most COMMONLY used one. But it doesn't necessarily make it the most IMPORTA

Tricky thing about "data driven" / behaviour observation is: App/icon X may be the most COMMONLY used one. But it doesn't necessarily make it the most IMPORTANT one, the one I need to reach in a hurry / most easily. I don't know how to capture, via automated telemetry, "this occasional button I REALLY REALLY need"... so it's just hubris then. I'm an outsider, I've only entered Tesla's as opposed to driven them, but the UX is such a massive deal-breaker for this old grouch, it's unbelievable. I wish it weren't so but c'est la vie.

heleninboodler 5y ago
It's also subject to an unhealthy feedback loop. Oh, this button isn't commonly used, so let's move it to a slightly less prominent place. Oh, this button's usage dropped, it must be super unimportant, let's move it behind a menu. Oh, nobody ever presses this button, let's get rid of it.
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  I get this a lot with URL autocomplete. For some reason it decides “news” means “some other URL with news in its <title>”, then out of habit I type news+enter and it takes me to that website, further reinforcing “Yeah he goes to this website a lot, let’s keep that at the top autocomplete priority!” So now I have to type “news.” before it will fill news.ycombinator.com, because it started showing me the wrong option and I kept inadvertently picking it because it used to give me the right one. There doesn’t seem to be any mechanism for it to realize “every time this happens he closes that website immediately and goes to a different one that we ranked #2 in the autocomplete search.” So until I retrain my muscle memory I’ll just keep on mistraining the autocomplete even further.
  - TuringTest 5y ago
    > “every time this happens he closes that website immediately and goes to a different one that we ranked #2 in the autocomplete search.” This is a disheartening yet frighteningly common problem with UI automation. It doesn't learn enough to actually be aware of the expected result, yet it can't be programmed to behave exactly as you want or need. Automation in user interfaces should be exactly the opposite. It should try to learn your repeated actions so that you can perform them automatically, yet if the learning goes wrong, the user should be in control at all times and override the automatic deduced actions.
ptaipale 5y ago
Indeed. What is the largest button I have in my Renault's dash? It's the triangle-shaped hazard light switch. Do I ever use it? I hope not. Do I want it to be that big? Yes, I do.
- Syonyk 5y ago
  That's actually one complaint I have about the 1st gen Chevy Volt - the hazards switch is a physical button... on the right side of the center console, over by the passenger. It's not a location that is either rapid to find if you don't know where it is, or particularly rapid to hit when you need them - it's a substantial span reach, unsupported, on a smaller button than I think reasonable. Though, admittedly, I miss the ones on the top of the steering column. That was standard enough for a long time that I still look for the toggle there. I use them at least a few times a year, though far less than I used to when I was on the interstate a lot more. Any time traffic rapidly drops more than about 20mph, I light up my hazards to let following traffic know, "Yes, you see brake lights, no, they're not just people scrubbing a few miles an hour off - get on your brakes now!" Probably a habit I picked up from truckers, a lot of them do this for the very understandable reason that a big rig doesn't stop on a dime, and even if they will, you're likely to unstack your cargo in the process. Super infrequently used compared to other buttons, but also not something I really have the time go sorting through menus for when I need it. And neither do I trust the car's automatic systems to turn them on for me. Though, if I could dream, we'd use LED brake lights to encode braking intensity somehow. The car knows if I'm barely touching the pedal to cancel cruise control and light up the brakes, or if I've just mashed them to the ABS actuation point, but the brake lights don't encode any of this useful info. You couldn't rely on it for car behavior (trivial to spoof, and get rid of tailgaters), but it would be an additional useful input for driving - "Woah, hey, that car in front of you just nearly locked up their wheels, radar data agrees, slow down!"
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    Actually, I've seen that some cars will rapidly flash the brake lights a few times if the brakes are applied hard. I don't know off the top of my head which cars though.
markus_zhang 5y ago
Think in terms of financial day trading, I always had a panic button that wired to the deepest dark pool to get out of the situation ASAP, even with a hefty cost.
edmundsauto 5y ago
Not about the Tesla issue, but telemetry isn’t the issue here. Bad goaling and not being context aware is the issue. For the type of situation that you mentioned, it’s common to design counter metrics or context dependent metrics. Define the “really important” situation, see how often people can use the necessary button in that time. Define your goals based on that ratio and you are on the right track. The thing is, interfaces are limited. I think there’s a reasonable discussion around how important different features are, especially when they are rarely used in general. Again, I’m not too familiar with Tesla, and it sounds like they made choices different than you think they should. But it’s not the approach that is the problem - setting bad goals or bad strategies is at issue.
GuB-42 5y ago
> I don't know how to capture, via automated telemetry, "this occasional button I REALLY REALLY need" I suppose a way is to correlate use of the button with activity that may indicate an emergency situation. For example strong accelerations, quick movement, etc... Some touchscreen can also sense how strong the push is, and we have a tendency to push harder on important buttons.
- romwell 5y ago
  Right, and in the original scenario the defogger button would still be unused in critical situations... Because nobody would be able to find it in critical situations.
mcv 5y ago
What might actually be useful is instead of a "recently used", you've got a "used in similar circumstances" or "popular with other drivers RIGHT NOW". So if everybody is suddenly turning on their fog lights, maybe you should too.
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  So now we've got a button that you can never rely on being there at all. This is stupid. It's a car and you need controls accessible in an instant, not hidden behind a login page and captcha.
  - mcv 5y ago
    That's exactly the point: you want the button you need to be there. Rarely used buttons may be hard to find and yet very important in specific situations. If car companies really want to use some form of AI in the UI, that's going to be bad in almost all cases, except if they use it to help you find that important but rarely used buttons in those rare situations where you need it. Of course it should also still be immediately accessible in its normal spot.
    - brokenmachine 5y ago
      Safety-critical controls shouldn't be reliant on a blackbox to determine whether they're visible or not. There's a reason things like planes and industrial equipment don't have dynamic interfaces.

heleninboodler 5y ago

It's also subject to an unhealthy feedback loop. Oh, this button isn't commonly used, so let's move it to a slightly less prominent place. Oh, this button's usage dropped, it must be super unimportant, let's move it behind a menu. Oh, nobody ever presses this button, let's get rid of it.

wlesieutre 5y ago
I get this a lot with URL autocomplete. For some reason it decides “news” means “some other URL with news in its <title>”, then out of habit I type news+enter and it takes me to that website, further reinforcing “Yeah he goes to this website a lot, let’s keep that at the top autocomplete priority!” So now I have to type “news.” before it will fill news.ycombinator.com, because it started showing me the wrong option and I kept inadvertently picking it because it used to give me the right one. There doesn’t seem to be any mechanism for it to realize “every time this happens he closes that website immediately and goes to a different one that we ranked #2 in the autocomplete search.” So until I retrain my muscle memory I’ll just keep on mistraining the autocomplete even further.
- TuringTest 5y ago
  > “every time this happens he closes that website immediately and goes to a different one that we ranked #2 in the autocomplete search.” This is a disheartening yet frighteningly common problem with UI automation. It doesn't learn enough to actually be aware of the expected result, yet it can't be programmed to behave exactly as you want or need. Automation in user interfaces should be exactly the opposite. It should try to learn your repeated actions so that you can perform them automatically, yet if the learning goes wrong, the user should be in control at all times and override the automatic deduced actions.

ptaipale 5y ago

Indeed. What is the largest button I have in my Renault's dash? It's the triangle-shaped hazard light switch. Do I ever use it? I hope not. Do I want it to be that big? Yes, I do.

Syonyk 5y ago
That's actually one complaint I have about the 1st gen Chevy Volt - the hazards switch is a physical button... on the right side of the center console, over by the passenger. It's not a location that is either rapid to find if you don't know where it is, or particularly rapid to hit when you need them - it's a substantial span reach, unsupported, on a smaller button than I think reasonable. Though, admittedly, I miss the ones on the top of the steering column. That was standard enough for a long time that I still look for the toggle there. I use them at least a few times a year, though far less than I used to when I was on the interstate a lot more. Any time traffic rapidly drops more than about 20mph, I light up my hazards to let following traffic know, "Yes, you see brake lights, no, they're not just people scrubbing a few miles an hour off - get on your brakes now!" Probably a habit I picked up from truckers, a lot of them do this for the very understandable reason that a big rig doesn't stop on a dime, and even if they will, you're likely to unstack your cargo in the process. Super infrequently used compared to other buttons, but also not something I really have the time go sorting through menus for when I need it. And neither do I trust the car's automatic systems to turn them on for me. Though, if I could dream, we'd use LED brake lights to encode braking intensity somehow. The car knows if I'm barely touching the pedal to cancel cruise control and light up the brakes, or if I've just mashed them to the ABS actuation point, but the brake lights don't encode any of this useful info. You couldn't rely on it for car behavior (trivial to spoof, and get rid of tailgaters), but it would be an additional useful input for driving - "Woah, hey, that car in front of you just nearly locked up their wheels, radar data agrees, slow down!"
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  Actually, I've seen that some cars will rapidly flash the brake lights a few times if the brakes are applied hard. I don't know off the top of my head which cars though.

markus_zhang 5y ago

Think in terms of financial day trading, I always had a panic button that wired to the deepest dark pool to get out of the situation ASAP, even with a hefty cost.

edmundsauto 5y ago

Not about the Tesla issue, but telemetry isn’t the issue here. Bad goaling and not being context aware is the issue. For the type of situation that you mentioned, it’s common to design counter metrics or context dependent metrics. Define the “really important” situation, see how often people can use the necessary button in that time. Define your goals based on that ratio and you are on the right track. The thing is, interfaces are limited. I think there’s a reasonable discussion around how important different features are, especially when they are rarely used in general. Again, I’m not too familiar with Tesla, and it sounds like they made choices different than you think they should. But it’s not the approach that is the problem - setting bad goals or bad strategies is at issue.

GuB-42 5y ago

> I don't know how to capture, via automated telemetry, "this occasional button I REALLY REALLY need" I suppose a way is to correlate use of the button with activity that may indicate an emergency situation. For example strong accelerations, quick movement, etc... Some touchscreen can also sense how strong the push is, and we have a tendency to push harder on important buttons.

romwell 5y ago
Right, and in the original scenario the defogger button would still be unused in critical situations... Because nobody would be able to find it in critical situations.

mcv 5y ago

What might actually be useful is instead of a "recently used", you've got a "used in similar circumstances" or "popular with other drivers RIGHT NOW". So if everybody is suddenly turning on their fog lights, maybe you should too.

brokenmachine 5y ago
So now we've got a button that you can never rely on being there at all. This is stupid. It's a car and you need controls accessible in an instant, not hidden behind a login page and captcha.
- mcv 5y ago
  That's exactly the point: you want the button you need to be there. Rarely used buttons may be hard to find and yet very important in specific situations. If car companies really want to use some form of AI in the UI, that's going to be bad in almost all cases, except if they use it to help you find that important but rarely used buttons in those rare situations where you need it. Of course it should also still be immediately accessible in its normal spot.
  - brokenmachine 5y ago
    Safety-critical controls shouldn't be reliant on a blackbox to determine whether they're visible or not. There's a reason things like planes and industrial equipment don't have dynamic interfaces.