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>Mazda is apparently taking the right approach here -- increasing the tactile buttons on the dash and console, and ditching touchscreens. Huh? After using both

• genocidicbunny 4y ago
  > Turing the wheel unpredictably selects objects on the screen, forcing you to keep your eyes off the road while you keep turning the wheel until the item you need is selected. You shouldn't need to do anything requiring the wheel while you're driving though. All the controls that you would want to have accessible while you're driving are physical (climate control, basic media/phone controls.) For everything else you should be setting that up while you're parked.
  • karamanolev 4y ago
    Yet, it's not what people are doing. The UIs of cars and other objects should take into account how they're going to be used, not how they are designed to be used. It's been proven again and again that you can only marginally educate or tell people how to behave. It's better to make a system that is safe 7/10 in real world usage, instead of one designed for 9/10, but actually getting 5/10.
    • stonogo 4y ago
      The solution to "stupid people won't keep their eyes on the road while driving" is not "force everyone else to take their eyes off the road as well."
    • lttlrck 4y ago
      Both hands staying on the steering wheel is a huge plus. And the inputs are stepwise and therefore less prone to error, so safer. And then there is Siri which makes all the things that you might want to do while driving, and probably shouldn't (touchscreen or not) far easier and safer. How is a touchscreen safer?
      • karamanolev 4y ago
        I've never said a touchscreen is better. FWIW, I like the button controls on my car and don't need a touchscreen. I'm specifically replying to "anything else you should do at the parking lot", which we know people don't do. I'm ONLY saying that UIs should be designed for how they will be used. If people never pull over and do things on the go - either disable them completely when the car is moving or make sure the user is done as quickly as possible and with the minimum amount of looking inside the car. If that's a touchscreen, buttons, buttons next to a screen, I don't really know - that should be done with proper UI/UX research.
    • dognotdog 4y ago
      I'd claim things are more nuanced. There are many reasons why UIs in many places, not just cars, suck. In cars, wether warranted or not, there is also pressure from legal to err on the side of building a cludge that is unassailable vs. a smooth user experience that could be grounds for a class action because it doesn't make enough of an effort to discourage dangerous user behavior.
      • oceanplexian 4y ago
        It’s because the incentives are in the wrong place. When the average Joe goes to a car lot a new truck with a touchscreen is “Futuristic” and “Modern”. The only cars that come with buttons are the base models, and are therefore “cheap”. The car industry isn’t in the business of building great UIs, they’re in the business of selling cars off of the dealer lot, unfortunately.
  • elzbardico 4y ago
    Usually me an my wife take turns driving. And we have a tacit agreement that the passenger control this kind of stuff. So, if I am driving, I ask my wife to set a destination on the GPS, play some music, change the temperature, and when she is driving I become the navigator/flight-engineer. Having those controls in the wheel would be incredibly annoying for us.
    • genocidicbunny 4y ago
      In my Mazda, the climate controls are physical, but in the center console, and easily accessible to both driver and front passenger. The wheel-based controls are things like skip forward/backward, bring up voice input, or end call. That's also about the extent of things I consider the driver should be focusing on. When I was younger, on family trips, even climate control was something relegated to the passenger; Even for the driver side. I consider putting in a destination on the GPS, or setting up my music playlist to be 'park the car' types of things if simply doing it via voice control doesn't work.
    • bluGill 4y ago
      The controls should not be visible to the driver. Move that touch screen over to the navigators seat and make it nice and convient for them to use. A little angle to the driver can't see it at all would be good. The driver should have limited controls, all physical, and all ergonomicly designed to be easy to find. Even programming your phone GPS while moving should require the navigator to hit accept. Screens for the driver should be carefully designed to not be something you look at while moving.
      • ghaff 4y ago
        Realistically, however, there often is no navigator so reverting vehicle controls for a solo driver to the situation 10 years ago is almost certainly a non-starter. And even that long ago, it just meant people were using a smartphone instead on an in-car infotainment system.
        • bluGill 4y ago
  • ericd 4y ago
    The thumbwheel buttons on the Tesla wheel are great, and one of them activates listening for voice commands, which work really well. That usually handles all music switching and climate control setting.
• andrewla 4y ago
  Wow, that sounds intensely bad! I haven't actually driven a Mazda, I just heard that they were getting rid of touchscreens and it honestly didn't occur to me that they'd try to shoehorn full Android Auto or CarPlay into that. I just assumed that they would have a minimal interface and let your phone do the work, and then have "next track" and "previous track" buttons and a volume knob, plus climate control and stuff, and the screen would just have various car information; tire pressure and fuel efficiency and various camera systems for parking. It might still work for me (I'm definitely going to test drive a Mazda when my current car needs replacing), but this is me; I disable CarPlay because I can't stand it; I prefer to just put my phone on a mount and use it directly; I just need the car systems as a speaker for the phone.
  • izacus 4y ago
    I own a Mazda and using Android Auto with physical controls works just fine, no idea what the OP is talking about. All the main driving features are accessible by buttons and don't need eyes off the road. It's a massive difference in compasion to some brands that require you to use touchscreen to switch to next track or adjust AC temp.
    • vel0city 4y ago
      Which cars have touchscreens and don't have steering wheel media controls?
      • izacus 4y ago
        Renault Zoe was the last one I've drove with that annoying issue (at least the model I had). There was also a BMW Series 1, that requred selecting a media page in dashboard screen and then selecting a next track button. (No support for Auto on that one tho.)
        • vel0city 4y ago
          Interesting. It seems like almost all cars sold in the US these days have steering wheel media controls, even cheaper base models. It feels like you'd have to go out of your way to find one that doesn't have it.
• twblalock 4y ago
  > What good is tactile feedback when you have no idea what you're adjusting without staring at the screen? This is what people don't understand about touchscreen vs dial-based UIs. One is not safer than the other if they both require you to take your eyes off the road and look at a screen! If car makers want to have a button control a feature, then they should simply make a button that controls that feature. Cars worked that way for many years. Buttons, dials, or trackpads that move a cursor or select items on a screen are slower than touch-based UIs, require at least as much driver attention, and are less ergonomic than just putting your finger on the exact item you want.
  • treeman79 4y ago
    I can operate basically anything by touch in the car other than the touchscreen.
    • mcronce 4y ago
      This is what people don't seem to get...with a set of physical buttons, you can find what you're looking for just by feel, glance down briefly when it's safe to do so to make sure it's the button you want, then press it. With a touchscreen, in contrast, you have to hover over approximately the location you think you want to press, and either hope you don't hit a bump before you have a chance to look down and make sure it's the right spot or look down immediately. I put a touchscreen head unit in my car in 2016. If I drove more often I'd dump the touchscreen in a heartbeat.
  • vel0city 4y ago
    The idea with the touchscreen controls is that the driver shouldn't really be using the touchscreen at all while driving except as a quick reference to the map. You're not supposed to be using the screen to adjust your media while driving, there's steering wheel and voice controls. You're not supposed to be adjusting the climate controls while moving, auto climate should just handle it. Why would I want to be distracted by needing to change the climate controls? I shouldn't have to adjust them while the vehicle is in motion.
• elzbardico 4y ago
  I refuse to believe an UX professional or even a programmer ever thought this could be a good idea. It must have been pushed down the throats of the designers and developers by an edict from some point-haired MBA.
  • 3-cheese-sundae 4y ago
    I'm positive this is what happened. My anecodotal evidence: the touchscreen-while-moving functionality was removed when my 2016 got a software update. One day I could just touch the giant map to enlarge it, the next I had to twiddle the knob a precise number of notches and watch the screen to make sure I highlighted it correctly. It could be worse: Lexus infotainment screens of certain years would refuse to display the radio's RDS song info when you pressed the "Message" button (which enlarges the window to see it) while you were moving. Meanwhile, the RDS data happily continued to scroll by, one word every 3 seconds, in the tiny marquee at the top.
• wyldfire 4y ago
  I have a 2020 Mazda 6 and I love the safety focus of its infotainment. But the ludicrously bad latency is infuriating. Button presses - especially <change radio station +/-> will sometimes get buffered for 10/20s and sometimes they're ignored altogether.
• syzar 4y ago
  I recently got a Mazda CX-5. Previous car was a Ford Escape. I much prefer Mazda’s approach. The touchscreen on the Ford was a pain to use after several years. I think the screen’s touch sensitivity degrades over time. I don’t know. It was especially bad in winter. I haven’t owned the Mazda long enough to know if the joystick will degrade much over time but I find the interface easy to use and navigate. It does sometimes take a while to acknowledge a click. That’s annoying but overall I really like Mazda’s approach.
• 0x457 4y ago
  > Android Auto and CarPlay interfaces were designed for touchscreen control. Mazda forcing the use of a wheel, like a joystick is a safety hazard. What? How is it a safety hazard? I'm far more distracted trying to touch the button on display or scroll in my Wrangler, than using a wheel in my Miata. Selection is extremely predictable and always the same order, it's a basic accessibility feature of android. I enjoy using the knob with android auto far more than touch screen, specifically because I don't have to move eyes of the road or have a hand in an uncomfortable position trying to touch something on the screen. Plus, switching between navigation and media is a press of a button that is always in the same space - next to the knob. Compared to touchscreen... And on top of everything, it remembers which navigation/media I'm using, so switching between radio and android auto navigation is a single button press. It's like one of the important features why my last two cars were mazdas.
• nkrisc 4y ago
  The truth is you really shouldn’t be doing anything apart from adjusting the A/C while driving. It’s all dangerous to do, whether it’s a touchscreen or buttons. Everyone does it, but nothing will make it safe.
  • kccqzy 4y ago
    If you're going down this path, what makes you single out adjusting the A/C? My car has a physical knob to adjust the temperature of the A/C that I can locate without looking, but I need to look at the seven-segment display to see the temperature being adjusted. How is that different from looking at a touchscreen and tapping a button on the screen?
    • nkrisc 4y ago
      It’s risky too, but it’s pretty much the only thing on the center console that is directly related to your physical comfort which will impact your concentration. That’s why I made an exception for it.
  • akomtu 4y ago
    In this case, looking into side mirrors is dangerous, but not looking into them is also dangerous. Thus driving is dangerous, but walking is dangerous too, so better to sit in a safe room away from the dangers.
    • nkrisc 4y ago
      Driving is dangerous. But looking in your side mirrors is necessary. But looking too long is dangerous, especially in stop and go traffic. My point is not that we should do nothing because everything is dangerous, but that we should minimize the risk by avoiding things that are unnecessary. Adjusting the radio is almost certainly unnecessary to drive.
      • akomtu 4y ago
        Annoying music makes the driver angry and inattentive, so not adjusting the radio is also dangerous. This kind of risk assessment algorithm is already built into our brains, and I doubt you can improve it with a formal simplistic model, partially because the risk weights depend on circumstances.
• ghostpepper 4y ago
  Mazda provides physical buttons for 90% of the controls you need on a daily basis but there's no realistic way to use apple carplay without looking at a screen. Were you expecting mazda to have a "Search for a song" dedicated button on the steering wheel? In my view Mazda's modern interface is almost as safe as you can get while still having modern features that require a touchscreen. I only wish there was a button to physically turn the entire screen off when driving at night (you can do this but it's buried in a menu). In my 2020 CX5, the screen is actually a touchscreen as well, but it only works at low speeds which may be safer but is not very convenient when a passenger wants to control it at speed.
  • m-ee 4y ago
    There’s a way to put it into developer mode and unlock it, but I haven’t bothered since I like the wheel better.
  • dillondoyle 4y ago
    When will amazon put an echo branded voice prompt car control in? Or whoever. If it works well it seems like a great solution. Talking on the phone is distracting, but feels less so than trying to find touchscreen areas.
    • izacus 4y ago
      Both Apple Carplay and Android Auto support voice controls via their respective assistants. And most cars come with native voice control these days as well.
      • dillondoyle 4y ago
        I've tried the one on my dad's car but it's pretty crap.
  • sizzle 4y ago
    You can press the speak button on the steering wheel and say “turn screen off” and it will turn off on the Mazda 2 door hatch. Might have changed for latest version, I would google it to find the magic phrase incantation.