5 ms·

A two-line text display is still a screen. My dad's early-2000s Peugeot 407 also had a similar set-up: a red/orange monochrome dot-matrix display, with a surpr

A two-line text display is still a screen. My dad's early-2000s Peugeot 407 also had a similar set-up: a red/orange monochrome dot-matrix display, with a surprisingly hot backlight, capable of displaying only the most rudiminary of roundabout diagrams and now-and-next directions. It did use TTS to pronounce street names with the wrong inflection and an overemphasis on "yAAARds" as units-of-distance for some reason. It was controlled by an easy-to-lose infrared remote-control D-pad: entering an address meant picking each letter one-by-one from an A-Z list until it could autocomplete the street name. I was always envious of kids whose parents had contemporaneous Mercedes with their full-color 3-4" LCD screens - until they'd told me of how bad UX was across the board: stuff like sub-usable frame-rates, overpriced map-data updates, etc - and this never got better over time until Tesla showed-up with 17" full-screen 60fps Google satellite imagery right there. And still the rest of the car industry doesn't "get" good UX. Le sigh. (Yes, I drive a Model X and I'll decide the next car I buy squarely on the car's software UX - because if they can't get something as simple as smooth framerates right then what else are they getting wrong in the car?)

genocidicbunny 4y ago
(Gonna be the lightning rod of hate here for a moment) > And still the rest of the car industry doesn't "get" good UX. Le sigh. Imho, a giant 17" touchscreen that replaces most physical controls in a car is also not good UX for a car. Why do you need high-res satellite imagery of your route on a screen in the center of the car? Just look out the window! I'll grant that most other manufacturers also do a poor job of a lot of the UX elements, but Tesla ain't the great saviour either.
- DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
  > Why do you need high-res satellite imagery of your route on a screen in the center of the car? Just look out the window! Because it’s incredibly useful. It means you can navigate dirt tracks. See over treeelines. Judge the quality of parking lots. Find out what side of the building the driveway or entrance is on. Etc.
- mosburger 4y ago
  no hate here - the "replace everything with an iPad" movement of car dash design has been generally, IMO, a horrible change. When driving, you need tactile feedback when adjusting things like the cabin temperature so that you can keep your eyes on the road. Replacing knobs with GUI sliders on a screen that you have to see to manipulate is a step backwards. I would love it if auto manufacturers came to their senses and went back to old-fashioned knobs and buttons, but I suspect that just sticking everything on a screen is cheaper to manufacture and maintain, so I won't hold my breath. :(
  - DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
    I agree entirely. Heterogenous (I.e. distinctly shaped) physical controls are essential for safe driving without taking one’s eyes off the road. …but that doesn’t mean my last car’s abysmal “Ford MyTouch” or “Ford Sync” or whatever they rebrand it’s as was ever fit-for-purpose. How can a UI that can’t render faster than ~5fps be considered acceptable by the world’s leading carmaker? Where is the pride in their work?
    - genocidicbunny 4y ago
      You have a very good and valid point. Incidentally, despite being not a fan of Tesla's UX, I also see a bit of the silver lining in that it at least got people to start talking about it, both via the point you're making (that all other car UX sucks too) and also starting to ask the questions about what makes a good UX rather than a pretty one.
      - DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
        > at least got people to start talking about it You speak as though this is something new. It isn't. It was the same story back with Apple's iPod's clickwheel-and-drilldown UX. Nothing was stopping Apple's competitors from innovating on their own and potentially making something superior (and I was particularly fond of the contemporaneous UI of MS's PocketPC 2000's Media Player[1]). But they didn't. Instead everyone: Creative, Dell[2], Rio/iRiver, everyone just kept on putting out unusable plastic flash players that took 30 minutes to sync 10 minutes of 32kbps mono MP3 over COM1 or bulky HDD players unusuable to everyone except those people with ponytails who run that strange new "Linux" operating system I've been hearing so much about. And before that, it was probably Braun vs. Philips. For noncoherent reasons that I can't string together into a readable paragraph (I wasted over 10 minutes trying to already) I'll just say I think it's inevitable that in any consumer industry there will eventually be only one company with a monopoly on good taste and good design. Also consider how companies will hire people who are already aligned with the company's values, and we know Apple hires people with an eye for design regardless of their role, but Apple's competitors never had an eye for design, so they neve hired people with an eye for design, so they're never able to compete with Apple on the design front. Upstart competitors might be formed with an objective to wrest-away Apple's monopoly on good design but (post-1997) how could any design-focused small-fry compete with Apple on design? They can't. They'd ever get bought-out before they become too big to become a threat (if Apple's feeling nice), or end-up as another also-ran Android vendor with a nice handset, but you're still stuck with Google, and without the leverage of Samsung. I don't know where I'm going with this post now, so I'll just end it here. [1] Rightmost screenshot: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KMKZKDjJzWY/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KMKZKDjJzWY/maxresdefault.jpg [2] https://daringfireball.net/2005/09/ditty https://daringfireball.net/2005/09/ditty

genocidicbunny 4y ago

(Gonna be the lightning rod of hate here for a moment) > And still the rest of the car industry doesn't "get" good UX. Le sigh. Imho, a giant 17" touchscreen that replaces most physical controls in a car is also not good UX for a car. Why do you need high-res satellite imagery of your route on a screen in the center of the car? Just look out the window! I'll grant that most other manufacturers also do a poor job of a lot of the UX elements, but Tesla ain't the great saviour either.

DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
> Why do you need high-res satellite imagery of your route on a screen in the center of the car? Just look out the window! Because it’s incredibly useful. It means you can navigate dirt tracks. See over treeelines. Judge the quality of parking lots. Find out what side of the building the driveway or entrance is on. Etc.
mosburger 4y ago
no hate here - the "replace everything with an iPad" movement of car dash design has been generally, IMO, a horrible change. When driving, you need tactile feedback when adjusting things like the cabin temperature so that you can keep your eyes on the road. Replacing knobs with GUI sliders on a screen that you have to see to manipulate is a step backwards. I would love it if auto manufacturers came to their senses and went back to old-fashioned knobs and buttons, but I suspect that just sticking everything on a screen is cheaper to manufacture and maintain, so I won't hold my breath. :(
- DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
  I agree entirely. Heterogenous (I.e. distinctly shaped) physical controls are essential for safe driving without taking one’s eyes off the road. …but that doesn’t mean my last car’s abysmal “Ford MyTouch” or “Ford Sync” or whatever they rebrand it’s as was ever fit-for-purpose. How can a UI that can’t render faster than ~5fps be considered acceptable by the world’s leading carmaker? Where is the pride in their work?
  - genocidicbunny 4y ago
    You have a very good and valid point. Incidentally, despite being not a fan of Tesla's UX, I also see a bit of the silver lining in that it at least got people to start talking about it, both via the point you're making (that all other car UX sucks too) and also starting to ask the questions about what makes a good UX rather than a pretty one.
    - DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
      > at least got people to start talking about it You speak as though this is something new. It isn't. It was the same story back with Apple's iPod's clickwheel-and-drilldown UX. Nothing was stopping Apple's competitors from innovating on their own and potentially making something superior (and I was particularly fond of the contemporaneous UI of MS's PocketPC 2000's Media Player[1]). But they didn't. Instead everyone: Creative, Dell[2], Rio/iRiver, everyone just kept on putting out unusable plastic flash players that took 30 minutes to sync 10 minutes of 32kbps mono MP3 over COM1 or bulky HDD players unusuable to everyone except those people with ponytails who run that strange new "Linux" operating system I've been hearing so much about. And before that, it was probably Braun vs. Philips. For noncoherent reasons that I can't string together into a readable paragraph (I wasted over 10 minutes trying to already) I'll just say I think it's inevitable that in any consumer industry there will eventually be only one company with a monopoly on good taste and good design. Also consider how companies will hire people who are already aligned with the company's values, and we know Apple hires people with an eye for design regardless of their role, but Apple's competitors never had an eye for design, so they neve hired people with an eye for design, so they're never able to compete with Apple on the design front. Upstart competitors might be formed with an objective to wrest-away Apple's monopoly on good design but (post-1997) how could any design-focused small-fry compete with Apple on design? They can't. They'd ever get bought-out before they become too big to become a threat (if Apple's feeling nice), or end-up as another also-ran Android vendor with a nice handset, but you're still stuck with Google, and without the leverage of Samsung. I don't know where I'm going with this post now, so I'll just end it here. [1] Rightmost screenshot: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KMKZKDjJzWY/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KMKZKDjJzWY/maxresdefault.jpg [2] https://daringfireball.net/2005/09/ditty https://daringfireball.net/2005/09/ditty