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> Vi Bilägare gathered eleven modern cars from different manufacturers at an airfield och measured the time needed for a driver to perform different simple task

> Vi Bilägare gathered eleven modern cars from different manufacturers at an airfield och measured the time needed for a driver to perform different simple tasks, such as changing the radio station or adjusting the climate control. Not sure about your car but mine has physical buttons for the actions they're talking about. In fact I can increase/decrease my radio volume and seek via buttons on the back of my steering wheel so I never have to take my hands off the wheel. The touchscreen is useful for things like switching between apps, entering things into the GPS, etc. The alternative to that isn't buttons, it's looking at my phone. My biggest complaint, at least about Android Auto is that it tries to force voice commands. The voice interface is horrendous, just let me or my passenger use the touchscreen.

LarryMullins 4y ago
If you want to use an app, you should pull over to the side of the road.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Pulling over is often not very practical or especially safe itself. One of my frustrations that voice assistants in cars are still not often that great.
- godelski 4y ago
  You're probably right, but who's going to actually do that? Especially for a 5 second task. Plus, are we going to do that when there is a passenger who can control the phone without endangering anyone? The notion of pulling over is sane from a logical point of view but absurd from a human point of view. You can be right and wrong at the same time, this is one of those times. We have to consider how humans will actually act, not what they should do. Make the right decisions easy to do and make the wrong decisions as safe as possible.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    > You're probably right, but who's going to actually do that? I do, every single time. I place my phone screen-side down in the space in front of my gear shift, under the dash, and I don't even touch it if the car isn't in park. I never look at the screen for GPS or anything when I'm driving. I rely on memorizing the route before I drive, and TTS announcements for upcoming turns. If the phone notifies me of an incoming call or text, I pull over before checking it. I don't think this is unreasonable. If you've been driving for 20 years or so already, then surely you know what it's like to drive like this. What it's like to drive without interacting with a screen, without GPS at all in fact. We had these things called road atlases, big books containing maps for every road in the state, and using one while actively driving was tantamount to suicide. Somehow we all still got where we wanted to go.
    - godelski 4y ago
      > I do But are you an outlier or a median sample? That's the point I'm trying to make here. I'm not even trying to suggest that people shouldn't follow your example (they should). But I'm trying to be realistic in recognizing that the majority of people do not do this and likely are not going to.
godelski 4y ago
> The alternative to [x] [is] looking at my phone. This is the biggest failure I see in a lot of car apps. Spotify and VLC both limit what I can scroll through when scrolling through my libraries on my media screen. Being alphabetical I could scroll through a lot without looking, but they truncate it. All this does is cause me to disconnect my phone, open the app, search, and plug it back in. When the failure mode is significantly more dangerous than the "safety feature" being created, your app is dangerous. There are so many good intentions that do not consider the failure modes. Yes, there is voice alternatives, but people still don't like using those. I know there are app designers here, PLEASE PLEASE think about how your apps fail! Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Good ideas and clever designs can still fail in spectacular ways. You cannot ignore your failure analysis. Dogfood your apps. Make your friends eat it too and be honest. Figure out what they do when things fail. Driving apps aren't your run of the mill smartphone app where you can "move fast and break things," they are apps where failures can lead to people crashing and getting injured or worse. You have to come from an (physical) engineering perspective rather than a software perspective. I'm amazed that even big names frequently get these designs wrong (e.g. the above Android Auto complaint).

LarryMullins 4y ago

If you want to use an app, you should pull over to the side of the road.

ghaff 4y ago
Pulling over is often not very practical or especially safe itself. One of my frustrations that voice assistants in cars are still not often that great.
godelski 4y ago
You're probably right, but who's going to actually do that? Especially for a 5 second task. Plus, are we going to do that when there is a passenger who can control the phone without endangering anyone? The notion of pulling over is sane from a logical point of view but absurd from a human point of view. You can be right and wrong at the same time, this is one of those times. We have to consider how humans will actually act, not what they should do. Make the right decisions easy to do and make the wrong decisions as safe as possible.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  > You're probably right, but who's going to actually do that? I do, every single time. I place my phone screen-side down in the space in front of my gear shift, under the dash, and I don't even touch it if the car isn't in park. I never look at the screen for GPS or anything when I'm driving. I rely on memorizing the route before I drive, and TTS announcements for upcoming turns. If the phone notifies me of an incoming call or text, I pull over before checking it. I don't think this is unreasonable. If you've been driving for 20 years or so already, then surely you know what it's like to drive like this. What it's like to drive without interacting with a screen, without GPS at all in fact. We had these things called road atlases, big books containing maps for every road in the state, and using one while actively driving was tantamount to suicide. Somehow we all still got where we wanted to go.
  - godelski 4y ago
    > I do But are you an outlier or a median sample? That's the point I'm trying to make here. I'm not even trying to suggest that people shouldn't follow your example (they should). But I'm trying to be realistic in recognizing that the majority of people do not do this and likely are not going to.

godelski 4y ago

> The alternative to [x] [is] looking at my phone. This is the biggest failure I see in a lot of car apps. Spotify and VLC both limit what I can scroll through when scrolling through my libraries on my media screen. Being alphabetical I could scroll through a lot without looking, but they truncate it. All this does is cause me to disconnect my phone, open the app, search, and plug it back in. When the failure mode is significantly more dangerous than the "safety feature" being created, your app is dangerous. There are so many good intentions that do not consider the failure modes. Yes, there is voice alternatives, but people still don't like using those. I know there are app designers here, PLEASE PLEASE think about how your apps fail! Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Good ideas and clever designs can still fail in spectacular ways. You cannot ignore your failure analysis. Dogfood your apps. Make your friends eat it too and be honest. Figure out what they do when things fail. Driving apps aren't your run of the mill smartphone app where you can "move fast and break things," they are apps where failures can lead to people crashing and getting injured or worse. You have to come from an (physical) engineering perspective rather than a software perspective. I'm amazed that even big names frequently get these designs wrong (e.g. the above Android Auto complaint).