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I bought 3 VWs, then switched to a Mazda for my last car after they went full-touchscreen. And I told my dealer that was the reason when they called me. I assum
by karaterobot 3y ago
I bought 3 VWs, then switched to a Mazda for my last car after they went full-touchscreen. And I told my dealer that was the reason when they called me. I assume they ran that up to the boardroom in Germany, and that's why this changed. You're welcome, everybody. /s
> This is reassuring for the simple fact that actual buttons just work. The touch sliders and whatnot in the Mk8 Golf and ID.4 are finicky, only operating like they should some of the time. They also aren't backlit, making them difficult to find and use in the dark.
I'd frame it differently. It's not that, under certain circumstances, buttons work better than touchscreens. It's that there are particular situations when touchscreens are superior to physical buttons (nav is one of them), and for every other use case, buttons provide a more intuitive, consistent, discoverable, pleasurable experience for users. Because I can do GPS nav on my phone anyway, if I have to choose one, I'd say it's reasonable to conclude that physical controls are superior in general as UI for cars.
The other problem with touchscreen interfaces is that, paradoxically, they can result in worse design. You'd think that an all-software interface would give designers more options. What it seems to do—and many designers will recognize this antipattern from the real world—is make it so that you don't get as much time to think about the right design, and you don't have to make the difficult decisions that result in a simple, opinionated design. Instead, the UI ends up being an afterthought because it's just software, and every VP with a dumb idea gets to have it crammed into the design. That's why touchscreen controls for cars still suck, 10 years into them being ubiquitous, while a dashboard from the 1970s can be controlled by a child.
- jansan 3y ago> I bought 3 VWs, then switched to a Mazda for my last car after they went full-touchscreen. And I told my dealer that was the reason when they called me. I assume they ran that up to the boardroom in Germany, and that's why this changed. You're welcome, everybody. /s Thank you, sweetheart!!!
- matsemann 3y agoThe VWs/Cupras I've driven recently have had these insane buttons on the steering wheel, that aren't physical but supposedly does some weird vibration/haptic feedback when pressed. Makes it absolutely impossible to control the cruise control etc. Just insane. Reason alone for me not considering those cars at all when buying.
- Neikius 3y agoTouch buttons yeah. Combining the worst of both worlds. By being both touch and buttons and at the same time not being buttons physically so not having the ergonomy of the button and not being a touchscreen and so not having the flexibility of that... I really was baffled by this decision. Not believing this headline until I see it.
- wodenokoto 3y agoApple got away with it on their mouse pads. I’m still surprised it’s more efficient than an actual button.
- bradknowles 3y agoWhen the whole thing is one big button, it works. Not otherwise.
- georgeecollins 3y agoI took a class in cognitive design (fancy name for controls design) with Donald Norman (he wrote Design of Everyday things) and his standard assignment was to ask us to make the controls for a clock radio television. This was a long time ago. One of the points of the exercise was to make us realize that combining different devices and their controls didn't always make sense. In the same sense in a car their is a lot to be gained by keeping the controls for audio and the controls for temperature separate. The only good reason is to save money on buttons and knobs.
- sizzle 3y agoAwesome was this class at UCSD in the cogsci department?
- georgeecollins 3y agoYes
- robomartin 3y ago> The only good reason is to save money on buttons and knobs. That’s not quite right. At scale the buttons and knobs are cheap. Having designed many control panels for a wide range of applications, I can tell you that good design is an excruciatingly long and painfully expensive undertaking. You cannot recompile your way out of a poorly working physical control panel or bad design. You can’t just throw something together for testing and finish it while other teams complete the design of the rest of the car, machine, etc. As a real example, you might have to evaluate hundreds of button designs for tactile, audible and visible feel. Once sub-selected, you might evaluate over a dozen full scale control panel mock-ups before design lock. Etc. Touch screens allow you to eliminate a huge portion of what goes into creating a user interphase.
- georgeecollins 3y agoGood to know! I always thought it was to save money.
- 19h 3y agoBelieve me, you’re definitely not the only one. Every single person I know that drives a recent Audi or VW hates it — even I wrote it in a feedback form when I got my car from the factory in Wolfsburg; the employees just told me they know, they agree and it’ll probably change very soon. Hilariously they said “you know how the design people up there are, this year needs to be different from the other car makers, this and that, don’t worry, they’ll obviously go back”
- gottorf 3y agoI know you jest, but really, thank you -- assuming the bit where you told the dealer is actually real. ;-)
- nojvek 3y agoWhen many people vote with money, they have to listen. I’m not buying a Tesla precisely for that reason. Physical touch is powerful. You don’t need to look, the fingers just do what the Brian thinks.
- B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago> what the Brian thinks ... ok, I'll just toss that into my typos collection as a Monty Python artefact. I'll trade in half of a string-loaded door.