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A UX designer walks into a Tesla Bar (2021)
- java-man 2y agoThe lack of physical controls, the nicks on the wheels, and secret mantras to open rear doors in case of power failure is what currently keeping me from buying a tesla.
- coldpie 2y agoThey used to be fine cars, but they've been surpassed now by the big brands. Hyundai is putting out the top tier EVs now, and most of the other brands have good-to-great options as well. Tesla isn't really worth considering when shopping for a new EV.
- avg_dev 2y agoit was a good read. but i also note the date on it is Dec. 2021. perhaps things have changed (i have no idea). i do think it is a risky business to change your car's interface with an update!
- actionfromafar 2y agoAnd changed in which direction...
- d_watt 2y agoI had a Tesla for a couple of years and then sold it. I'd buy another EV. I wouldn't buy another Tesla, because of the UX. Lack of physical buttons and changing UI. The infotainment screen crashed a couple of times in a year, the car was fine but suddenly the only place for car status feedback was gone. Lastly, not having a console in front of you, and needing to look to the side to see things like speed limit just felt unacceptable.
- JohnMakin 2y agoI really like the 1+1=3 cognitive load analogy on the cost of adding a "single" click to something. One of the most aggravating things in the last 15 years is a seemingly industry wide decision to "declutter" menus by burying even very simple, common actions 4-5 menus deep, often with icons that have no discernible clear meaning until you click around for a while and figure it out. Why? Seriously, why?
- FpUser 2y agoBecause "modern" designers are often degenerates who have zero fucking clues about ergonomics. Their ideal design is an empty screen with a single light gray element on white background.
- ivan_gammel 2y agoNo, they are not. They are just wrong people hired for the jobs by ignorant management which has no idea how diverse can be design tasks. It’s like blaming React developers working on some Jira tickets without a full picture, which is not a website but a satellite RTOS. An experienced generalist would understand the challenge and may refuse to do it if they don’t have the knowledge, but most people would simply incorrectly assume that they can do it. Management on the other side should have done better.
- FpUser 2y agoWhat I've described is bad in either case, be it Tesla, Web Page or desktop app.
- Facemelters 2y agolol what makes them degenerates
- arethuza 2y agoA recent favourite of mine was trying to find the odometer reading on my humble Skoda - couldn't find it on any screen, nothing helpful in manual. I eventually realised that the odometer and the speed setting for the cruise control share the same area on the screen so if the cruise control is turned on then you can't see the odometer.
- feyman_r 2y agoI don’t agree with it, but I can take a guess as to why - they are putting the cart before the horse - cars truly aren’t self-driven enough to take our attention away from the road. If they were, we’d have the time to tinker deep into menus or whatever. As a driver I really want tactile feedback on my controls - even clear buttons on a screen require a half-second glance off the road which in bad weather is not a good idea. Needless to say, all forms of self-drive features give up in inclement weather.
- jitl 2y agoTesla has the worst interface I’ve used in a car (it gets -1000 points for making the driver futz and swipe dangerously on a touch screen to angle the air vent), and it seems to keep getting worse - but the best driving fundamentals I’ve used in a car. If I could take the lower half of a Tesla Model Y with a totally average Toyota upper half at the Model Y pricing I would buy that car in a heartbeat. Just swapping the infotainment unit to customizable Android Auto with CarPlay and I would consider it. It’s such a shame to have good engineering bundled together with bad opinions.
- Wistar 2y agoI deal with many cars on a daily basis and, for me, almost all the UX have become bewildering, especially in the last four or five model years. One particularly vexing thing: the splitting of vehicle settings between the instrument cluster and center stack displays. At least Tesla puts it all on one screen. Audi, for example, has it spread across three screens.
- jitl 2y agoYeah, I just learned Mercedes puts several settings on a "Service" instrument cluster mode in my 2024 vehicle. I wonder if it's common with german car brands, or have you seen it also in Japanese, Korean, or American brands? Overall the Mercedes UI stuff does a fine job starting CarPlay and showing a backup camera, but the settings menus are confusingly hard to navigate.
- Wistar 2y agoMB has had several settings available only in the cluster menus for a few years. Things such as door auto-lock on/off; daytime running lights (which, bizarrely can only be set on or off when the engine is turned off); easy-entry seat adjust and a few others. I don't know why they don't put these on the center screen menus—the slow and annoying animated carousel-style menus—along with all the other settings. These may be a holdover from the days and/or when they had no center screen menus or even a center screen at all but I think they can retire the practice now.
- dandiep 2y agoOne thing that has always annoyed me is how some icons are flat (e.g. phone) and some have depth (e.g. camera). How hard is to make all the buttons have the same style?
- dylan604 2y agoit's a lot easier with physical buttons
- GenerWork 2y agoThis is why physical buttons are generally superior. Yes, Teslas look cleaner because there aren't buttons, but the tradeoff is that the learning curve is steeper.
- eldaisfish 2y agoand dangerous. The important part is the danger posed by the lack of physical buttons, not the learning curve.
- thebruce87m 2y ago> I borrowed a friend’s Tesla 3 yesterday. About 5 minutes into the ride, the windshield started fogging up. I couldn’t find the defroster on the large control screen Teslas are so famous for. 5 minutes and they don’t know where all the buttons are? Colour me shocked. Any new car needs human recalibration of muscle memory. I want more buttons too but any new car has you scrambling in rain, fog for buttons. Even your muscle memory for looking at the speedometer is all askew. I do think that the HVAC system could use permanent buttons, or at least persistent screen buttons. Edit: My favourite bit about being irrationally downvoted is when someone comments about how I should “read the article more carefully” when they themselves have not read the article or my comment carefully.
- phailhaus 2y ago> I do think that the HVAC system could use permanent buttons, or at least persistent screen buttons. Um, this is exactly what the article is about: Tesla used to do this. There used to be a persistent "defog" button right at the bottom, but now it's hidden behind the Temperature indicator, which looks like it only lets you adjust up/down.
- thebruce87m 2y ago> Um, this is exactly what the article is about The article is about being unfamiliar with a car after 5 minutes. If the button was a physical button you’d still have to look for it since you are still unfamiliar with the car. Before downvoting, ask yourself: * “Would this article exist if the person found the button within 5 minutes?” * “Would this article exist if the person was familiar with the car?”
- mkroman 2y agoAnd they would've found it, because it wouldn't be hidden.
- dim13 2y agoThat's also, what's article is about. > This is one reason why hard-buttons are so effective in old-school cars. They all use these same standard icons so it’s easier for new users to scan across them and find the one you want without any training.
- martythemaniak 2y agoThat version gave you the ability to customize the bottom bar. You can still put that same icon in the same stop if that's what you want.
- EricE 2y agoShe borrowed a friend's car. It's beyond ridiculous that simple functions should be that hard to find in a car that you get into for the first time. Talk about solutions for problems that shouldn't even exist in the first place!
- jonathanberger 2y agoThe UX designer, Jenson, cites interesting concepts like 1+1=3 and cognitive load. But forgets an even more basic concept: design for the common case. The common case is the driver being the owner. Tesla has real world data about how many times the defrost button is tapped. Their UX decision to make the bottom bar customizable is smart. I personally choose to only put the defrost button in the bar during months of the year when I use that button frequently and remove it at other times. Keeps it easily accessible when I need it and out of the way when I don't. Elegant, functional. It might even be the case that defrost is in the bottom bar by default and the owner of the Tesla he drove had removed it, I can't remember right now what Tesla does for newly shipped cars.
- unstyledcontent 2y agoFunny to read because Musk famously said "Any product that needs a manual to work is broken." It's a mantra that has guided my work in UX and my design thinking overall. It was even a quote I had on my personal website many years ago, back when Musk had credibility.
- AnotherGoodName 2y agoHe also said to remove things until it breaks. That doesn’t work for ux imho since “well it technically still works” isn’t going to lead to a great experience.
- kortilla 2y ago“…and then add back the last piece.” Is the rest of the quote. This points to a lack of QA or dogfooding in Tesla, not an issue with that strategy.
- AnotherGoodName 2y agoThe problem is the line to breakage. “Technically still works” doesn’t lead to adding back. It hasn’t broken yet. In ux technically still works is a very low bar.
- FireBeyond 2y ago> This points to a lack of QA or dogfooding in Tesla Like when they get new third party firmware that takes 36 hours to run the test suite, so they just flash a car with it, and "take it out for a quick spin", much to the third parties consternation.
- FireBeyond 2y agoYeah, fairly sure that came from Jobs or someone well before Musk. > The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel – one that reads like a mystery to most people. They’re not going to learn slash q-z any more than they’re going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about.
- AnotherGoodName 2y agoI honestly believe the ux mistakes of Tesla are more the reason for the consistent -50% yoy earnings drops than anything to do with musk directly. I’ve starting seeing newer teslas indicate the complete opposite direction than they are turning many times in recent history. They no longer have an indicator stalk (as of 2024 model 3) but instead two small buttons on the wheel close enough that I’m not surprised this happens. I don’t think they should be allowed on the road as-is. I’m surprised they pass safety standards. No indicator stalk is definitely a bridge too far. The auto wipers not working is another. It’d be ok if there was a wiper stalk. There isn’t. In much of the world you can buy better electric cars for less. Electric cars which don’t have an overly minimalist interface. The USA has high tariffs so Tesla will survive here but they are giving away their international market share with their designs.
- toddmorey 2y agoHaving owned a Tesla for over ten years now, I’ve lived the real pain of being at the mercy of the manufacturer who can completely change how your car works overnight. Annoying in Figma, dangerous in a Tesla. Some comments dismiss this author as a new driver with a learning curve but Tesla has impacted muscle memory several times now. Why did they change this row of icons anyway? I don’t think they take the responsibility seriously.
- NickNaraghi 2y agoManufacturing cars with “cut everything possible and add stuff back in if it doesn’t work” mentality seems risky Brought to you by the folks who took out a critical piece of the break and shipped it by accident
- bcatanzaro 2y agoThis is why my next car won’t be a Tesla (after driving one for the past 8 years). It’s sad, they get so many things right but they are dangerously irresponsible.
- MPSimmons 2y agoYep, agreed. I'm on my third Tesla, and probably my last. The cars are still very structurally safe, but operationally they're getting more dangerous because of changes like the UI, FSD feeling actually worse than it used to (I had it on my Model 3, but I couldn't transfer it to my Model X, and it wasn't good enough on the 3, why would it be good enough on the X which actually had FEWER sensors?) and the absolute insistence than vision-only is safer than vision plus radar and ultrasonic. I understand that the radar they had was limited, but you improve the radar, don't drop it entirely. Also, I haven't been an Elon fan since 2018 or so, but I was still able to look past his shenanigans when I bought this a few years ago, but he's gone straight over the cliff since then and keep falling, so this is almost definitely the last one I'm getting.
- jonathanberger 2y agoYou have a different reaction than most Tesla owners [1]. [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tesla-has-the-most-loyal-buyers-and-the-most-conquests-in-2024-vehicle-loyalty-study-923d8450 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tesla-has-the-most-loyal-b...
- fredgrott 2y agoThe actual meta value is the twitter UX is design to produce pilling on of a comment to drive ad sales rather than an actual conversation thus replaying a UX designer walks into an Elon designed and run Social Media Platform....meta upon meta squared
- epolanski 2y agoI plain hate how digital modern cars are. So many useless features and all the core stuff is harder to use. I was so frustrated with my w213 E class Mercedes, I went back to a used fiat Punto. Everything is much easier and better, it's less comfortable and my SO has hard time sleeping in it on long trips, but aside that it's much better. Gets a scratch? Who cares. Someone bumps my car while parking? Who cares. Fuel economy? Much better. Maintenance cost? Much lower. Insurance? Much lower. Everything is analog and easy to use. I am more and more convinced that I will only be using vintage cars in the future, and all this digital stuff can die on the spot, and Tesla crap more than anything else.
- Gravityloss 2y agoHere's a vintage goal though the maintenance costs will be large... https://x.com/CarManToday/status/1822163384340521085?t=1aqVH6edxljKn4C_ERhoNg&s=19 https://x.com/CarManToday/status/1822163384340521085?t=1aqVH...
- hawski 2y agoI wonder if in a couple of years there will be a lot of old car conversion businesses around. Especially for the most common cars with the whole supply chain of ready made parts. The only real requirement from an old car I can immediately think of is for the car body to be fully galvanized. It would probably be best for smaller cars as the battery cost and electric drive train utility would be the biggest. But eventually maybe my 2009 Renault Laguna could also be converted :P
- epolanski 2y agoI don't think so. Such changes would require full full certification in Europe, e.g. Between the cost of of batteries, power trains, etc it's just cheaper to buy a brand new car imho.
- esafak 2y agoI guess somebody has to defend Tesla's UX so I'll do it. Apart from the lack of physical controls, and the aggressive pace of changes I find it quite intuitive. Better designed than most software. edit: I'm not saying it's flawless, but the alternatives are even worse. On balance, I like it.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago> Apart from the lack of physical controls, and the aggressive pace of changes I find it quite intuitive. Ok, but those are huge issues. You can't just wave those away. It's like that old joke about "other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- EricE 2y agoI will never own a vehicle that doesn't have common/critical functions on physical buttons - exactly because of crap like this. We aren't incentivized to leave well enough alone - things have to constantly be "improved" and then you end up with dangerous experiences like this.
- K0balt 2y agoIdk about Tesla, but for many manufacturers, the cost of incorporating physical buttons and the wires, mounting holes, switches, and buttons actually significantly reduces the margin they make on each car. Profits on low margin models can be as low as a couple hundred dollars. Obviously some are more like 10-20 percent over build costs, but in general the margins are low and an extra 20-30 dollars of manufacturing cost really matters if they can’t pass that along to the buyer. Not that that makes an excuse for making an unsafe and crappy product, but it helps to explain the situation. As for myself, I would vastly prefer a car with a small non-touch enabled MFD and a regular analog dash with knobs and switches over any kind of touchscreen. Problem is that is a lot more expensive than a tablet that runs everything. Touchscreens as a primary interface is the mark of cheap, low quality, serf grade engineering in the modern age.
- FireBeyond 2y agoSo essentially, Musk saying, "I'm not content with the profit per vehicle that other manufacturers have."
- EricE 2y agoFunny that at least one value focused automative company doesn't seem to find physical controls an economic burden: https://www.thedrive.com/news/hyundai-promises-to-keep-buttons-in-cars-because-touchscreen-controls-are-dangerous https://www.thedrive.com/news/hyundai-promises-to-keep-butto...
- K0balt 2y agoThey make some pretty excellent vehicles, from a utility standpoint.
- cbeach 2y agoTap climate, tap demist. It's really not that hard. If you frequently need to demist, simple drag the demist option onto the app bar, then it's a single click. The notion that every function needs to be accessible with a single click is what leads to ridiculously busy cabins that look like aircraft flight decks. Complaints about Tesla changing its UI ("real pain of being at the mercy of the manufacturer who can completely change how your car works overnight") are also ridiculous. Owning a Tesla is a rewarding experience precisely because its OTA updates work consistently well, and its UI is well-thought-out and responsive. If Tesla wasn't allowed to change its UI, we'd never have great features like the customisable app bar. And in any case, in the years I've owned my Model S, there has only been one major redesign of the UI, and it greatly simplified and improved the whole experience.
- amluto 2y agoI would be willing to give the app bar some credit if it were limited to apps, in the sense of features that you don’t really need to use while driving. But for some reason, basic control of the car is mixed up with apps. Certain controls may or may not be that frequently used but need to be readily available, and those include defogging, wipers, forward/reverse (sigh), and enough climate control to be minimally comfortable. Give them fixed positions! If I’m driving a rented or borrowed car, it gets dark and cold outside, oncoming traffic has bright lights, and the windshield is fogging up, I need to turn on the anti-fog mode. I do not want to have to contemplate whether it’s in a menu and whether whoever drove the car last remembered to put it on the app bar.
- cbeach 2y ago> But for some reason, basic control of the car is mixed up with apps. The reason? So the UX can be improved over time. Like, for example, when Tesla made certain safety symbols and the speed readout larger. Try doing that when everything is in hardware.
- amluto 2y agoWhen did I say “hardware”? While I prefer physical buttons for critical controls [0], a fixed-layout section of the touchscreen for physical controls would still be a massive improvement over the status quo. The “app bar” would be separate. [0] The speed readout you’re mentioning is not a control. I have no problem with it being on a screen other than the fact that that screen occasionally crashes.
- traverseda 2y agoWhat I don't understand is how society at large is so bad at "professional" UX. How did we get to this point, the constant dumbing-down of user interfaces that results in a more complicated and confusing product. Who are these UIs working for?
- pavel_lishin 2y agoI'll throw another anecdote into the rapidly filling bucket: A buddy of mine gave me a ride in his Tesla. When we arrived, I reached for the door handle and opened the door - a natural, smooth motion, at the end of which my hand found a handle that I could pull. My buddy told me that that's the emergency release, and to not use that, because it can damage the car if used too many times, and had to show me the real door handle. (I have already forgotten where it is.) It's probably good that in an emergency, my hand would naturally reach for the thing that would release me from the car - but on the other hand, it's wild that the natural muscle memory of decades leads me to a thing that'll fuck up his car.
- m_st 2y agoIt's indeed getting worse and worse driving cars. I drive a Tesla Model 3 daily and agree to the critism about it's interface. On my last holidays I rented a Suzuki Vitara. Indeed it's much easier to find and operate the standard controls like for climate. Also cruise control with its 6 buttons took only a little learning. The worst turned out to be CarPlay, a feature I always thought I'm missing with my Tesla. Occasionally it just didn't work, even though the phone was connected. So you get no navigation or you stop/start/wait until it works. And repeat that after every car stop situation. And when it works, forget about zooming or seeing anything more than the next step on this tiny display. All in all I was happy to return to my Tesla again. But then I know all important controls from memory. Anyway: Analog cars ruled indeed. I'd just use a simple phone holder too rather than anything like CarPlay.
- timzaman 2y agoThis post is outdated. The 2021 update sucked. They quickly fixed these issues.
- amluto 2y agoI just peeked at the display in a fully updated Tesla. There is no visible defog button.
- hartator 2y agoNote that other car manufactures are just copying whatever Tesla is doing. Including these bad parts.
- tristanb 2y agoAS a UX professional myself, I find the tesla UI changes incredibly annoying and detrimental to functionality. They reek of random "redesign" with no thought of function. The buttons in the car controls are greatly superior to the tiny icons. In fact if you take a look at the UI in general, it's all pretty disconnected. We have 50% of the screen taken up with a visualization of the cars around you (but not all of them, and you can't 'trust' it). Next to it we have a map. The map directions are not shown on the visualization. You can't use the visualization to check for cars as you would in mirrors, as its not accurate. So why is it even shown? They could use it to show navigation routes rendered as they are seen, so offramps are shown to the user in 3d rather than the overhead map tiles. That would be actually useful.
- huydotnet 2y agoThe post was 2021 but the pain is still true for today. Also, does anyone know how to turn off AC just for the passenger side? Even when I’m driving alone, I still have both sides on.
- mgarfias 2y agoIt would also help If they didn’t change the layout every 6 months.
- s08148692 2y agoI see a lot of these posts about how Tesla UI (and touchscreens in cars in general) are unsafe and cause accidents. Intuitively it makes sense, but I haven't actually seen any evidence that Teslas or other touchscreen-heavy cars are actually involved in more accidents per mile. Would be curious if there's any studios on this to back up these claims, or is everyone just making intuitively true claims without evidence?