This is a very good move. Next, they need to make the buttons more physically distinguishable, instead of panels of identical buttons The dashboards of older

This is a very good move. Next, they need to make the buttons more physically distinguishable, instead of panels of identical buttons The dashboards of older pre-1990s cars had a wide variety of buttons, switches, and knobs, all with different locations and feels. Of course today's designers would see this as an unclean mess driven more by manufacturing considerations than "design" considerations, but it was a much lower driver workload to operate those "messy" controls. The different position, size, shape, and feel of each control allowed easy operation by just feel, without taking eyes off the road. In contrast, the all-the-same rows of buttons on modern cars are still hard to operate after familiarization; which one is the front vs rear defrost? Moving many buttons to the steering wheel overcomes many of these limitations, but again, rows of identical buttons do not help. Consider a Formula One steering wheel with 20+ controls. They are 100% custom and can be made any way they want. They make the OPPOSITE of identical controls — they are all different and brightly colored. The point of driver cockpit design is NOT some clean asthetic. The point is to use every available mnemonic device so a driver under heavy workload can recognize the controls instantly and reliably. [0] https://www.wired.com/2014/05/formula-1-steering-wheels/ https://www.wired.com/2014/05/formula-1-steering-wheels/ [1] https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/f1-explains-how-f1-steering-wheels-are-designed-how-they-work-and-what-all.2B2TgpuPz8VZYwiHtgTII5 https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/f1-explains-how-f... [2] https://medium.com/formula-one-forever/the-nerve-center-of-an-f1-car-the-complex-beautiful-steering-wheel-4d11d0593bbc https://medium.com/formula-one-forever/the-nerve-center-of-a...