8 ms·

'He also explained that "I'm a big believer in screens, because I really believe if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen." '

by aenis 5mo ago

'He also explained that "I'm a big believer in screens, because I really believe if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen." ' I am a big believer in keeping "product people" away from UI design for dangerous machinery. The eyes and the attention of the driver should be on the road. All the audio visual noise from the car is just plain dangerous. I don't want my car to draw my attention to itself for anything less than a critical engine/tyre pressure failures. I do not want beeps on anything else distracting me while I am driving. My Volvo will, for instance, flash the same type of visual alert when fuel level is low (permanent "do you want to navigate to a fuel station" modal window obscuring navigation, speedometer and so on) -- as when it encounters a serious engine malfunction. It will steal a bit of my attention when it pops up. One of those days, someone will have an accident because of this moronic design, its statistically certain. Same with wipers fluid level low. I need to click on the button to hide the message. It will on occasion beep very loud when it thinks I am not braking hard enough. The map in the google android car navi rotates when i am just trying to pan. When I want to select an alternative route I need to very precisely touch a very small area on the screen, and more often than not instead of selecting the alternative route it will actually rotate the map. It is clear to me that either the people designing car UIs are staying away from those cars, or are just incompetent. (Or, I guess, both).

NotGMan 5mo ago
Thats what happens when you put engineers/programmers in charge of UI & UX development. Engineers should be delegated to the worker-bee level and you should just get some gear heads and some soccer moms to design to UI.
- wiseowise 5mo ago
  > Engineers should be delegated to the worker-bee level and you should just get some gear heads and some soccer moms to design to UI. This, but unironically.
  - Barbing 5mo ago
    MUST include the elderly. Big Tech, WTF guys you let gen-z/millennials design your interfaces and ship w/e works for them alone? Seniors have money and can’t use your products
    - lpcvoid 5mo ago
      Well, seniors get everything else handed to them in this world, so I don't shed many tears when they are left out for once.
      - Barbing 5mo ago
        Some deserve our wrath but it’s tough for a lot of them out there! From USA: The U.S. Census Bureau's latest data, released today, show that the poverty rate continues to rise among older adults, reaching 15%. This rise in economic challenges comes as recent cuts to benefits programs, like SNAP and Medicaid, will inevitably leave more older adults without funds to afford basic costs of living, including medications, health care visits, and food. https://www.ncoa.org/article/poverty-among-older-adults-keeps-growing/ https://www.ncoa.org/article/poverty-among-older-adults-keep...
        mghackerlady 5mo ago
        boohoo, a whole 15 percent. Maybe they should've thought about that before collectively voting for the worst possible people
- ctenb 5mo ago
  Have you tried that, or is it just a random thought?
- happymellon 5mo ago
  > you should just get some gear heads and some soccer moms to design to UI. the_homer.jpg
georgeecollins 5mo ago
I agree but at the same time cars are requiring less of our attention. Forget autonomous driving for a moment and consider lane change alerts for cars in your blind side, automatic braking if you come up too fast on the car ahead, active lane keeping, smart cruise control. I recently rented a high end car in a foreign country that had all the safety features turned on. Before I arrived I was worried about driving in an unfamiliar country. After I wondered, could I have crashed at all? I was so augmented.
- hephaes7us 5mo ago
  When the car actually drives itself completely, I think they will be safer than human drivers. All of these half measures are pretty concerning to me. I think they let drivers feel more comfortable, despite paying less attention, and I think their failure modes may often be much worse than the (human-driven) crashes they purport to prevent. Anecdote: I once had a rental car with alane-keeping assistance system that would nudge the wheel slightly. On the interstate, upon cresting a hill, I saw that there was a vehicle stopped in the shoulder, and I was concerned someone might step out into the travel lane. I already knew that there were no vehicles behind me in either lane, so I steered gently into the passing lane to give ample space to anybody who might step into the road. However, in my haste, I had not used the blinker, so the lane-keeping system intervened. Imagine my surprise when the car decided to nudge me back towards exactly the dangerous situation I had been avoiding! Luckily, nobody stepped out into the road. But if they had, this lane-keeping system could have killed them. In comparison, even if the left lane hadn't been clear, the hypothetical accident there would have been a comparatively minor fender bender.
  - aenis 5mo ago
    I had the same thing while passing an unexpected cyclist. That was an Audi A6, I vividly remember even though some 5 years have passed - I was one of the scariest things that happened to me on the road.
  - amluto 5mo ago
    Rivian enabled this feature a while back via OTA, and it was bad. It only ever triggered while entering or exiting a freeway, and it’s really quite distressing when you are trying to merge onto a freeway and the car tries to nudge you off the road. Or when you are getting off the freeway and the car tries to nudge you into an area that isn’t actually a lane. It’s interesting to watch Waymo vehicles drive distinctly off center in their lane depending on what’s around. I’m not convinced that Waymo has dialed in the right tradeoff between its own distance from other cars vs driving politely and predictably, but they are certainly very aware of what’s around them. (Yes, I switched it to a mode where it would beep but not try to steer once it was safe to do so.)
ryandrake 5mo ago
> I am a big believer in keeping "product people" away from UI design for dangerous machinery. I mean, there are product people who can do UI design for dangerous machinery. Put them back in charge. It seems like in the last decade, these product people were replaced with product people from Internet Attention-Monetizing companies and Gacha games, where you are rewarded if your product "attracted eyeballs" and "fueled engagement" and kept users hooked. These guys moved into car companies and are trying to do the same thing to drivers who are trying to navigate their cars at high speeds. I think if I were a car company OEM trying to do it right, I'd look at every resume that came across my desk and if they ever worked for an internet software or game company, I'd chuck it in the trash.
- aenis 5mo ago
  Yes, you are right. All my power tools (from Makita, Milwuakee, Festool) have absolutely phenomenal UI - so there are still corners of industrial design where the dark patterns/attention grabbing product people haven't ventured. They should be brought back to car companies.
  - b112 5mo ago
    And I bet they were let go, when they tried to cite why all this change to no-buttons, attention-grabbing was wrong. Upper management loves the "but everyone else is doing it" mentality, even if their mom would smack them aside the head for such logic.
    - mixmastamyk 5mo ago
      Reminds me of the Boeing story.
  - spockz 5mo ago
    Power tools are getting Bluetooth now. I saw a Festool battery operated sander where you could set the settings for the light on it and more via the app on your phone.
- red_admiral 5mo ago
Barbing 5mo ago
The low fuel, low wiper fluid, and forward collision warnings sound like they were all implemented a little clumsily. What do you think the best implementation would look like? Seems it would still have to strike a balance. It's dangerous to tell the driver they're low on fuel if we distract them. But it's also dangerous for a driver to run out of fuel on the highway if we didn't catch their attention. Also guessing you’re relatively detail oriented and don’t run out of gas, per: “I don't want my car to draw my attention to itself for anything less than a critical engine/tyre pressure failures.” The general public though… uh oh!
- hephaes7us 5mo ago
  For years, vehicles have had a little light that comes on when you are below about 50 miles of range. It's next to the fuel gauge. I've always heard it called the "walk light", which I presume is a reference to the fact that, if you don't do something, you may have to start walking soon. My car has a little screen in the dash where it usually shows my range, or the current temperature - information that I check when safe to do so, but never very urgently. This is the perfect place for a warning about low wiper fluid. As for forward collision warnings, ehhhh. Maybe that should beep loudly, but it should almost never be wrong! (A false alarm could easily mean I slam on the brakes and get rear-ended, so that has to be balanced with the safety advantage of the true alarm.)
  - smugma 5mo ago
    Forward and rear collision warnings have saved me several times in 3 different cars, including slamming on the brakes as I was backing up and then a MUNI bus that I didn’t see flew by. I’ve also been in 4 accidents that were my fault (one on the same street, a MUNI bus blocked my view of another car that had the right of the way) and 2 that weren’t but I wasn’t able to avoid them. I will always buy a new car with the latest tech because I acknowledge I’m a below average driver and those warnings (inc the subtle “someone is in your blind spot” light) are helpful to me. PS I also prefer physical knobs (especially on the steering wheel) and don’t have cars with giant touchscreens.
    - 5mo ago
1980phipsi 5mo ago
And at the same time the car companies want to move away from Apple CarPlay, which for any of its fault is a substantially better UI than we can expect the legacy carmakers to produce.
- Esophagus4 5mo ago
  That’s all about money… they don’t want Apple to sell services to their customers when they believe it’s “their” territory. Carmakers want SaaS revenue as well now.
- trinix912 5mo ago
  They just want to sell their navi map updates like they used to before CarPlay was a thing.
  - aenis 5mo ago
    I used to drive a range rover sport that would display a long pop up with some legalese about focusing on the road while driving when I hit the navi button. It required acknowledging.
    - criddell 5mo ago
      My car has one of those, but I rarely have to acknowledge it because once I put the car into reverse, the display switches to the rear camera. When I put the car back into drive, the normal display comes up and the message has been cleared. Those acknowledgements are so stupid. There should be an assumed level of competence. If a person gets in a wreck because they weren't aware of their surroundings, it isn't the fault of a poorly worded (or missing) nag on the nav display. My big pet peeve right now is the auto start/stop feature. You can permanently turn it off by installing a $50 device, but why should I have to do that?
  - ragall 5mo ago
    That wouldn't be a problem if it weren't that the built-in MB navigator is by ar the best I've ever used, and definitely better than all of the apps (Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze, Nokia Maps, TomTom, Garmin, etc...).
sharts 5mo ago
So called “product people” are the reason for enshitification because of mostly resume/linkedin driven design philosophy.
- cnst 5mo ago
  Resume Driven Development is why fundamentally people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are crucial to ensuring the enshitification is kept in check. Elon Musk may be a bad example in this situation, because he's actually a fan of removing the extra controls and the physical buttons, but at least their UX is far-far better than any of the legacy manufacturers.
ajross 5mo ago
> The eyes and the attention of the driver should be on the road So, that's attractive as a slogan but it's 100% incorrect in practice. Non-road UI features like backup cameras and blind spot warning alarms save lives. Period. Other stuff might be distracting on a screen where it isn't on a button. Switching the audio track instead of hitting the next button in your muscle memory might qualify, for example. But the reverse is also true. If you don't know where the control for something is, finding it on a screen is going to be faster than searching a panel, especially in the dark. Cars are getting safer, not more dangerous, and nothing about the shift away from "physical buttons" has done anything to affect that trend. I'm very suspicious of sloganeering.
- aenis 5mo ago
  "So, that's attractive as a slogan but it's 100% incorrect in practice. Non-road UI features like backup cameras and blind spot warning alarms save lives. Period." The "on the road" extends to mirrors (or screens that have replaced it) - I assumed that was obvious.
  - ajross 5mo ago
    So screens can replace "mirrors" and not "buttons"? Seems like excuse-making to me. I repeat: I'd prefer to see more analysis and less sloganeering, especially where you "assume that was obvious".
    - aenis 5mo ago
      My argument was to keep the attention of the driver on the road. To that end, I don't care whether I am looking at a physical mirror or a screen that replaced one (as long as its good, high res, low latency screen) - I am looking in the direction I am driving and focused on steering the vehicle. For the same reason I don't mind (in fact, I appreciate) the silent helpers such as ABS, ESP, 4x4 and so on - all of those systems exist, work, and never utter as much as a beep to distract me. Great. Popups, imbecillic charging/energy distribution animations, elaborate sequences needed for basic functions such as AC controls, are the things I don't like. Sure, people designing this stuff should engage in research, but some things are actually obvious. Such as the need to mind the mirrors when reversing.
cmrdporcupine 5mo ago
Truth. Volvo's latest EX30 (and also the Polestar 4 I was in last week...) require you to use the touchscreen to just open the glovebox. How does that even make sense from a cost POV? They put in unnecessary servo motors for that? What made them think consumers wanted this? The EX30 is supposed to be their cost reduced rock bottom price car, and they wasted money on that? Screw you, Geely. Google Maps pops up questionaires on me while I'm driving ("People reported police nearby, are they still there?") You're seriously distracting me during my driving of a 4000lb machine at 100km/hr so you can data-collect from me? What's next? Surveys and YouTube style interstitial skippable ads when picking navigation targets? I have no idea how they get away with this, it should have been flagged as a safety hazard. If the PM is on this forum, I'll tell you this: you should be ashamed. If I was still working at Google, I'd be on buganizer right now giving you hell.
- aenis 5mo ago
  Yeah, my volvo also wants me to do questionnaires when driving. Insane. When I am buying a new car, I now always try to rent one, and specifically the current model year, for a few days and do various types of driving. My V60 used to spend some time in the garage and I got various new models as replacements. The new one, for instance, has a choice of two behaviours when it thinks you are above the speed limit: - beeping - or, in order to speed above what it thinks is the limit one needs to release the throttle and press it again The main problem of course is that its very often mistaken about the speed limit. Another problem. The thing recently got a new major version of the infotainment system. On my 2 year old V60 it is now noticeably more laggy, for instance when bringing up the AC panel its at least 1.5 seconds before it comes up. Now what is more likely - that I will press the button and regain focus on the road, or that I will press the button, and be distracted for a second or two longer?
- mschuster91 5mo ago
  > How does that even make sense from a cost POV? They put in unnecessary servo motors for that? What made them think consumers wanted this? China. That's the elephant in the room. Cars aren't designed for the Western markets any more. We tried that and lost marketshare against the Chinese on their domestic market (the only one in the world that still has growth potential), and the primary reason market research determined was that Chinese manufacturers cram their cars full of gimmicks. So, we design our cars for Chinese bling-bling demands now because it's too uneconomical to have distinct supply chains and we get all the BS that you can't sell a car in China without.
nikanj 5mo ago
My Citroen does the same if window wiper fluid is low.
nottorp 5mo ago
> He also explained that "I'm a big believer in screens, because I really believe if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen." ' I'd say he doesn't drive himself.
- aenis 5mo ago
  Likely. What does this sentence even mean? "if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen". It crashes my parser. Good thing I am not reading hacker news while driving :-)
  - mihaelm 5mo ago
    I read it as finding a happy medium between analog and digital i.e. people will love the big screen if they still have physical buttons for all the functions they use often while driving. If you force them to fiddle around with touch screen for everything, they'll hate the big screen alltogether because the experience frustrates them.
  - mghackerlady 5mo ago
    corpospeak for "we want to be a 'platform' but our software guys suck"
maxvij 5mo ago
It seems almost as if the car manufacturers don’t have guardrails in place to check for the implications of any software design change. I agree with you here… It’s frustrating.
- mechanicalpulse 5mo ago
  The solution is A/B testing and then looking at the resulting crash statistics. Weekly reports produced by the connected BI system should use excrutiatingly precise language like "number of {people,children,dogs,expectant mothers} {killed,saved} under <PO>'s <new idea>". A real Trolley Web Problem 2.0. /s
tedggh 5mo ago
People already keep their eyes on their phones when driving, so it’s not like car screens are introducing a new hazard. If anything, they are an opportunity to replace some of the functions of the phone and make them safer, understanding most people will never exercise safe driving habits.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- bigstrat2003 5mo ago
  The answer to "some drivers are bad, and look at their phones while driving" is not "let's give them a different screen to look at". It is to take away the driver's licenses of people who are stupid enough to look at phones while driving.
singleshot_ 5mo ago
> if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen. What if you don't want to connect? What if you just want to go somewhere? Why would a car be tasked with connecting?
- m_fayer 5mo ago
  Might sound hyperbolic but this is clearly the softly smiling fascist menace of the corporate regime. A gentle friendly assumption that we are all eager to partake in “euphemism for platform-serfdom”. Our desire to “connect/share/express/etc” is simply taken for granted. And what if you just don’t want to? We’re sorry, but that’s simply not an option.
  - Forgeties79 5mo ago
    All I hear is you hate connecting with people.
    - tadfisher 5mo ago
      Perhaps we should avoid connecting with other drivers, whilst driving.
      - Forgeties79 5mo ago
        no argument here lol
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
- ErroneousBosh 5mo ago
  People look at me like I've suddenly sprouted an extra head when I say this, but I don't want any screens in my car at all. I don't even really want much of an instrument panel, because that's all distracting clutter and noise. I'm now of an age where I need reading glasses to see what the tiny 20x2 LCD screen it does have is saying, if it's not telling me what gear it's in and what the current odometer reading is - mostly today it's been lying about the gearbox overheating or the bonnet being open, such are the ways of 1990s cars - and if I've got my reading glasses on to see things inside the car clearly it means I cannot see things *outside* the car clearly, and the things outside the car are what I need to pay attention to. So, no LCDs, please, I don't want any lit-up screens when I'm driving. My car has a mechanical ignition switch that, when you put a key in and turn it, withdraws a big metal pin to unlock the steering and turns a small rotary switch. First click for the radio and other accessories, second click turns on the ignition, and the spring-loaded third click cranks over a beautifully simple engine that started life as a Mercury Marine inboard (and auxiliary engine, in larger vessels), and is still pretty much in production today in small quantities. Simple, and I like simple. No "keyless ignition" for crooks to relay and get the car started and drive off in it. Nothing needs to connect to the outside world in it, and indeed its Atari ST-era computers would probably be baffled by it. It'd be like plonking a steam train engineer down in the cockpit of an A380, they wouldn't have a clue where to start. I don't want a connected thing. I love driving. I don't want distractions. I write all my best code when I'm driving because there's no distractions. No-one is phoning me, I'm not doomscrolling Reddit or HN, there's no expectation except keep it oily side down and on the grey gravelly stuff, and out of the grassy stuff (well - at least until I get to the grassy stuff I actually *need* to drive on). No screens for me please.
heckintime 5mo ago
I like having a HUD to display speed and warnings like a car merging in front of me while I'm using cruise control. I am not a fan of large screens where I have to take my eyes off the road to control (ex. Tesla).
Conlectus 5mo ago
The thing that everyone always misses in these conversations is that screens over buttons is a cost cutting measure, not a first-principles design decision. It means the UI can be designed and developed mostly independently of the physical controls, which helps reduce rework. I also expect it reduces costs for manufacture and assembly. I’m in favour of more physical controls, but it surprises me that this rarely comes up. I suppose “people are idiots” is a more appealing explanation.
- johannes1234321 5mo ago
  It's even more in regards to production planning. Building the production pipeline takes long and is inflexible as you need to ensure to pick suppliers which will provide spare parts for a sensible price for the whole lifecycle. Thus you limit capabilities very early in the design cycle. A software based solution you can finalize last minute and with later updates add extra features. Thus if a competitor provides a feature you don't have to wait years for the next new design, but can deliver based on software development priorities any time, to any series you like (even add after delivery)
- aembleton 5mo ago
  Somehow, the Dacia Sandero has physical controls for climate control and physical buttons on the steering wheel. It manages to do that whilst being one of the cheapest cars you can buy.
  - ssl-3 5mo ago
    Having fewer functions means fewer controls are required. Fewer controls means fewer buttons. KISS tends to promote this. If it's the choice between $50 worth of buttons and $100 worth of touchscreen, then $50 worth of buttons wins on cheapness. And at that end of the market, it works (and it makes sense that it works). --- But at the other end of the market: Common luxury cars have lots of features, and KISS isn't really one of the design goals (if a customer wanted cheap and simple instead, perhaps they'd be shopping for a Dacia instead). Things are still built down to a cost, but there's a greater quantity of those things. When the choice is between $200 worth of buttons or $100 worth of touchscreen, then $100 worth of touchscreen wins.
pigbearpig 5mo ago
Yeah, where are they getting the customers that want the big screen? Are these people stupid? These product people have lost touch with reality. I'm driving, I want to focus on the road, not a 39 x 6" touch screen.
- rootusrootus 5mo ago
  They're all copying Tesla. And ironically, only Tesla had a rational reason for their decision -- cost cutting. Not that I think the result is a net positive for the rest of us, it was ideal for Tesla. But just like the rest of their cost cutting choices they successfully spun it as a positive, and now other manufacturers are racing to copy them for all the wrong reasons. Though I suspect those manufacturers do secretly know the real reason and hope to benefit from it.
ErroneousBosh 5mo ago
> My Volvo will, for instance, flash the same type of visual alert when fuel level is low (permanent "do you want to navigate to a fuel station" modal window obscuring navigation, speedometer and so on) -- as when it encounters a serious engine malfunction. My 30-year-old Range Rover uses the same three high-pitched beep to alert you that you're getting close to the speed set on the speed limiter (if you set it for 70, it beeps at 67) that it uses to indicate that it's lost oil pressure, or has lost all its brake pressure or coolant, or the gearbox is on fire. The button broke on the speed limiter, so I set it to zero (no alerts) and have not bothered with it since, bloody useless thing. The Kia Niro EVs we have at work beep and flash when they think you're being distracted by something, to warn you not to be distracted by things, with a big distracting flashing warning. They also - at least the last time I drove one - start beeping and flashing and showing a big coffee cup symbol overlaying the speedometer, if it thinks you've been driving too long and need to take a break. It starts doing this maybe 20 or 30 miles into the journey. Might be good if you suggest somewhere I could actually get a coffee then, oh wait, we're in the middle of a gigantic nature reserve, there isn't a coffee shop for another 100 miles, maybe just STFU then eh?
spockz 5mo ago
For what it is worth, you can turn the pop-up to navigate to the closest fuel station off. In my XC90 MY16 it is called something “Suggest navigation on low fuel.” I will check it when back in the car.
bobbean 5mo ago
I know my wiper fluid is low when I push the button to spray the wiper fluid and a less than normal amount comes out. Why does anyone need a light for that? How often do people use wiper fluid?
- a96 5mo ago
  For a few weeks in the year when there's a change to be sprayed with dirty water, ice, slush, hail, snow, and dust depending on the day. Being able to clear the windscreen is vital. Having an early warning is definitely better than realising you're fucked after you're fucked. Conditions vary around the world. Many people may never need wipers.
sayamqazi 5mo ago
they are using the "reusable" <ErrorModal message="..." /> thats why it looks the same, which is a good practice /s

by aenis 5mo ago

NotGMan 5mo ago

Thats what happens when you put engineers/programmers in charge of UI & UX development. Engineers should be delegated to the worker-bee level and you should just get some gear heads and some soccer moms to design to UI.

wiseowise 5mo ago
> Engineers should be delegated to the worker-bee level and you should just get some gear heads and some soccer moms to design to UI. This, but unironically.
- Barbing 5mo ago
  MUST include the elderly. Big Tech, WTF guys you let gen-z/millennials design your interfaces and ship w/e works for them alone? Seniors have money and can’t use your products
  - lpcvoid 5mo ago
    Well, seniors get everything else handed to them in this world, so I don't shed many tears when they are left out for once.
    - Barbing 5mo ago
      Some deserve our wrath but it’s tough for a lot of them out there! From USA: The U.S. Census Bureau's latest data, released today, show that the poverty rate continues to rise among older adults, reaching 15%. This rise in economic challenges comes as recent cuts to benefits programs, like SNAP and Medicaid, will inevitably leave more older adults without funds to afford basic costs of living, including medications, health care visits, and food. https://www.ncoa.org/article/poverty-among-older-adults-keeps-growing/ https://www.ncoa.org/article/poverty-among-older-adults-keep...
      - mghackerlady 5mo ago
        boohoo, a whole 15 percent. Maybe they should've thought about that before collectively voting for the worst possible people
ctenb 5mo ago
Have you tried that, or is it just a random thought?
happymellon 5mo ago
> you should just get some gear heads and some soccer moms to design to UI. the_homer.jpg

georgeecollins 5mo ago

I agree but at the same time cars are requiring less of our attention. Forget autonomous driving for a moment and consider lane change alerts for cars in your blind side, automatic braking if you come up too fast on the car ahead, active lane keeping, smart cruise control. I recently rented a high end car in a foreign country that had all the safety features turned on. Before I arrived I was worried about driving in an unfamiliar country. After I wondered, could I have crashed at all? I was so augmented.

hephaes7us 5mo ago
When the car actually drives itself completely, I think they will be safer than human drivers. All of these half measures are pretty concerning to me. I think they let drivers feel more comfortable, despite paying less attention, and I think their failure modes may often be much worse than the (human-driven) crashes they purport to prevent. Anecdote: I once had a rental car with alane-keeping assistance system that would nudge the wheel slightly. On the interstate, upon cresting a hill, I saw that there was a vehicle stopped in the shoulder, and I was concerned someone might step out into the travel lane. I already knew that there were no vehicles behind me in either lane, so I steered gently into the passing lane to give ample space to anybody who might step into the road. However, in my haste, I had not used the blinker, so the lane-keeping system intervened. Imagine my surprise when the car decided to nudge me back towards exactly the dangerous situation I had been avoiding! Luckily, nobody stepped out into the road. But if they had, this lane-keeping system could have killed them. In comparison, even if the left lane hadn't been clear, the hypothetical accident there would have been a comparatively minor fender bender.
- aenis 5mo ago
  I had the same thing while passing an unexpected cyclist. That was an Audi A6, I vividly remember even though some 5 years have passed - I was one of the scariest things that happened to me on the road.
- amluto 5mo ago
  Rivian enabled this feature a while back via OTA, and it was bad. It only ever triggered while entering or exiting a freeway, and it’s really quite distressing when you are trying to merge onto a freeway and the car tries to nudge you off the road. Or when you are getting off the freeway and the car tries to nudge you into an area that isn’t actually a lane. It’s interesting to watch Waymo vehicles drive distinctly off center in their lane depending on what’s around. I’m not convinced that Waymo has dialed in the right tradeoff between its own distance from other cars vs driving politely and predictably, but they are certainly very aware of what’s around them. (Yes, I switched it to a mode where it would beep but not try to steer once it was safe to do so.)

ryandrake 5mo ago

> I am a big believer in keeping "product people" away from UI design for dangerous machinery. I mean, there are product people who can do UI design for dangerous machinery. Put them back in charge. It seems like in the last decade, these product people were replaced with product people from Internet Attention-Monetizing companies and Gacha games, where you are rewarded if your product "attracted eyeballs" and "fueled engagement" and kept users hooked. These guys moved into car companies and are trying to do the same thing to drivers who are trying to navigate their cars at high speeds. I think if I were a car company OEM trying to do it right, I'd look at every resume that came across my desk and if they ever worked for an internet software or game company, I'd chuck it in the trash.

aenis 5mo ago
Yes, you are right. All my power tools (from Makita, Milwuakee, Festool) have absolutely phenomenal UI - so there are still corners of industrial design where the dark patterns/attention grabbing product people haven't ventured. They should be brought back to car companies.
- b112 5mo ago
  And I bet they were let go, when they tried to cite why all this change to no-buttons, attention-grabbing was wrong. Upper management loves the "but everyone else is doing it" mentality, even if their mom would smack them aside the head for such logic.
  - mixmastamyk 5mo ago
    Reminds me of the Boeing story.
- spockz 5mo ago
  Power tools are getting Bluetooth now. I saw a Festool battery operated sander where you could set the settings for the light on it and more via the app on your phone.
red_admiral 5mo ago

Barbing 5mo ago

The low fuel, low wiper fluid, and forward collision warnings sound like they were all implemented a little clumsily. What do you think the best implementation would look like? Seems it would still have to strike a balance. It's dangerous to tell the driver they're low on fuel if we distract them. But it's also dangerous for a driver to run out of fuel on the highway if we didn't catch their attention. Also guessing you’re relatively detail oriented and don’t run out of gas, per: “I don't want my car to draw my attention to itself for anything less than a critical engine/tyre pressure failures.” The general public though… uh oh!

hephaes7us 5mo ago
For years, vehicles have had a little light that comes on when you are below about 50 miles of range. It's next to the fuel gauge. I've always heard it called the "walk light", which I presume is a reference to the fact that, if you don't do something, you may have to start walking soon. My car has a little screen in the dash where it usually shows my range, or the current temperature - information that I check when safe to do so, but never very urgently. This is the perfect place for a warning about low wiper fluid. As for forward collision warnings, ehhhh. Maybe that should beep loudly, but it should almost never be wrong! (A false alarm could easily mean I slam on the brakes and get rear-ended, so that has to be balanced with the safety advantage of the true alarm.)
- smugma 5mo ago
  Forward and rear collision warnings have saved me several times in 3 different cars, including slamming on the brakes as I was backing up and then a MUNI bus that I didn’t see flew by. I’ve also been in 4 accidents that were my fault (one on the same street, a MUNI bus blocked my view of another car that had the right of the way) and 2 that weren’t but I wasn’t able to avoid them. I will always buy a new car with the latest tech because I acknowledge I’m a below average driver and those warnings (inc the subtle “someone is in your blind spot” light) are helpful to me. PS I also prefer physical knobs (especially on the steering wheel) and don’t have cars with giant touchscreens.
  - 5mo ago

1980phipsi 5mo ago

And at the same time the car companies want to move away from Apple CarPlay, which for any of its fault is a substantially better UI than we can expect the legacy carmakers to produce.

Esophagus4 5mo ago
That’s all about money… they don’t want Apple to sell services to their customers when they believe it’s “their” territory. Carmakers want SaaS revenue as well now.
trinix912 5mo ago
They just want to sell their navi map updates like they used to before CarPlay was a thing.
- aenis 5mo ago
  I used to drive a range rover sport that would display a long pop up with some legalese about focusing on the road while driving when I hit the navi button. It required acknowledging.
  - criddell 5mo ago
    My car has one of those, but I rarely have to acknowledge it because once I put the car into reverse, the display switches to the rear camera. When I put the car back into drive, the normal display comes up and the message has been cleared. Those acknowledgements are so stupid. There should be an assumed level of competence. If a person gets in a wreck because they weren't aware of their surroundings, it isn't the fault of a poorly worded (or missing) nag on the nav display. My big pet peeve right now is the auto start/stop feature. You can permanently turn it off by installing a $50 device, but why should I have to do that?
- ragall 5mo ago
  That wouldn't be a problem if it weren't that the built-in MB navigator is by ar the best I've ever used, and definitely better than all of the apps (Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze, Nokia Maps, TomTom, Garmin, etc...).

sharts 5mo ago

So called “product people” are the reason for enshitification because of mostly resume/linkedin driven design philosophy.

cnst 5mo ago
Resume Driven Development is why fundamentally people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are crucial to ensuring the enshitification is kept in check. Elon Musk may be a bad example in this situation, because he's actually a fan of removing the extra controls and the physical buttons, but at least their UX is far-far better than any of the legacy manufacturers.

ajross 5mo ago

> The eyes and the attention of the driver should be on the road So, that's attractive as a slogan but it's 100% incorrect in practice. Non-road UI features like backup cameras and blind spot warning alarms save lives. Period. Other stuff might be distracting on a screen where it isn't on a button. Switching the audio track instead of hitting the next button in your muscle memory might qualify, for example. But the reverse is also true. If you don't know where the control for something is, finding it on a screen is going to be faster than searching a panel, especially in the dark. Cars are getting safer, not more dangerous, and nothing about the shift away from "physical buttons" has done anything to affect that trend. I'm very suspicious of sloganeering.

aenis 5mo ago
"So, that's attractive as a slogan but it's 100% incorrect in practice. Non-road UI features like backup cameras and blind spot warning alarms save lives. Period." The "on the road" extends to mirrors (or screens that have replaced it) - I assumed that was obvious.
- ajross 5mo ago
  So screens can replace "mirrors" and not "buttons"? Seems like excuse-making to me. I repeat: I'd prefer to see more analysis and less sloganeering, especially where you "assume that was obvious".
  - aenis 5mo ago
    My argument was to keep the attention of the driver on the road. To that end, I don't care whether I am looking at a physical mirror or a screen that replaced one (as long as its good, high res, low latency screen) - I am looking in the direction I am driving and focused on steering the vehicle. For the same reason I don't mind (in fact, I appreciate) the silent helpers such as ABS, ESP, 4x4 and so on - all of those systems exist, work, and never utter as much as a beep to distract me. Great. Popups, imbecillic charging/energy distribution animations, elaborate sequences needed for basic functions such as AC controls, are the things I don't like. Sure, people designing this stuff should engage in research, but some things are actually obvious. Such as the need to mind the mirrors when reversing.

cmrdporcupine 5mo ago

Truth. Volvo's latest EX30 (and also the Polestar 4 I was in last week...) require you to use the touchscreen to just open the glovebox. How does that even make sense from a cost POV? They put in unnecessary servo motors for that? What made them think consumers wanted this? The EX30 is supposed to be their cost reduced rock bottom price car, and they wasted money on that? Screw you, Geely. Google Maps pops up questionaires on me while I'm driving ("People reported police nearby, are they still there?") You're seriously distracting me during my driving of a 4000lb machine at 100km/hr so you can data-collect from me? What's next? Surveys and YouTube style interstitial skippable ads when picking navigation targets? I have no idea how they get away with this, it should have been flagged as a safety hazard. If the PM is on this forum, I'll tell you this: you should be ashamed. If I was still working at Google, I'd be on buganizer right now giving you hell.

aenis 5mo ago
Yeah, my volvo also wants me to do questionnaires when driving. Insane. When I am buying a new car, I now always try to rent one, and specifically the current model year, for a few days and do various types of driving. My V60 used to spend some time in the garage and I got various new models as replacements. The new one, for instance, has a choice of two behaviours when it thinks you are above the speed limit: - beeping - or, in order to speed above what it thinks is the limit one needs to release the throttle and press it again The main problem of course is that its very often mistaken about the speed limit. Another problem. The thing recently got a new major version of the infotainment system. On my 2 year old V60 it is now noticeably more laggy, for instance when bringing up the AC panel its at least 1.5 seconds before it comes up. Now what is more likely - that I will press the button and regain focus on the road, or that I will press the button, and be distracted for a second or two longer?
mschuster91 5mo ago
> How does that even make sense from a cost POV? They put in unnecessary servo motors for that? What made them think consumers wanted this? China. That's the elephant in the room. Cars aren't designed for the Western markets any more. We tried that and lost marketshare against the Chinese on their domestic market (the only one in the world that still has growth potential), and the primary reason market research determined was that Chinese manufacturers cram their cars full of gimmicks. So, we design our cars for Chinese bling-bling demands now because it's too uneconomical to have distinct supply chains and we get all the BS that you can't sell a car in China without.

nikanj 5mo ago

My Citroen does the same if window wiper fluid is low.

nottorp 5mo ago

> He also explained that "I'm a big believer in screens, because I really believe if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen." ' I'd say he doesn't drive himself.

aenis 5mo ago
Likely. What does this sentence even mean? "if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen". It crashes my parser. Good thing I am not reading hacker news while driving :-)
- mihaelm 5mo ago
  I read it as finding a happy medium between analog and digital i.e. people will love the big screen if they still have physical buttons for all the functions they use often while driving. If you force them to fiddle around with touch screen for everything, they'll hate the big screen alltogether because the experience frustrates them.
- mghackerlady 5mo ago
  corpospeak for "we want to be a 'platform' but our software guys suck"

maxvij 5mo ago

It seems almost as if the car manufacturers don’t have guardrails in place to check for the implications of any software design change. I agree with you here… It’s frustrating.

mechanicalpulse 5mo ago
The solution is A/B testing and then looking at the resulting crash statistics. Weekly reports produced by the connected BI system should use excrutiatingly precise language like "number of {people,children,dogs,expectant mothers} {killed,saved} under <PO>'s <new idea>". A real Trolley Web Problem 2.0. /s

tedggh 5mo ago

People already keep their eyes on their phones when driving, so it’s not like car screens are introducing a new hazard. If anything, they are an opportunity to replace some of the functions of the phone and make them safer, understanding most people will never exercise safe driving habits.

deleted 5mo ago
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bigstrat2003 5mo ago
The answer to "some drivers are bad, and look at their phones while driving" is not "let's give them a different screen to look at". It is to take away the driver's licenses of people who are stupid enough to look at phones while driving.

singleshot_ 5mo ago

> if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen. What if you don't want to connect? What if you just want to go somewhere? Why would a car be tasked with connecting?

m_fayer 5mo ago
Might sound hyperbolic but this is clearly the softly smiling fascist menace of the corporate regime. A gentle friendly assumption that we are all eager to partake in “euphemism for platform-serfdom”. Our desire to “connect/share/express/etc” is simply taken for granted. And what if you just don’t want to? We’re sorry, but that’s simply not an option.
- Forgeties79 5mo ago
  All I hear is you hate connecting with people.
  - tadfisher 5mo ago
    Perhaps we should avoid connecting with other drivers, whilst driving.
    - Forgeties79 5mo ago
      no argument here lol
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
ErroneousBosh 5mo ago
People look at me like I've suddenly sprouted an extra head when I say this, but I don't want any screens in my car at all. I don't even really want much of an instrument panel, because that's all distracting clutter and noise. I'm now of an age where I need reading glasses to see what the tiny 20x2 LCD screen it does have is saying, if it's not telling me what gear it's in and what the current odometer reading is - mostly today it's been lying about the gearbox overheating or the bonnet being open, such are the ways of 1990s cars - and if I've got my reading glasses on to see things inside the car clearly it means I cannot see things *outside* the car clearly, and the things outside the car are what I need to pay attention to. So, no LCDs, please, I don't want any lit-up screens when I'm driving. My car has a mechanical ignition switch that, when you put a key in and turn it, withdraws a big metal pin to unlock the steering and turns a small rotary switch. First click for the radio and other accessories, second click turns on the ignition, and the spring-loaded third click cranks over a beautifully simple engine that started life as a Mercury Marine inboard (and auxiliary engine, in larger vessels), and is still pretty much in production today in small quantities. Simple, and I like simple. No "keyless ignition" for crooks to relay and get the car started and drive off in it. Nothing needs to connect to the outside world in it, and indeed its Atari ST-era computers would probably be baffled by it. It'd be like plonking a steam train engineer down in the cockpit of an A380, they wouldn't have a clue where to start. I don't want a connected thing. I love driving. I don't want distractions. I write all my best code when I'm driving because there's no distractions. No-one is phoning me, I'm not doomscrolling Reddit or HN, there's no expectation except keep it oily side down and on the grey gravelly stuff, and out of the grassy stuff (well - at least until I get to the grassy stuff I actually *need* to drive on). No screens for me please.

heckintime 5mo ago

I like having a HUD to display speed and warnings like a car merging in front of me while I'm using cruise control. I am not a fan of large screens where I have to take my eyes off the road to control (ex. Tesla).

Conlectus 5mo ago

The thing that everyone always misses in these conversations is that screens over buttons is a cost cutting measure, not a first-principles design decision. It means the UI can be designed and developed mostly independently of the physical controls, which helps reduce rework. I also expect it reduces costs for manufacture and assembly. I’m in favour of more physical controls, but it surprises me that this rarely comes up. I suppose “people are idiots” is a more appealing explanation.

johannes1234321 5mo ago
It's even more in regards to production planning. Building the production pipeline takes long and is inflexible as you need to ensure to pick suppliers which will provide spare parts for a sensible price for the whole lifecycle. Thus you limit capabilities very early in the design cycle. A software based solution you can finalize last minute and with later updates add extra features. Thus if a competitor provides a feature you don't have to wait years for the next new design, but can deliver based on software development priorities any time, to any series you like (even add after delivery)
aembleton 5mo ago
Somehow, the Dacia Sandero has physical controls for climate control and physical buttons on the steering wheel. It manages to do that whilst being one of the cheapest cars you can buy.
- ssl-3 5mo ago
  Having fewer functions means fewer controls are required. Fewer controls means fewer buttons. KISS tends to promote this. If it's the choice between $50 worth of buttons and $100 worth of touchscreen, then $50 worth of buttons wins on cheapness. And at that end of the market, it works (and it makes sense that it works). --- But at the other end of the market: Common luxury cars have lots of features, and KISS isn't really one of the design goals (if a customer wanted cheap and simple instead, perhaps they'd be shopping for a Dacia instead). Things are still built down to a cost, but there's a greater quantity of those things. When the choice is between $200 worth of buttons or $100 worth of touchscreen, then $100 worth of touchscreen wins.

pigbearpig 5mo ago

Yeah, where are they getting the customers that want the big screen? Are these people stupid? These product people have lost touch with reality. I'm driving, I want to focus on the road, not a 39 x 6" touch screen.

rootusrootus 5mo ago
They're all copying Tesla. And ironically, only Tesla had a rational reason for their decision -- cost cutting. Not that I think the result is a net positive for the rest of us, it was ideal for Tesla. But just like the rest of their cost cutting choices they successfully spun it as a positive, and now other manufacturers are racing to copy them for all the wrong reasons. Though I suspect those manufacturers do secretly know the real reason and hope to benefit from it.

ErroneousBosh 5mo ago

> My Volvo will, for instance, flash the same type of visual alert when fuel level is low (permanent "do you want to navigate to a fuel station" modal window obscuring navigation, speedometer and so on) -- as when it encounters a serious engine malfunction. My 30-year-old Range Rover uses the same three high-pitched beep to alert you that you're getting close to the speed set on the speed limiter (if you set it for 70, it beeps at 67) that it uses to indicate that it's lost oil pressure, or has lost all its brake pressure or coolant, or the gearbox is on fire. The button broke on the speed limiter, so I set it to zero (no alerts) and have not bothered with it since, bloody useless thing. The Kia Niro EVs we have at work beep and flash when they think you're being distracted by something, to warn you not to be distracted by things, with a big distracting flashing warning. They also - at least the last time I drove one - start beeping and flashing and showing a big coffee cup symbol overlaying the speedometer, if it thinks you've been driving too long and need to take a break. It starts doing this maybe 20 or 30 miles into the journey. Might be good if you suggest somewhere I could actually get a coffee then, oh wait, we're in the middle of a gigantic nature reserve, there isn't a coffee shop for another 100 miles, maybe just STFU then eh?

spockz 5mo ago

For what it is worth, you can turn the pop-up to navigate to the closest fuel station off. In my XC90 MY16 it is called something “Suggest navigation on low fuel.” I will check it when back in the car.

bobbean 5mo ago

I know my wiper fluid is low when I push the button to spray the wiper fluid and a less than normal amount comes out. Why does anyone need a light for that? How often do people use wiper fluid?

a96 5mo ago
For a few weeks in the year when there's a change to be sprayed with dirty water, ice, slush, hail, snow, and dust depending on the day. Being able to clear the windscreen is vital. Having an early warning is definitely better than realising you're fucked after you're fucked. Conditions vary around the world. Many people may never need wipers.

sayamqazi 5mo ago

they are using the "reusable" <ErrorModal message="..." /> thats why it looks the same, which is a good practice /s