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Lutra ,

For more thinking about this issue for software/hardware makers a good read is “Enchanted Objects” by David Rose.

iirc. He says we’re in a ‘Glass Rectangle’ phase, where makers are stuck on screens, Like Xhibit in Pimp my ride - we put 22 screens in your car. They know how to “screen” and they use it the solution to all problems. It’s like an infatuation, where you just can’t see another way. There are entire sciences of Human Machine Interaction that explain why these designs are messed up, and the designers are aware, and have chosen otherwise.

2016 Actor Antov Yelkin who played Checkov is killed by his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee, pinning him to his mailbox and fence. Because it didn’t have a gearshift. It has a thing that looks like a shift but is a joystick.

Gestrid ,

Antov Yelkin who played Checkov

You mean Anton Yelchin who played Chekov?

Lutra ,

most definitely that. not the other. The guy who played Pavel Checkov, the Enterprise’s navigator. Not the noted author born in 1860.

anonymouse ,

I think what happened to Yelchin is a separate issue. The joystick was still a physical object that gave tactile feedback. The design was fine, but GM flushed the mouse on the implementation.

Where we have a bigger problem is when common vehicle controls are just an image on a screen, and a driver has to take their eyes off the road to do something simple like change the A/C temperature or skip a song track.

Timecircleline ,

I’ve never heard the term “flushed the mouse”. I tried to google it but all I got are -people flushing live mice down the toilet (?) and -the movie flushed away. Can you elaborate?

anonymouse ,

It’s basically a nicer way of saying “shit the bed.” I picked it up from the Tony Kornheiser podcast. It’s a running bit there.

Timecircleline ,

Thank you! That’s what I guessed from context but wasn’t sure if it was a regional thing.

Lutra ,

Yes, this is a bit outside the screen problem, but it is pertinent to car UI. Buttons/Joysticks give a form of tactile feedback, they don’t give positional feedback. Take a button. Pushing it does give tactile feedback (she feels that she pushed the button), but it’s quite possible that the button wasn’t pushed enough or long enough to register the push, same with joystick up/down. Flipping a switch for example is different. The position changes, and latches. She is certain that her intentions (turn on the light) were either carried out or not, because the switch with either be in position one or two. Buttons/joysticks require a second evaluation, to check that the button knows it was pushed. It’s a subtle difference, but serious. Sliding the gearshift all the way forward, we just know it’s done. Likewise pulling up on the handle, hearing the ratchet sound, I know that my parking brake is on.

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

My father’s Avalon has touch sensitive HVAC controls. They’re not touchscreen, it’s a panel of plastic that has little labelled sections that have grooves cut around them as if they are buttons, but it responds like a modern touch screen. The temperature control is used by sliding your finger along. It’s SO GODDAMN STUPID.

NoSpiritAnimal ,
@NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world avatar

I gotta rub my cars clit if I want the AC running

TheDarksteel94 ,

That’s how new cars are made. Just gotta find the cussy.

intensely_human ,

Head out on the highway!

NoSpiritAnimal ,
@NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world avatar

I’m lookin for adventure

Churbleyimyam ,

I only have old vehicles and I’m actually shocked that these things are operated via touchscreen on modern cars - I thought they were just for unnecessary infotainment stuff…

jabjoe ,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

To change the temperature of the air, seats, or clear windows, I have to look down and across, away completely from the road, and watch my fingers press “buttons”. Or worse, use menus!

At some point it feels like I’ll crash because I can’t see through the fogged up window, or I’ll crash because I was looking at touch screen instead of road.

Not crashed yet, but lot swerves.

Churbleyimyam ,

This is insane. Why is it illegal to use a phone while driving (here in the UK at least) but not that? They are basically the same thing!

sploosh ,

Ford? If so I feel your pain. The controls for the ventilation in their infotainment system are godawful. The time between input and output is so long that you have to look down to hit the “button” to bring up the ventilation menu, look back to the road while it takes 2 literal seconds for the menu to pop up, then look back down to the diagram of the vents to decide what you want blowing or not blowing, hit the right “buttons” and then wait for the thing to respond and do what you asked. Meanwhile you’ve gone 1/4 mile at highway speeds with your eyes barely on the road.

What was wrong with a dial with all the possible vent combinations? I want the defroster on and I want hot air on my feet? That’s at 7 o’clock. Just blast my face? 12 noon. It was simple, it worked. It did not require looking away from the road once you were familiar with it.

jabjoe ,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

It is a Ford. I just want buttons. We also have a Citroen eBerlingo and it more primitive (cheaper) but the upside of that is old school buttons.

RememberTheApollo_ ,

If their cheap-asses had actually done something other than cheapest possible implementation for the majority of input devices it might have been ok. Having driven several cars with touch input for various features the complaints I have are all the same:

  1. too many menus with unintuitive directories that put what should be top-level systems several layers deep. IOW, I want to turn on the AC. I shouldn’t have to climb out of the Sirius menu then down 2-3 layers to turn on the AC and choose the ventilation configuration and temperature.
  2. Horrible UI design. Things that need to be tapped/touched are either too small and/or too close together. You shouldn’t need to divert your attention to focus on a 1/4” square “OK” touch element when this should have a touch area minimum of a square inch so you can hit it without too much concentration. UI’s are too cluttered.
  3. closely related to #2 - awful sensitivity of the screen. Small buttons that are hard to accurately hit are worsened by touch screens that don’t register input. Now you’re trying to accurately hit a patch of screen that is refusing to accept the tap, so now you’re further distracted and frustrated trying to get you music stream to play or whatever.

I don’t hate touchscreens, they can be useful, but manufacturers have implemented them at the expense of actually driving the car.

prole ,

Damn, am I just getting old or did anyone else have to google what “IOW” stood for?

Any control that requires you to take your eye off the road for a split second just to confirm that you even activated it, is dangerous. Then multiply that by each control they’ve moved to touch screen. So dumb.

jpreston2005 ,

funnily enough, we already had an abbreviation for “IOW” (In Other Words), “I.E.” (Id Est - That Is)

Silentiea , (edited )

Worth noting that, by convention, “i.e.” is usually in lower case, and only capitalized when the words themselves would be, i.e. at the start of a sentence.

Edit: typo

jpreston2005 ,

I THOUGHT it looked weird capitalized, but the other guy capitalized IOW so I figured “When In Rome”

Trail ,

You mean w.i.r.

prole ,

i think ie looks weird no matter how you present it

jadedwench ,

I had to Google it too! “In other words”

The only semi nice thing my car did for the touchscreen is let you put shortcuts at the top, which is just the stupid screen for the heated seats. Everything else has a button in a easy to reach spot. I use Android Auto and I only have to bring up the actual car menu every few months, and not while driving. It isn’t a perfect infotainment system, but it has certainly been the least annoying.

spaghettiwestern ,

Tesla’s Model 3 uses a touchscreen for damn near everything. Some things are buried and require multiple presses in different places on the screen. It looks really good, but the actual purpose and the fact that humans driving at potentially deadly speeds need to operate it seems to have been placed a distant second to safety when the thing was designed. Given who is in charge of Tesla it’s not much of a surprise.

_number8_ ,

it *used to look good, but then they fired the former-apple designer and hired some hack who worked on android, and it looks god awful

before: www.teslarati.com/wp-content/…/model-3-ui-1.jpg

after: miro.medium.com/…/1*zNdNui2-s30EEAqCDy8vRA.jpeg

BakerBagel ,

Neither of those options look at all appealing to me

Semi-Hemi-Demigod ,
@Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social avatar

This is an excellent example of why Steve Jobs was right to make Bill Atkinson add rounded rectangles to Mac OS

Zorque ,

Of the two, the second looks easier to use. The first looks like everything is buried under "child-safe" menus you have to dig through to do anything. That said, they both kind of suck.

Just because they look all bubbly doesn't mean it's a better UI.

spaghettiwestern ,

Spoken like an Apple fan. 🙂

I think they both look nice, but I wouldn’t want to have to actually use either of them, especially while driving a car.

Annoyed_Crabby ,

It’s tech on wheel, so safety is always second.

overzeetop ,
@overzeetop@lemmy.world avatar

I’d never realized how convenient/natural a joystick is for adjusting your side mirrors. I’m not even sure my wife has the reach to both press a touchscreen in the center console and have her head in driving position to adjust the mirrors with real time feedback. Even I’d hate to have to tweak a mirror while driving with a touchscreen.

GenEcon ,

Its mainly touchscreen due to two reasons: 1. Touchscreens are significantly cheaper than analog controls. 2. Touchscreens support the ‘publish now, debug later’ approach of Tesla and a lot of Chinese car manufacturers.

whotookkarl ,
@whotookkarl@lemmy.world avatar

Not saying it’s for everyone, but if it’s not accessible from the home screen with a single press I can do without looking I’d rather just use the voice controls to keep my hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.

spaghettiwestern ,

For someone who’s the primary driver of a vehicle that’s a good option, but there are plenty of Teslas out there that get driven often by secondary drivers who aren’t familiar with the specific voice commands and IMO aren’t going to learn them. Some standardization for controls is a good thing and although physical controls can vary, they’re usually enough alike to easily figure them out. That’s not going to happen with a touch screen.

Jramskov ,

I’d like a couple more physical controls, but I think you’re making it sound worse than it really is. I also don’t think the issue only is touch screen vs physical controls. Modern cars are a lot more complex - they have a lot more features.

spaghettiwestern ,

I went for a few years renting higher end cars on a regular basis. The primary functions on every single one of the “modern cars” were easy to figure out with the exception of the Teslas. For occasional use Tesla’s controls are absurdly cumbersome verging on dangerous.

I can understand your experience would be different if it’s your primary ride.

Jramskov ,

I can of course only speak for myself and what I have experienced with others in our TM3. When we (my wife and I) got it 5 years ago, neither of us had ever driven a TM3 before. We had a Ford C-max before. My wife got the honour of driving it home from the delivery center and I of course drove it a bit later. Quite a few friends and family tried it in the weeks after. I don’t recall anyone finding it cumbersome or hard to drive.

I do find it stupid that Tesla had removed the stalks on the refreshed TM3 and I welcome the Euro NCAP changes, that will likely have an effect.

PuddingFeeling907 ,
@PuddingFeeling907@lemmy.ca avatar

Thank you Europe!

uis ,

I have better slogan: “EU, I belive in you!”

afraid_of_zombies ,

Not sure how related this is but in my field, designing industrial control systems, each seperate physical button is about $100 added to the cost over a touchscreen. We call touchscreens HMIs just to be special and sound smart. I imagine the numbers are very similar for cars but I don’t have data to back that up.

bane_killgrind ,

BAS inputs (all physical inputs really) require muxed and addressed circuits on the board level to accomplish some connection to the software interface, whereas one touchscreen can have an arbitrary number of software interfaces it interacts with.

afraid_of_zombies ,

True but wasn’t really thinking of it that way when I said $100 dollars, since I usually have way more I/O than I need. It is the physical operators, the running wire, the mounting, the inventory etc.

bane_killgrind ,

Same I sell access control and my comment was really more additional context for the normies. Recently I’ve been thinking about what the barrier of entry for Bacnet native access control hardware would be, and I can’t come up with good reasons that jci or kaba hardware is priced at the level it’s at except to consider it’s proprietary software interface.

Manufacturers don’t want to supply complete interoperable devices, because then they couldn’t sell software

LodeMike ,

Airbags are several hundred dollars added to the cost.

Physical buttons are a safety feature.

Duamerthrax ,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiB8GVMNJkE

LodeMike ,

Ah yes

SocialMediaRefugee ,

The first time I tried using android auto in a rental car I hated it. The damn thing would disconnect constantly and there was no safe way to restart or reconnect it while driving, I had to pull over somewhere. The car’s screen controlled things like the radio and AC so I had to constantly take my eyes off of the road to adjust anything.

Ironfacebuster ,

Were you using Android Auto with a USB cable or wireless? I have an aftermarket AA radio in my car that I use wired and it works almost perfectly, but I also have physical climate control so I can’t fully relate

CosmicCleric , (edited )
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

Were you using Android Auto with a USB cable or wireless? I have an aftermarket AA radio in my car that I use wired and it works almost perfectly,

Are you suggesting a Wi-Fi Bluetooth device inside of the same vehicle its trying to connect to via Wi-Fi Bluetooth would have connection problems, and not be able to connect, at that short range?

Nollij ,

It uses Bluetooth, not Wi-Fi. But there are a ton of factors that make wireless communications less reliable than wired. Have you ever been on Wi-Fi and had connection issues right next to the router? All of those factors also affect Bluetooth.

That said, I’ve never had any issues connecting my phone to AA via wireless.

CosmicCleric ,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

It uses Bluetooth, not Wi-Fi.

Yeah sorry about that. I actually know it’s Bluetooth and not Wi-Fi, but I was just working on my Wi-Fi in the house before I posted that comment, so it got stuck in my head. I connect my phone to my stereo system in my car via bluetooth.

But there are a ton of factors that make wireless communications less reliable than wired.

Over long distances, sure. But in a vehicle, with that short of a distance?

It would have to be one hell of another thing interfering to break a Bluetooth connection in a car.

smeenz ,

I have an irrigation valve that turns the water on and off for the garden. It talks to the app via Bluetooth, and I’ve found that my phone has to be at least 3m away from it or it won’t connect. Any closer and the signal must overload it to the point where it can’t interpret it. The first one I bought, I took back to the store and swapped it for another before I figured out what the problem was.

I’m sure it’s a bad design on the valve’s Bluetooth implementation, but nevertheless, it exists.

CosmicCleric ,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

I have an irrigation valve that turns the water on and off for the garden. It talks to the app via Bluetooth, and I’ve found that my phone has to be at least 3m away from it or it won’t connect. Any closer and the signal must overload it to the point where it can’t interpret it.

Not to discredit your example, but that’s not exactly a car that we’re talking about right? I would imagine more due diligence would have been done on the engineering side for a Bluetooth connection in a vehicle, versus a lawn sprinkler.

If cars were having that same problem of close distance issues that would be making the news, especially if it was a whole fleet of cars that that problem was happening for.

Ironfacebuster ,

I mean, yeah, it’s possible

Just trying to get more information about their experience as well, maybe it’s not actually Android Auto and it’s a weird half baked system built into the car

mortalic ,

Being honest here, I have a car with android auto and I hate having to plug it in for a variety of reasons.

  1. I just want to get in and drive, the music should just play and all the stuff should just get out of the way.
  2. I don’t want to charge my phone every time I drive my car, it’s not necessary and can be hard on the battery
  3. This is doubly important for an EV, I don’t want to waste EV power charging a phone that doesn’t need charging

My opinion, Phone OS makers need to get their shit together around android auto / apple carplay. Too much nonsense gets in the way of all the actually important pieces. When you get in a car with only a radio, the music just starts playing when you get in. Which means, your experience is better with old tech. That’s just ridiculous.

I personally think a better idea is to just start equipping cars with cell modems that you add to your plan or something. There is no need to offload this work to your cellphone when the car has more physical space for that kind of thing anyway. I mean tesla’s just have a borderline gaming computer in them these days.

Ironfacebuster ,

Ironically I’ve had an issue with Spotify not automatically playing when I wanted it to, unrelated to Android Auto lol

Also I think some cars do have cell modems, but it’s mostly to provide in car wifi

TheRealKuni ,

You can get an adapter that makes wired Android Auto or Apple CarPlay wireless. I bought one off AliExpress for like $30 and it works great.

MDKAOD ,

I’m researching aftermarket head units for my wife’s Kia, what did you go with?

teamevil ,

You definitely don’t want wireless android auto…the interface sucks and it’s amazing to be able to unplug it and use your phone correctly then plug back in

MDKAOD ,

I have wireless android auto in my GLI. It’s fine. There have been a few random instances where being connected wirelessly has been inconvenient. But my biggest gripe is the battery drain.

Smokeless7048 ,

Good! I hate how modern cars have so few buttons.

eran_morad ,

I mean, no fucking shit.

PrincessLeiasCat ,

Fucking finally. Thank you.

FinishingDutch ,
@FinishingDutch@lemmy.world avatar

Well duh. Even when they were introduced, touchscreens in cars got a lot of pushback. I’d much rather flip a switch or turn a knob for things I do daily, rather than futz three levels deep in a car maker’s software. They put things in there that really should be simple pushbuttons.

Imhotep ,

We want buttons

variaatio ,

Well it could also be a lever or a switch.

rottingleaf ,

“Back”?

There are people who’d entrust their life to a touchscreen?

Atomic ,

You have a smartphone don’t you?

What are you gonna do when your hands have blood all over them? Good luck dialing an emergancy number on your phones touchscreen.

So yes. Pretty much everyone in a developed country do entrust their lives to a touchscreen on a daily basis.

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

On iOS you can just hold the side button and one of the volume buttons to bring up the SOS menu, if you keep holding the buttons it’ll sound an alarm, do a countdown, and call the emergency services. You don’t actually need to interact with the screen. Obviously this means you’ll need to be able to squeeze your thumb and another finger together, but a phone with buttons would require you to be able to operate that somehow too.

I think you could also try to ask Siri if that’s enabled.

I’ve no idea about Android but I’d assume you can do something similar there.

aniki ,

holding the power button brings up the emergency menu. You can also use the same menu to lock your phone down so none of the police scanner software works.

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

Holding the power button brings up Google Assistant on my Pixel 6. It does the same on my iPhone.

aniki ,

What version of android are you running?

androidpolice.com/…/android-12-adds-emergency-sos…

androidpolice.com/…/android-p-feature-spotlight-n…

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

It’s running Android 14.

prole ,

Lol on Android that same shortcut takes a screenshot hahahaha… I don’t know why that’s so funny to me.

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

Just checked my Pixel - you’re right.

It does on iOS as well. Though note the difference between holding and pressing. Pressing Power + Volume Up takes a screenshot, holding it (keeping it pressed) brings up the SOS stuff.

wewbull ,

If my hands have blood all over them, I’m not telling anybody. I’m running away before anyone finds me.

overzeetop ,
@overzeetop@lemmy.world avatar

The implication is that it’s your own blood, but I like the planning/forethought. I think you’ll be going places. Probably at a run.

rottingleaf ,

I have one, but my main SIM is in my schoolboy\soldier\grandpa phone with nice good buttons. So I don’t.

Atomic ,

And I’m sure you always keep it with you as well. Really, good for you. Amazing. So many people. And I happened to just comment to the one person who keeps a dumb-phone on them. What are the odds

rottingleaf ,

Not always, but more time than my Android phone which is somewhere charging often.

Zorque ,

They've been buying Teslas for years.

Eggyhead ,
@Eggyhead@kbin.social avatar

I can’t even entrust my video games to a touch screen.

Jramskov ,

I think the title is a bit misleading. AFAIK, Euro NCAP have no authority to tell car makers anything, but they do indirectly affect how cars are developed because getting high Euro NCAP safety scores are important.

dan1101 ,

Let’s hope important enough.

n3m37h ,

It states this fact in the article, although that 5 star rated is highly coveted so if they say a car with no touch buttons will only get 2/3 stars things will change pretty quick, at least in europe

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