The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens | Hacker News Reader

The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens

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230 pointsjepityr163 comments

I sometimes feel I am in a minority of one these days.

Just about every car I've owned, I develop a muscle memory of where all the important switches are, and how far to turn to "hot enough" or "cool enough" etc. Same for most things around - I know fairly well how far to turn the oven for 180 +-10, no need to look. I might check if it's something especially sensitive (rare).

Thanks to iPhone (I have one, and like it) touch has become the answer to everything and that muscle memory doesn't work any more.

My current car is a pain in the arse as despite a dozen switches on the steering wheel they've forced simple functionality into the centre touch screen with awful UI where a simple switch would have worked fine.

Only Apple and a handful of others have any idea of usable UI - and even they aren't as hot as they once were. Anyone making appliances or cars is especially bad at UI. Worse if they decide to add helpful beeps. I don't want to be looking at anything in the car except the idiots outside it and the speedo. Nothing. Ever. Give me the damn switches back!

Heck even smart phones are a step back for use as a camera or phone. Old Sony-Ericssons had the ergonomics of a camera as well, including button and lens cover. Every feature phone could be answered (and most of a text written) without looking even once.

I really would like my stuff to move beyond this cargo cult of touch and keep it just for the iPhone.

Preach.

I still drive a 'dumb' car with actual buttons and knobs, because I loathe (with a passion) almost every car UI I have interacted with. I haven't been in a Tesla yet, but all the big makers (GM, Nissan, Audi, etc) get the interfaces so wrong, to the point where I assume it was their intention. I'd be interested to hear of any cars that get it right.

I thought I'd got enough of a balance. Next time around I'll be irritating dealers going through the UI much more carefully.

> to the point where I assume it was their intention

It really does feel that way sometimes. They must have special "Interfaces that almost work" courses. :)

I really like the interface Mazda came up with. Right by the shifter there's a knob that controls everything on the screen, which is as easy to glance at as the speedometer. Muscle memory still works to an extent

They also keep the HVAC controls entirely separate, and there's controls on the steering wheel too, in addition to the "commander" knob and volume/mute knob.

Biggest reason why i wouldn't get a Tesla. All i want is a Golf cart with doors and a plug for my phone really. Keep the 15" screen that sucks my battery dry.

Surprisingly (to me), I do use a lot of muscle memory with my Tesla UI: some of the most important controls are positions near corners and I hit them purely by feeling for the corners. So it's not as bad as you might think.

Re. screen sucking the battery dry, you might consider the energy needed to keep the car moving which complete dwarfs the few watts the screen takes. It's a complete nonissue.

Only if you expect to use the same car for inner cities, highways, short and long distance. As long as we are hauling a literal metric ton of steel to move 100 kilos of flesh and bones not much will change.

My solution was to buy a car that has physical HVAC knobs and install a non-touchscreen aftermarket stereo.

I just bought a car (with Carplay), but I was adamant that I would only have one that had physical buttons and volume knobs on the centre console. Sat in Tesla the other day and was really surprised about how awful the UI was in terms of information heirarchy. Everything seemed to have the same weight. A sea of clickable buttons.

Can I ask which brand you went with? I'm currently looking and have already tossed out several models I otherwise really wanted.

I recommend taking a look at Audi. No touchscreens. Smart functionality. Tactile buttons for everything. I love my 2018 A5 Sportback.

+1 to this. Even CarPlay is controlled via knob instead of touchscreen, which makes it less distracting, IMO.

Car people would kill me for saying this, but look at Kia and Hyundai. I drive a 2015 Forte and I think its touchscreen system makes a lot of sense. It has physical volume and seek knobs, buttons to change audio sources or show the map, and physical climate controls. Their steering wheel control layout is also one of the best I've seen.

I'm a "car person", and I would say that Kia and Hyundai are really damn good cars, these days.

I'm in the UK - I went for a SEAT Alhambra (we tend to have to ferry our kids and their friends on camping holidays)

Same here, if I just want to turn down the AC I don't want to have to pull over to do it safely. Considering it is a ticketable offense in many parts of the US to text/use a phone while driving, how is it any better to have to use the car's touchscreen? I don't disagree with anti-texting laws, but I find it easier to skip to the next song on my phone w/o looking than using Ford's horrible UI.

Porsche is still using a low of switches to maintain this aspect of UX.

Hopefully we can go to mostly physical interfaces and voice (for nav input). Where is a touchscreen the best answer?

Laws mandating backup cameras on cars have helped spread touchscreens, as that video screen takes up dashboard real estate. In my relatively new Outback it's only for the radio, and I have steering wheel controls (as well as a physical volume and tuner knob), but it's still a regression to some degree.

Don't get me wrong, with cars getting taller it's good to have backup cameras (and indeed it was part of my thinking in selecting the car, having recently had a nephew reach walking age), but the desire to make it multitask creates the touchscreen urge.

I've been thinking about switching back to a basic MP3 player for my listening-to-stuff-while-on-the-go needs.

The device being connected to the Internet is convenient for not having to think about downloading podcasts and suchlike. Having to physically claw the device out of my pocket, push my sunglasses up, and squint in the bright sunlight in order to find the spot on the screen where I need to tap in order to rewind 15 seconds so I can catch whatever I missed because of that dump truck that just drove past, though, is getting annoying.

After many years, I was almost to the point where my muscle memory was good enough to do it without taking my phone out of my pocket. Then the latest iOS dropped, and they both moved the relevant touch targets and shrunk them down to something like 5mm square.

I live in a climate that has cold winters, and have Raynaud's syndrome. If it's cold outside, I wear -30C rated mountaineering mitts, and I'm fine, as long as I don't expose my hands to the cold. Touchscreens (and tiny steering wheel buttons) in cars are literally unusable for me for a good portion of the year.

Would a Stylus work on these screens? Granted that is probably more dangerous while driving than a finger.

A stylus for capacitative touchscreens still needs skin contact in order to work.

I know there are gloves with conductive fibres woven in, to make them work with touchscreens. Probably not -30C rated, though.

You can get a capacitive stylus for a few bucks. It's nothing special and doesn't need skin contact.

Would actively heated mitts work, with exposed fingertips?

Probably, but they'd need a lot of heating. You lose a lot of insulation with exposed fingertips. Raynaud's starts from my fingertips, so they'd basically need enough heating to keep the fingertips warm via convection. (Plus I'm not sure how you'd do exposed fingertips on a mitt rather than a glove. If you just cut off the end of the mitt you've effectively just got a long sleeve with a thumb pocket.) I do have some wool gloves with exposed fingertips, but if I'm sedentary, they're only good for me down to a minimum of +5C or so.

I’m with you on most of this. As far as cars go, I recommend a look at Audi for smart functionality, tactile buttons/knobs/switches, and zero touchscreens. I love my 2018 A5 Sportback.

My wife recently got a car with a touchscreen display that controls nearly everything and it's infuriating. You can't use it without looking away from the road. There's still a physical audio volume control and the gearshift, so if you don't ever need to use the climate controls/nav/etc it's safe. I can't imagine how dangerous the Tesla 3 might be.

It would be hilarious if Apple did make a car and everything used physical knobs and buttons because of course that's better.

I just picked up a Nespresso machine - a Creatista Uno. It's a new, lower end variant of a pre-existing line of machines.

The main difference, aside from the more utilitarian finish and lower cost, is that it replaced the touchscreen of the other models with 6 buttons. The reviews have almost universally praised it as the one to get due to the speed and ease of use - of course convenience is going to rate highly with folks who are into something like Nespresso.

I agree, and I feel in minority too.

My current car, Subaru Outback, has groves for some common touch buttons but still hard to develop muscle memory because you cannot feel your way to right button. I hate it. Impossible to not take your eyes off the road to touch radio presets or your contacts.

Same thing with cameras, it is so much harder to use cameras with touchscreens (also I guess menus too). But manufacturers keep adding touchscreens to cameras. I Finally got Fuji x100f which has a lot of knobs and dials for easy access to common settings. It took me maybe a couple of weeks to develop muscle memory for it.

Another one of my pet peeves, I loved Kindle Keyboard with physical buttons. When it broke, I got the new Kindle Touch. I kept accidentally flipping pages. You need to hold it so that your fingers never rest on the screen, just awkward for me. I think physical buttons were great differentiator for Kindle. I returned Kindle and got iPad instead. (I know I could have gotten Kindle Oasis, but it was so expensive for what it does and I keep thinking if I will spend that much money, might as well spend a bit more and get something with extra functionality.).

This makes you appreciate the attention to detail, and the countless painfully learnt lessons, that goes into user interface design for airplanes.

Compare a Cessna 400's cockpit [1] to a switch cluster in a recent Mini [2]. The car still has physical switches, which is better than a touchscreen. It's also styled to resemble an airplane cockpit. But all the switches look the same, and some of them have two positions while others have three; some of them disable things while others turn them on.

In the Cessna, each control has a different color, and a different surface texture. The flap lever is styled to resemble an actual flap. The same goes for gear levers on planes with retractable landing gears: they are styled as little wheels. As the pilot, if you touch the wrong lever, you'll immediately feel the difference, avoiding dangerous mistakes.

In the Mini, all switches have the same color and they feel the same. Their status is indicated with a little LED on the switch itself. You neither feel the current status from touching the switch, nor is there any tactile feedback of whether you are touching the right switch. With a touchscreen, that remains true, but additionally the location of the switches changes too.

[1] https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-f37712d0cd771d5aee97ac...

[2] https://www.gunaxin.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2017-MINI...

There is a subtile difference in terms of consequences between blindly picking the wrong button on a car vs plane, though...

Obviously but OP’s point still stands. Quality UX takes time and careful thinking (which is why it’s worth doing it for a plane but not for a car).

I think both these examples are quality UX. In fact I'd go so far as to bet that BMW has spent far more on UX than Cessna has. The difference is in the definition of "quality". In Cessna's case the objective is to make the plane safer and easier to pilot, so people decide to buy it. In BMW's case the objective is to make people want to buy the car. Two different objectives = Two different user experiences

you confuse sales with UX.

I was being slightly simplistic, but let's not forget that UX means "user experience". It doesn't mean "user efficiency" or "user safety". Clearly BMW has decided that the experience they want to focus on is more emotional than rational.

There are far more people in cars.

There are far more people around cars.

The people in, and around, cars, have far less training to specific instrumentation and controls than those in, and around, aircraft.

I don't think that's a lack of attention to detail from Mini. Just a decision made with the knowledge that people don't buy premium cars based on rational decisions. If they did, I'm not sure Mini (or BMW for that matter) would exist... I don't think this is the case for airplanes.

Are there any somewhat affordable cars that skimp on the "bling" to archive this sort of efficiency?

What I've found is that each make of car has it's "way" of doing things. I've found that Toyotas have a consistent placement of controls, as do Hondas, but they are not the same to each other. I haven't driven enough other makes of cars to know definitively, and they can change between generations.

It may be a way to foster brand loyalty. I find Honda's way more intuitive, but Toyota's is fine, too.

I'm happy with my 3rd generation Mazda3.

http://images.nadaguides.com/ChromeImageGallery/Expanded/Whi...

The IVI display is out of the way but accessible (there's a jogdial on the center console to control it while driving). HVAC controls are manual and very easy to use without looking.

The problem is how to reconcile manual controls (which are great) with Carplay/AndroidAuto (which is even greater). The only control I have over Carplay without using the touchscreen is next/previous song and volume :(

The Mazda unit is supposed to be Carplay-enabled in the next couple of months. I'm curious as well to see what happens. I would hope the newer versions of CP allow for use of external control devices like the jogdial.

I guess entry level Dacias would probably be your best bet?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/motoring2/2015/12/03...

Volvo is better about physical switches than comparable cars.

My purchase of a Mini was mostly motivated by

1. wanting a physically small car (I'm bad at parking)

2. ...that wasn't anemic at highway speeds

3. ...and could (uncomfortably) fit a couple of friends if necessary, or some flat-pack furniture boxes

4. ...all without being either bland or ugly as sin.

And (4) is where BMW make their money! Or you'd have bought a Suzuki Swift :)

I drive a 2011 MINI Cooper S and have owned a 2007 and a 2003. Every generation has its share of wtf when it comes to dashboard switches.

Take my biggest peeve, the blower switch on the 2011: If you press "increase" while at max blower, it stays at max blower. If you press "decrease" while at min blower, it turns off. If you press "decrease" while at off, it goes to min blower.

So you can jam the blower to max without looking, but if you overshoot on the way back down, it goes off and on again!

> So you can jam the blower to max without looking, but if you overshoot on the way back down, it goes off and on again!

Seems like the "turn to lowest if decrease is pressed while off" was explicitly designed to overcome this issue.

Yes! I should have included that I am sure it is purposeful, but I am not sure that they considered the practical implications.

On my old car I could both read and write any value to the car without looking at the controls. That's important -- if I was feeling cold, but the temperature was set to where I wanted it, I'd turn on the seat warmer, as I knew I'd need to feel warmer only temporarily. Now I have to look at the controls all the damn time. One important thing was that all of the controls were asymmetric -- the buttons were all different sizes and positions, which looked awful if you were looking at it but YOU WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE LOOKING AT IT. It made it really easy to just reach out a hand and know where on the surface you were.

There's a reason that many professionals who use computers for repetitive high-skill tasks (video editing, music production) have custom input hardware for it.

I had an interesting UI failure in my car today, with the knob that directs air to the windshield, middle and feet levels, with many intermediate combinations. Uncommonly, the knob can turn full circle, but it is not directional; I noticed it was turned 180° from the intended position only when I noticed I was sweating.

Was it a SAAB? Pre-GM they had amazing cockpits, well laid-out and as easy to use at night as day.

I often wonder how much the environment the designers have to live in affect their designs.

With the nordics being very dark and cold for half a year or more, being able to operate the vehicle in limited visibility would be paramount.

Similarly, operating a capacitive touchscreen is not fun in -20C or colder.

Touch screens and mixed user interfaces on things like cash machines, petrol pumps, etc kind of bother me - maybe later posts will go into this as the blog ends saying there will be a follow-up.

Just a couple of anecdotes - the first being cash machines where I input the PIN using the traditional buttons on the numeric pad, then i start using the touchscreen to make other choices. Pick one or the other, not a mixture of the two. Or self service petrol pumps that end up covered in grease and dirt, because they're in that kind of environment.

Once i was waiting in line at the Eurotunnel and the person in front of me was clearly struggling. It took them about five minutes to get through the registration process and they kept leaning over out of their car window, stabbing away at the touchscreen with their finger appearing somewhat frustrated. I assumed they must have had trouble finding their booking.

When I got to the booth myself I pressed the touchscreen and it was immediately clear that the calibration was off, by about a couple of finger widths - this was enough to cause the problems for the user before me, as they were trying to type in their booking reference but it would always choose the wrong digits. So when I typed in my booking reference I moved my finger a little to the side to account for the calibration error. Easy! Well, not so much if you're not technically inclined enough to recognise this kind of issue when you see it.

I think the only situation in which I prefer a touchscreen to anything else is when the function of the device completely changes a lot and I can't have keyboard and mouse.

Re: calibration: In Austria we have touchscreens for buying train tickets at the station. As a tall person looking down on the screen I always have to factor in some offset, touching slightly beneath the thing I want to hit. Not that bad with big areas. But typing out stuff on the software keyboard is terrible.

An older solution there is soft buttons around the edges.

Older ATMs used them to allow you to make context sensitive choices, while also having the numeric pad.

And now i find myself pondering a "smartphone" with rows of buttons along the longer edges of the screen...

I think the mixed mode works really well.

Touchscreens are pretty natural and intuitive, especially for things like ATMs, but you can't have braille on ATM touch screens so you need the buttons no matter what. At least in the US they usually have headphone jacks to replace the information presented on the screen though, and since you have a screen you might as well make it a touch screen.

> Touchscreens are pretty natural and intuitive

Try to watch someone in their 60s operate them and you will learn that the are anything but.

My dad find them endlessly frustrating, as his first instinct when talking about something in an image or something is to put his finger on it. But that invariably triggers something on such a screen.

He also struggles with things like Google Maps on a PC with a scroll mouse, as to him the natural action is to "pull" the map closer rather than "zoom in". End result is that he often find himself scrolling the wrong way...

I've seen the 'super hybrid' a few times, at least in Australia, on both ATMs and credit card machines. A touch screen (with physical numpad) at but with positional buttons on the side so the choices can be both touched, or use the buttons. For me it creates a bit of cognitive overhead at first - I'm getting mixed messages as to how to interact - but then I make a random guess and its right. No matter which I tried, I would have been right.

Try watching children operate touchscreen and you'll see that they are quite intuitive.

The biggest difference is they don't have 60+ years of experience telling them what won't work (because it didn't used to) like your dad probably does.

Kids will try anything, just to see what happens (i think i issued the format c: command within days of the first PC arriving in our home back in the day). They are possibly the worst indicator of "intuitive" out there.

>i think i issued the format c: command within days of the first PC arriving in our home back in the day

I did the same thing!- good thing we had some OS floppies lying around

Or just jumping from an older interface to a modern one. I'm a 30-year-old software developer and just had this experience with Google's "Material Design" on my new Android phone, took quite a while to figure out what did what.

It's been a week and I'm still discovering things by accident or having to look up online how to do things because it's all hidden away with no visual indicators. I've pretty much decided to shun the whole thing and make things look like what they are whenever I make UIs.

AFAIK, there's a special reason for the PIN pad: it encrypts the PIN, so the ATM doesn't have access to it. That's why even ATMs with touch screens still keep the PIN pad.

I thought it's just because it's way too easy to spy on the screen.

Side note, I hate every device that needlessly makes a beep. Everything seems to make a useless audible sound constantly.

> High contrast, color-coded buttons take less time to mentally digest.

I agree with this strongly and recommend using high-contrast features and color wherever it can assist in rapid recognition of important UI elements. I remember being surprised by how much font-lock-mode reduced my bug/typo rate; I started fixing many errors immediately after typing them because the color was obviously wrong.

However... it's important to remember that a lot more color blind people will use your UI than you might suspect (if you even remembered to account for color blindness at all, which is unfortunately common). Color can still be used, but remember to also include other no-color based differences and/or use a tool (or consultant) to verify everything is still high contrast and easily distinguishable.

edit:

> “and when this one becomes tolerable, they’ll change the software on me.”

I had an echocardiogram a few months ago, and the technician had to restart after making a minor mistake setting up the first image. Apparently the test equipment was modular, and the plug-in features would show up on the touchscreen UI in the order the hardware was plugged in. The medical center had two of these devices, and the technician was used to the other machine. The one we were using had several buttons in opposite locations. Obviously this was only a minor problem at the time, but medical equipment is another situation where it's probably a very bad idea to make the UI layout unstable.

Having physical buttons has the advantage of limiting how much the UI can be changed in a software update.

Just a few days ago I added to my Pocket IMproved CSS style to 1) put some distance between the trash and other post icons and 2) colour-distinguish them.

https://pastebin.com/raw/bdMw6jkr

I posted this comment 3 days ago on another article but it's just as relevant here. Touchscreens are great for people unfamiliar with an interface, but they seem to work poorly for experts.

---

One place I lived had train ticket machines from the 90's that were an analog of Teletext. If you knew the 3-digit zone code for your end station, you could just jam in the zone code, adult, buy ticket, pop in your magstripe card and have a ticket in 5 seconds flat. It was absolutely perfect.

They were then replaced with user-friendly Windows-powered machines where buying the most basic ticket took 2 minutes as you had to poke though pages of stations on a crap resistive display.

Would also potentially add "voice control" to this list. It's amazing to me that by trying to be "innovative/modern", most car user interface designs have become increasingly user unfriendly.

Case in point, the other day I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to connect my phone to a car via bluetooth (I'm still used to there just being a button for pairing).

Ended up having to search online for the instruction manual to figure it out, turns out pairing is only available via voice command when the car is in park ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I rely on google to tell me how to use my "intuitive" iphone.

A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wavebands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme

Douglas Adams (1979) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Voice control isn't friendly either. It often fails to understand what you say, requires significant focus from you to say the exact magic words, and works less well when it's loud outside.

On my Android Auto, the voice-activated voice control also tends to trigger inadvertently when playing podcasts.

My 2016 Jeep Wrangler has Chrysler's garbage voice control. When I say "settings," half the time it hears "español" and changes everything to Spanish, and also switches the digital speedometer from mph to km/h. The confirmation prompt doesn't understand "NO" even when I scream at it.

Once that happens, the only way I've been able to switch it back to English is via the steering wheel controls, but you can only get to that menu when the vehicle is in park.

> pairing is only available via voice command when the car is in park

I guess their policy is "fuck the mute and the non-English speakers"?

This is exactly why I dislike the new MBP touch bar. I spend much of my working day in IntelliJ, debugging Scala code. I so badly want to rest my fingers on the function keys while I step in/out/over code, just as I used to in Visual Studio debugging C# and C++. I recently tried the native touch bar support in the Early Access version of IntelliJ and it was really not any better. It's no fault of Jetbrains either, I just don't care if I'm seeing a cute arrow icon instead of F9, as I don't want to have to look at anything at all, I want to rely on muscle memory.

Same goes for audio/DAW control surfaces; as much as I'd love to replace all equipment with an iPad, it just doesn't come close to the feel of an Ableton Push (for instance), and I don't see how it ever could.

Why did you buy it then? I think that all the marketing of "touchscreen: oooh shiny!" is working, and there is very little we can do about bad interfaces unless we vote with our feet.

Is there any other non Mac trackpad which just works. Once you use a Mac trackpad, its hard going back to something else.

Surface trackpads are pretty good (generally, anything with a large area that uses Precision Touchpad instead of Synaptics or other OEM junk is decent).

Personally, no laptop I've ever owned had at trackpad that _didn't_ just work. Of course there were a handfull in the store at any given time that were mediocre, but that's why I try before I buy. The Mac trackpad is definitely great, don't get me wrong, but in my experience poor trackpads only appear on certain business models and cheap flimsy models. (Currently using a two or three year old Lenovo thinkpad yoga, the trackpad has always worked great)

If one happens to need a new Macbook Pro at the moment, Apple haven't left a lot of options which don't have a Touchbar and a terrible keyboard. One can choose to delay an upgrade in many cases, but it's rather harder to choose to delay replacing a broken machine.

It's a shame because at one point the Macbook Pro was a machine almost without flaw.

And no, for some people getting a Windows or Linux machine simply isn't an option without a level of investment in new software that simply can't be justified. Apple have people over a barrel. All that vertical integration has led to some of the best computers ever made, but it also gets you in trouble when your chosen walled garden gets burned down.

It's standard issue at my current job (as well as my previous one). For my personal laptop I actually bought one of the 2015 MBPs Apple is still selling new in the box. The next time I get a laptop refresh I may very well just go with something like an XPS w/ Ubuntu (at least for work, where I don't need things like Ableton Live, Max/MSP and NI Reaktor).

Because there are usually multiple reasons for and against a choice, for a particular person's needs, and the sum of the positives minus the negatives might be the highest for that choice compared to the sums for the other options?

The pinnacle of climate control is the 1988-1991 Toyota Corolla. The controls are obvious, they literally point to what they are doing, while providing tactile control and feedback. Everything increases in intensity as it moves to the right. The detents that a switch pass through allow the user to have full control while keeping their eyes on the road. All controls are independent (fan, AC, heat, recirculation). In the Volvo and VW there is literally no way to have the fan and not set the desired temperature, which will automatically control the AC or heater depending on the outside temp.

They then made the same regressions as the rest of the industry and moved to a display with modal buttons.

https://imgur.com/a/nt0DwwP

>we never tested it on the road

That is an even bigger issue than the decision to use a touchscreen. Don't these companies want to make good products? I can't imagine releasing something without even attempting to put it through some realistic usage. Given the sorry state of in-car interfaces, I suppose I should not be surprised.

I worked at Microsoft on what would have been the next gen system after Ford SYNC and MyFord Touch. Our design team put a HUGE effort into making the UI usable at arms reach and at a glance. They had all this research about button sizes and how accurate a person could be with their outstretched arm. They built a full car simulator and we had modified cars in our parking garage we could actually test on.

Ford decided to go a different direction and I left the project shortly before it was ultimately scrapped. The ideas were awesome, but for various reasons, we never really built anything.

Seems like all the car manufactures are failing to learn all the lessons that Google and Apple have learned about touch screens and voice interfaces.

What's worse is whatever your phone of choice is, it's likely to know a HUGE amount more about your. Your contact list, what you searched on recently, tickets you bought, public transit research, etc. So instead of say "Navigate to Joe Random" you end up hunting and pecking at a terrible on screen keyboard with a terrible touch interface that doesn't even allow multitouch or swipes. God forbid you change your mind underway.

Distractions can cause lives, and car manufacturers are doing worse than Apple/Google. The easiest fix seems like it would be mandate that car manufacturers allows users to choose their navigation system.

More info on the distraction claims at: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aaa-apple-and-googl...

I have a patent on using morse code to text people on the phone rather than a keyboard. The idea is so you can text without looking at the phone.

A rocker switch is added to the edge of the phone, up is dit and down is dah.

I coulda been a billionaire! :-)

Agreee. Touch screens on cars are infuriating. You must look away to touch them and any movement might mean you accidentally touch other on sceeen buttons.

Working in industrial automation I can confirm that ugly color coded touch interfaces are optimal. Group functions by color and/or menus by color. Operators quickly know where to glance for data and which "buttons" to press.

Most of today's UI's are centered around web/mobile where form over function is the rule.

This makes me think of another field where bad UI decisions took years to undo... synthesizers! The rise of digital synthesizers in the late 1980s led to an elimination of knobs and sliders, in favor of buttons and menus. This made it very difficult to design your own sounds for them, as sound manipulation was no longer physically intuitive, and working with interacting parameters could mean a lot of menu-digging rather than just turning two knobs at once to find the sweet spot.

But it was cheaper. And there's where touch screens really come to the fore. They're less expensive than the bespoke hardware interfaces that cars otherwise use.

In cars, though, it's not enough to be hard to use. It's dangerous to use the unfamiliar touchscreens while driving.

There has been a resurgence in analog and analog-style synths since the 80's but overall I think synth UX has gotten even worse with the rise of software synths.

Turning a virtual knob with a mouse pointer is a terrible UX. Mapping parameters to a midi keyboard is also pretty bad, with the exception of hardware like the Native Instruments S MK2 midi keyboards or the Maschine that are specifically built for controlling certain software.

And even then, midi mapping is a pain. There are a few synth makers who have figured out good touch-based iPad synths, but for the most part, ugh. Emulators! Try playing a Minimoog correctly on a touch screen....

The annoying thing for me is that the touchscreen in an automobile doesn't preclude it form having physical controls, often the physical controls are just very poorly thought out.

My 2015 Nissan Leaf has on the face of the steering wheel two 2-way rocker switches, a 3-way rocker switch, what looks like a rocker but is actually two buttons, and five other buttons. This is in addition to the two control stalks that have a dizzying array of positions and knobs themselves.

Three of those buttons are for dedicated features of the infotainment system I will never intentionally press. The answer/drop call button could also function to invoke the voice recognition feature and eliminating the dedicated button. The cruise control utilizes a 2-way rocker and two buttons, it really could be reduced down to a single 3-way rocker.

Infuriatingly the model with the infotainment system, an upgrade, replaced the knobs for volume and temperature control with buttons?! You might think it's to reduce space for the infotainment system but when you look at the two consoles side by side they're proportional spacing is the same.

The infotainment system has two to three physical buttons dedicated to features you shouldn't be using while driving and would better hidden behind the menu button. Of the physical buttons that are arguably usable, there are two that I will again never intentionally press. They'd have been better off making the buttons color/symbol coded and function programmable like the buttons that flank the sides of ATM screens.

So how are touchscreens OK, but using smartphones while driving isn't OK? I mean, I got pulled over once for a little lane wandering while adjusting the radio. Which had knobs.

Perfectly valid question!

The process of vehicle validation should be extended also to user interface besides drive-train.

Touchscreens probably aren't OK, is the point.

But more obviously: the current state of your air con isn't as deeply absorbing and distracting as, say, your Facebook feed. So one is pretty bad to be looking at while drive, the other is lethally dangerous.

To restate the obvious: I don't need to look at anything to adjust the temperature. My arm knows where the knob is. But with touchscreens, there's no tactile feedback. They'd need almost full VR for that. Or maybe we could have touchscreens that grew "knobs" and stuff, to provide tactile feedback. Maybe use an electrical field to thicken areas of an LCD screen.

Playing the devil's advocate here... but it's easier to show advertisements if a screen is available ?

The skeptical side of me thinks that car manufacturers are simply preparing us slowly to accept screens in the car so that the next generation accepts it by default.

I recently switched to a car which is the outgoing generation of that particular model and (almost ironically) has a physical button on the dashboard to simply stow the screen away. One cannot even tell that there could be a screen there !

There still is a screen in the instrument clsuter but it's monochromatic and I have set it up to display the speed and a "sub-readout screen ?" to display fuel consumption. The instrument cluster screen is also capable of showing GPS direction instructions as well if the main screen is stowed away.

Everything else has a physical switch. The HVAC status is dispayed on it's dedicated LCD on the center console.

I like the outdated tech in my "new" car.

> The skeptical side of me thinks that car manufacturers are simply preparing us slowly to accept screens in the car so that the next generation accepts it by default.

I'm not quite this cynical. I think car manufactures got all excited by the tech (in part due to Tesla just lazily slapping in a huge touchscreen and getting lots of coolness points for it, and in part due to the massive success of Android / iPhone / iPad), and decided they wanted cars to have that too. Car manufacturers are roughly 5 years behind current tech, so they rushed into touchscreens and by the time they got their products to market, the tech felt dated and the UX was never well thought out.

However, smarter car manufacturers learned from that and are now moving away from the touchscreen-only controls now, using them just for auxiliary needs or for things that really require them (like GPS navigation).

Consider the the Gen 1 Volt, where 99% of all buttons are identical touch-only pads. http://hanabi.autoweek.com/sites/default/files/styles/gen-12... As much as I love this car, this console is a huge UX disaster every bit as bad as a touchscreen-only car, and doesn't even earn any 'coolness' points for doing it.

Then in the Gen 2 Volt, they went back and put in lots of distinct physical buttons and dials for those previously-touch-only actions https://electromotivela.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/chevy... Not perfect, but this is a massive improvement over the prior model.

That is better... but does the shifter really glow blue?

Some big mainstream brands such as Volvo and Audi have introduced touch screen based UX. You need to use the screen even to operate HVAC. Range Rover Velar even has a touch screen in the steering wheel which changes according to the context.

But I do hope the manufacturers do realise that having touch screens only is incorrect and physical controls which can be operated by muscle memory are safer.

I still miss a physical button on my phone to take a picture. Haven’t had it since my Nokia Windows Phone.

Sony phones have dedicated button (hold down to enter camera app, by the time phone is out of pocket you are ready to press it again to take the photo).

On Pixel 2, double press Power button to start the camera app; then use volume buttons to take the photo. Not as ergonomic as Sony, but still works.

I'm sure other phones have something similar.

I would like a dedicated photo button.

Although physical buttons have a habit of failing (I have had multiple phones fail with button problems).

I have a Moto G3: double tap power to go into camera mode from the lock screen, or alternatively "waggle" it twice to get into camera mode (if screen turned off).

Both methods work, but I use them rarely enough that I still haven't learned to use either of them quickly when I actually need to take a photo quickly. And I am definitely a technically competent user.

Most phones allow you to take a picture with the volume button.

iPhones also let you use the volume buttons to take a picture

Press lock button, swipe left, press volume button - snap. It's somewhat fast actually.

iOS turns on the screen when you hold it up now. So it's just swipe left, click volume/shutter button :)

Oh cool, so does my new Android. I would never have guessed that, and there's no documentation anywhere.

So from "screen off" to "picture taken" it's "tap power twice, tap volume". So much better than I've had to get used to with my prior phone.

I don't get how jog dials aren't more popular for every interface. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jog_dial

There is a 5 direction one from Sony. One or two of these and a small black and white screen near the gauges should be all you'd ever need.

Small jog dials are pretty bad. They require enough precision to force mistakes, while not giving actual precise input.

Might as well swipe the touchscreen (or a touchpad) with some haptic feedback.

At small sizes, well shaped buttons with all chosen stiffness and press depth are unbeatable. Not even a lever comes close. (think gamepads and analog sticks or hat controllers)

For analog input, levers are best, but they have to be big enough (joystick) though steering wheel comes close.

There is a good reason most vehicles use either a steering wheel, potentially multiaxis, or a joystick, augmented with buttons and levers. Stepped knobs are also good.

I had the Sony Ericsson M600[0] Symbian phone for a while, and loved the jog wheel on it. The software never really took full advantage of it though, and just used it to select in lists. It would have been great for stuff like quick-launch shortcuts.

[0] https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_m600-pictures-1425.ph...

I love jog dials, too. They are fast, precise, and tactile. They should be used much more than they are.

This is why I will never own a Tesla Model 3. If I can't adjust the air conditioning while looking at the road, I don't want it.

You can set auto-climate control and will be able to change climate with voice in the future: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/952750646406426624?s=21

They're solving a problem they introduced themselves eh?

Voice command: shout at car to make it cooler. Car doesn't understand. Shout at car to turn off radio so your voice command is clearer. Car doesn't understand. Take eyes off road to turn off the damn radio with the touch screen. Crash!

The button interfaces actually work 100% of the time. Voice command... lol...

It's fine because you can just turn on the Autopilot while you adjust the radio and everything will be fine.

Tesla created an interface that can only be used while driving by handing control over to software that is unable to recognize when a vehicle in front of you is at a dead stop.

And everything is just fine?

I think the parent comment was intended to be facetious.

Give me a voice interface that works 100% of the time (not 99% of the time, not even 99.9% of the time) and I'm sold. Otherwise I'll continue to prefer a knob that "just works".

I find talking to a machine uncomfortable and embarrassing, regardless of whether they work. I doubt I'm the only one who feels this way. Why can't I just turn a dial?

... or about a million other cars, sadly.

I'm tentatively looking for a new car and it looks like i'm locked out of most of the nice things because of idiotic touch screen controls.

You can adjust the temperature from the scroll wheels on the steering wheel.

Or maybe you just can't afford it and are looking for a reason to make yourself feel better. :D How far long do you think before Tesla will support voice control? Or perhaps ML driven system that knows how to adjust the climate based on the passengers? Tesla is a computer/car hybrid ya know?

>> If I can't adjust the air conditioning while looking at the road, I don't want it.

Is this even a problem on a Tesla? My 2005 Honda with climate control can do this. I rarely adjust my a/c or heat. On a super hot or cold day, it will simply try its hardest at the beginning to reach the desired temperature before settling down.

I would think a new car like a Tesla would do it even better out of the box than my aging car.

It's worse than that. You can't even open the glove compartment without operating the touchscreen!

> “The quality of the touchscreen is my fault”, he admitted, “we never tested it on the road”. Apparently the management was so convinced that the entertainment system’s blue-tinted, rectangular touchscreen interface was “the future” that the company didn’t even bother using it on the road before releasing it. After all, Tesla had recently debuted (to much acclaim), its first model which boasted a similar touchscreen system. Now that this new company’s own car was in mass production, it would take many years to undo the damage.

So management (of the car company) pushes through a choice they don't understand, without understanding the implications ... and the problem is touchscreens ?

Sorry. That's not correct.

Tesla's interface has a good cpu and is quite usable (knowing EU car manufacturers my bet is that the first problem is woefully underpowered cpu). I wouldn't say it's at peak performance yet, but it's certainly as usable as a first stab at lots of buttons would be.

This is in fact the entire premise of the entire article. Management blindly doing things because "they're the future" ... sucks.

But we all know what the real problem is as well. The opposite attitude in management ("stay with the classics") also doesn't work.

You NEED management to know the business.

No exceptions !

This is yet one more example of total management failure. It should not reflect badly on any particular interface design principle.

Video games do this the best: you want a game pad like controller on the steering wheel with a HUD projected on the windshield.

You get the best of both worlds, a context-aware interface without losing focus on what’s in front of you.

Hahahahahahaha. Cars have some of the worst designed human interfaces known to man. In fact, virtually no designer of products (physical or virtual) cares anymore for their UX. It's sad, but in the mad rush to produce more and more, we've forgotten how to improve what we already have.

My frustration with automotive controls isn't limited to touch screens, but I've never used a touchscreen I like. I have two cars with awesome controls - a 2000 camary and a 20007 suburban. Both have 3 knobs: 1) how hot/cold 2) how fast is the fan blowing 3) where does it blow. The radio has two nobs - "what channel" and "how loud". My wife's 2013 (?) "luxury" car is quite the opposite. All controls are either 1) buttons you have to press or 2) something on the touchscreen. The user interfaces force you to take your attention from the road to use. That is bad and dangerous design ... end of story. I know the world likes to complain about using phones while driving, the the controls on some cars are just as bad.

The latest fad in luxury cars are switches that are actually touchscreens that look like physical switches, sometimes complete with haptic feedback.

Let the sheer stupidity of that sink in for a while...

Meanwhile in my old Mitsubishi switches rarely break, and if they do it'll cost a couple of dollar to replace it.

I think one reason store chains etc are moving to touch screns is that they can push various changes centrally.

I recall seeing older systems that used transparent keycaps, and invariably they would be covered in stickers and whiteout as the employees had tried their best to implement changes on the fly.

And now that i think about it, were there not a story posted a while back about a restaurant where the waiters used an age old grease marker on the screen of their POS to mark reservations that had arrived? This because while the software had such a feature, it required too many clicks or some such to be effectively done during a busy day.

I'd also recommend "Magic Ink: Information Software And The Graphical Interface": http://worrydream.com/#!/MagicInk

Having driven with the Tesla touchscreen, I can tell you you don't need to use it much while driving. The dials in the steering wheel can adjust the temperature, voice control is great for navigation and for selecting music, and range, performance data is on the dashboard (for non model 3).

If you need to do something complex like select a destionarion on the map, I don't think there's any interface that would let you do that safely as you need to visually identify a location.

I have a car with voice control and it's terrible for navigation with my 4 year old in the back seat. Seems it can't understand the phrase, "Drive to home why are you saying that daddy what did you say are you talking to the car daddy why?"

I'll take this opportunity to complain about my 2017 Honda HR-V. It has all of the problems described in the above piece.

It's the most dissatisfying thing about my car. In fact, it might be the only dissatisfying thing about the car, and yet it's still enough to make me reluctant to recommend the car to a friend!

A good mix of both touchscreens and physical mobs and buttons seems preferable. Similar to how the Apple Watch is designed.

In the '90's, I worked as a software/systems engineer "upgrading" factory process lines (think 100 year-old paper mills, plasctic bottle processing, pharma) from big old buttons and knobs to industrial touch screens. It was a Disaster! Things that operators used to do in a few twists and pushes now required toggling between multiple screens. Small on-screen touch buttons that were the perfect size for computer nerd fingers were way too small for the big meaty fingers of the operators. Conveyor speed feedback that looked steady on an analog meter now looked unstable on a digital display with three decimal places of (un-needed) precision. I should do consulting for these car companies. I could tell them that a volume control should always be a physical manual device. :-)

A coworker of mine often refers to his time of working on a CT scanner which this reminded me of. One story was around how a new model was released that used a touchscreen instead of tactile buttons.

As you can imagine, a doctor could previously fully focus on the patient as they were able to feel the feedback of physical buttons.

With the introduction of a touchscreen, they would have to continually switch between looking at the positioning of the patient, and looking to their right at the LCD panel in the CT scanner itself.

A quick look at the website of the large company in question seems to indicate that they reverted back to a non-touch screen display. I should hope so given that we're talking about hospital patients here!

Read about similar where doctors would keep using older DOS based software because they could operate the keyboard by touch, and thus bring up test results etc while maintaining the conversation with the patient.

Phew, well at least they did switch back. We're probably going to see more of that where it makes sense, now that having a touchscreen isn't a big deal anymore.

The new interfaces out of Garmin avionics are all touch screen based. They did wise up and add a knob and reference bumps around the screen. Still, scary to think I'd be looking at a screen when landing a plane outside of IFR flights.

Also, touch screens are much harder to use in turbulence.

Every screen I guess is a touch screen in some regards, say pointer-n-clik screen. Many such screens are so overcrowded these days, that you are playing a game of "Kill this pop up" to consume original content.

Browser notifications, Newsletter, Follow on Social, Special offers, etc etc

Regarding touch screen mentioned in this piece, the problem is those who created the product never use it and never it in original usage conditions. Many ATMS machines are filled with alighment problems to over confusing options.

Even their MENU & Navigation is not thought through

The Boeing Starliner has a similar problems with its "glass". It seems wrong on so many levels.

* requires sight (both line of sight and focus)

* fine motor control

* how does it interact with liquids (grease, blood, coolant, vomit) ?

* single point of failure (touch controller)

https://www.google.com/search?q=boeing+starliner+touch+displ...

I love the many buttons of my old Volvo dashboard. Rotary ones to set up temperature, etc.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Volvo_S8...

It doesn't have to be a touchscreen. I drove my brother-in-law's porsche suv when it came out. It had physical buttons with a screen. You had to press through deep menus to do anything. I've used computers for decades and I couldn't figure out how to turn the radio off. I gave up and turned the volume to zero.

IMO this is a cost that many popular smartwatches seems to forget these days.

Buttons are great for quickly interacting with the device without having to glance at it.

I shouldn't have to watch my screen to skip/pause a song, dismiss a notification, etc.

I mean Pebble watches live on with rebble.io, if you like that sort of thing.

The Garmin Fenix 5X uses buttons rather than a touchscreen for interaction, and it should be awesome as a result. Unfortunately the interface is so damn slow to respond that you end up having to look at the watch when navigating or using functions anyway. Also the feel of the buttons is spongey - there's no satisfying click to tell you when the button has been pressed properly. Again, a factor that forces you to look at the screen.

Not recommended: expensive, somewhat ugly, painfully slow UI, and frankly not that awesome in any way other than a relatively impressive battery life (unless you're using GPS!).

UI latency is also a huge related issue.

tactile interfaces will be a future trend.

On the other hand, many MFDs in recent plane cockpits, including military ones, were replaced or at least augmented with touch screens. That's probably not just a fashionable trend, since the avionics and particularily instrument displays are subject to much higher scrutiny than car entertainment systems, and must work and be accessible in much harsher conditions.

That said, I'd love to see some serious research on this topic.

I am learning to fly and know a fair few in aviation, most pilots actually detest touchscreen and much prefer physical controls that are tactile and gives hard-realtime feedback.

If you have payed attention to the controls in a cockpit, you will see that all the switches, knobs, and levers have different sizes, shapes, texture, and tilt. That is not accidental. It helps with muscle memory and when you have to alter many many different parameters in a short span of time, knowing where to look for and getting "instant" and tactile feedback is important, that is hardly possible with touchscreen interfaces as I know them.

I love that the landing gear levers have little tires on the top. It's perfect tactile feedback.

The flap controls have little airfoils on the top.

The cockpit is full of things like that, all learned the hard way. People are very bad at inventing intuitive interfaces.

For example, aviation has standard phrases for things. Like "takeoff power" is maximum power, as that's what you use for takeoff. One day, a pilot was landing and suddenly had to abort. He yelled "takeoff power" to the copilot, who heard "take off power", and chopped power to the engines at the worst possible moment, and they crashed.

The phrase was changed to "full power".

How could a generation of pilots and aviation experts never notice the ambiguity inherent in "takeoff power"? But they didn't, until there was an accident.

An ambiguous use of the phrase "take off" was a key cause of the Tenerife Airport Disaster.

>As a consequence of the accident, sweeping changes were made to international airline regulations and to aircraft. Aviation authorities around the world introduced requirements for standard phrases and a greater emphasis on English as a common working language.[13]

>Air traffic instruction should not be acknowledged solely with a colloquial phrase such as "OK" or even "Roger" (which simply means the last transmission was received[58]), but with a readback of the key parts of the instruction, to show mutual understanding. The phrase "take off" is now spoken only when the actual takeoff clearance is given or when cancelling that same clearance (i.e. "cleared for take-off" or "cancel take-off clearance"). Up until that point, aircrew and controllers should use the phrase "departure" in its place, e.g. "ready for departure". Additionally, an ATC clearance given to an aircraft already lined-up on the runway must be prefixed with the instruction "hold position".[59]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster

https://web.archive.org/web/20170218144312/http://lessonslea...

My source for the anecdote was my father, who was a jet pilot for the Air Force, and spent some duty as an accident investigator. I wouldn't be surprised if the AF and civil aviation both had to learn that lesson the hard way.

While I can easily see particular situations where touchscreens would be useful, I feel it would be extremely annoying to lose the sense of position afforded by physical buttons.

1. I'm a guitarist.

It's super annoying when a string breaks, even if I'm not using it. My fingers can feel even the adjacency of the string (vibrations, I'm guessing), and I lose all sense of orientation on the freatboard if one of the strings is gone, even if I'm not touching that string.

2. While I'm not a pilot, I spent years testing avionics.

Years later, I can still blindly, through muscle memory, replay sequences of commands in my mind, as actuated by mechanical buttons (LSKs) on either side of the display, and rotary encoders to "dial in" new values (e.g. frequencies).

I would usually run through the settings just with my hands, barely looking, and only double-check the settings as the last step, before actually committing to whatever action I was preparing.

I can't imagine doing something similar on a touchscreen without constantly havng to look.

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