Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

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.

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 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 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.).

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.

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.

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 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'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’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.

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

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

Preach.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com