Behind the wheel of a Tesla Model 3: It’s a giant iPhone – for better and worse
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Physical controls don't move around, so you can find them without having to take your eyes off the road, and they respond exactly the same way every time you use them, so you can interact with them without having to do context-switching in your head. On a touchscreen controls can be there or not be there, or respond to input differently from one moment to another, depending on what mode the touchscreen happens to be in (here's Jef Raskin complaining about this very problem, 25 years ago: https://www.wired.com/1993/06/1-6-guis/).
And then Tesla takes that single touchscreen, which is bad enough all by itself, and moves it to the center of the dash, so now you can't even check your speed without looking down and away from the road. Aircraft designers have known for decades that you can improve pilot performance by presenting important information front and center via a heads-up display (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-up_display). It's like Tesla took all this research and practical experience and set out to design the opposite of what it cries out for: the world's first heads-down display.
And of course every other car manufacturer will rush to copy this terrible design, because (1) Tesla is cool and (2) people loooooove touchscreens. So the more touchscreens the better, right? Jam those touchscreens in everywhere! Soon you won't be able to flush your toilet without swiping through four levels of user interface (and eventually, three auto-playing video ads jammed between those levels). Sigh.
I paid attention to how I drove for a while and realized the most common things I do are just these:
1. Look at a map to navigate
2. Adjust the AC/Heat (temp, speed, vents)
3. Adjust the radio (volume, change station, next track)
4. Check speed
#1 & #2. These first two are worse cognitive load in my Audi. The Audi navigation system and map are atrocious and the maps are horribly cluttered. The voice navigation is awful unless you only ever tell it to "navigate home". All of the AC controls are physical buttons but with digital displays that you have to look down at anyway to see what they are set to.
Navigation in the Model 3 is Google Maps. It is clean and the voice navigation is excellent. I can speak a street address to it and it'll get it. The AC is just as much cognitive load as my Audi (high).
#3 Radio: The model 3 has steering wheel controls for volume and next/previous just like other cars. Same cognitive load unless you go to browse for content and then both are high.
#4 Speedometer. I notice I rarely actually check this. Most people drive by feel. When you have to check it is only momentary and it is just slightly off to the right of your eye line. In other cars I often have to move my hands out of the way to see it. Also every dash in modern cars is loaded with garbage I don't care about. I would guess that 98% of people never look at their tachometer and yet it takes half the dash. Why is my speedometer even a dial? I just want the number in big font and easy to see.
On what do you base that assertion? It's funny also that modern cars IMHO have far less "feel" than older cars.
And it must be nice to live somewhere with no speed cameras! "It felt like 30" while doing 37 is not a valid excuse round these parts :D
Hence, I need to use the speedometer frequently.
I would argue this intuition happens for any activity you do regularly after several years. Like accidentally putting your fingers on the wrong keys in the home row.
It’s also different per car, so I rely on the speedometer more when renting. Older cars definitely feel faster than newer cars, and I think that is mostly due to weight and improved shock absorption. These things throw off your cues.
> every other car manufacturer will rush to copy this terrible design, because (1)[...] (2)[...]
(3) the cost is a tiny fraction of a conventional dash's.
But on the other hand, I haven't kept a phone in my possession for more than 3 or 4 years. And these are wayyy more expensive than phones.
I think there's a real market for "regular" cars powered by electric motors. Just take my truck, rip out the drivetrain and put in electric motors and battery. Same old door handles, same regular window buttons, same regular radio.
I'd drive that thing until the battery catches on fire (er, I mean the wheels fall off).
This guy took an Audi S5 and put a model S powertrain and batteries in it. Even kept the quattro system!