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Comment by semi-extrinsic | Hacker News Reader

For music and navigation, touchscreens are OK, as these are things you don't suddenly need to adjust if something happens. But for instance the defrost function on the AC can be something that you need to immediately control while driving 60 mph, e.g. if you enter a tunnel with moist microclimate (we have one of those nearby, it fogs up your windscreen in ~10sec at some conditions). Such things need to have physical buttons with logical placement.

Volvo is perhaps the ultimate example in good UI for the AC: the buttons are shaped like a human, and you press the part of your body where you want air:

http://www.carkhabri.com/Gallery/volvo/volvo-xc60/interior/l...

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> the AC: the buttons are shaped like a human, and you press the part of your body where you want air

I was driving a friend's newer car down the freeway once, and had to call him to find out how to turn on the godam defroster. There were so many knobs, switches, and dials that influence this, all labelled with icons so I had no idea what they did. Turns out that you had to push two buttons, toggle a toggle, and turn two knobs. Madness.

My car has a selector that you move to "defrost". Then it defrosts, like magic.

I want to speak to the car with my hands on the steering wheel and tell it to defrost the windows like I'm talking to an Alexa device. I can't wait for this day to come...

An automatic co-pilot would be nice indeed. It should also hand me drinks and snacks and keep me awake with conversation.

ATM it's still a co-pilot job to translate navigation system information into actionable directions in foreign cities..

I mean this could the be itch at the base of a startup, right?

Would be really interesting, especially with cars like Tesla that do OTA updates and can improve your "co-pilot" all the time.

Why wouldn't you want it to defrost automatically without a spyware microphone and neural network and a ton of problems with accents and background noise?

I think Volvo's electric car is going to be doing this with some sort of deeper Android Auto integration

> Volvo is perhaps the ultimate example in good UI for the AC: the buttons are shaped like a human, and you press the part of your body where you want air:

It's nice, but it still a major issue: you need to look at it while pressing it to know state.

If, instead, it's three stacked buttons top to bottom, you don't have to do that.

My car (and many older cars) simple has two knobs. One for temperature, one for location. If you entered a tunnel, you just crank the right hand knob all the way over to defrost. Better than buttons.

Oh I agree, not every action is suited to a on/off toggle, that's why there are so many mechanical interfaces.

In a car, the aim should be for logical use without eyes leaving the road much.

I absolutely agree! I just wanted to point out that a knob can be even more intuitive than buttons.

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