Every single engineer and executive working at Tesla right now needs to grab a copy of The Design of Everyday Things and read it cover to cover before returning to work.
This is why all companies are moving eveything to touchscreens - the cost savings are very real when it comes to building a certain amount of units in certain amount of time. And this is why the company with most manufacturing issues, Tesla, also went all in in making the cockpit as minimal as possible.
Sure there might be other reasons, but as always... follow the money :)
It's just their design goals are not "make the most convenient or practical control we can"
They're "make it cheap to manufacture" "make it easy to manufacture" and "make it perpetuate the vague feeling of futurism we go for"
The giant touch screen is at the intersection of all three. It's truly awful, but people convince themselves "this is the future!". And they say stuff like "I can't imagine going back to anything else" because by comparison the buttons feel dreary and old.
Then to keep up other manufacturers start to follow suite and now even pickup trucks are bragging about having 12 inch touch screens in their advertisements and how the competing truck doesn't ...
Just kidding! But, my assumption is that an engineer isn't the one making design decisions about the touchscreen UI at Tesla.
I'd go so far as to guess that the decision to move every possible control from the dashboard into software might have come from the top of the org chart, or near it. I have no idea if it's true, but it feels like one of those "visionary leader" decisions made by someone with little accountability and a lot of Dunning-Kruger.
Along with a voice operated climate control, you don't need to touch the screen, ever
Second... are you kidding me?!
A driver deciding to look down at their screen to share media while driving would be blamed... on the infotainment, is that a joke?
By that logic you're also allowed to look down at your cupholder and count the crumbs that have accumulated, that's a terrible design and the cupholder should be mounted at your sightlines.
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Normally I'm in the "putting screens in is adding unnecessary temptation" camp, but please.
Personal culpability is still a concept.
MB kept all the stalks that make sense, they kept the steering wheel buttons, they kept physical buttons for stuff specific screens. They did fine for the parameters they're playing with, which is "Tesla has made not sticking a giant touchscreen in your car not seem futuristic".
"Almost" is to say that no, it's not enough. Show me climate controls on the steering wheel.
> Along with a voice operated climate control
No. A very very small minority of people operate anything via voice control. Especially in cars where voice control is universally horrendous.
Same with the console mounted touchpad.
Both of which don't require the level of coordination touching a touchscreen would require.
There's also the fact they're giving people what they wanted, voice control suck but that's how you make it work with a giant touch screen, and people's buying habits and feedback on Teslas have shown it's what they want.
It wasn't until last year Tesla's voice input was even doing natural language-ish stuff. MBUX meets the (low) bar that's been set.
Riiight. And to see where exactly you are on the screen you need... guess what, look at it.
> There's also the fact they're giving people what they wanted, voice control suck but that's how you make it work with a giant touch screen
Yup. You got it all backwards.
- They install a huge touchscreen with horrible controls
- These controls are incredibly bad, and are a hazard when the car is in motion
- Instead of fixing the horrendous UX, they patch it with voice control
- Voice control, by your own admission, sucks
So, no, they are not giving people what the want. People want sane and safe controls inside a car. A huge touchscreen with no physical buttons, tiny controls and touch targets, and a voice control that sucks is not what people want.
> MBUX meets the (low) bar that's been set.
How about raising the bar instead of leaving it on the ground?
If your cognitive functions are a limiting factor, sure?
One of my cars has a touch screen and a knob to control it. It took my about 2 days of owning the car to know how many knob clicks to get to "Change input".
At worst I might glance at it for a second if I overshoot by an item, no different than when we had individual knobs for everything and you might occasionally glance to see how far you turned the knob
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Also, maybe read things twice.
> voice control suck but that's how you make it work with a giant touch screen
Read that again, slowly.
It means that they add a touch screen and make it work by patching in voice. You didn't need to repeat my point for me.
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Your problem is you think this is some sort of debate where I'm backing "Team Big Touchscreen And Voice Controls" and you're going "aha! Gotcha! You don't like voice either!"
No. I don't. But you're wrong, people do want touchscreens and crappy voice controls, and Tesla's cult following is proof.
That garbage interior is hailed as futuristic over it's tablet, and everyone is following them because, despite your illusion that what you want is what everyone wants .. people like the idea of a big shiny touch screen in their car to make it "futuristic", that's why people end ip retrofitting 12 inch screens into their 10 year old Camry now.
MBUX is above the bar that's been set in useability, but they don't set the bar because they don't have the image or mind share to do so. If tomorrow morning Tesla removed the screen and replaces it with AR goggles I promise you that will be the new bar.
> maybe read things twice.
> Read that again, slowly.
Ad hominem attacks, how nice.
> they add a touch screen and make it work by patching in voice.
Exactly. What I said: they made a horrible UX, and then patched it by adding more horrible UX. It's decidedly not what consumers want.
> people do want touchscreens and crappy voice controls,
Nope, people don't want that. But they are left no choice.
> MBUX is above the bar that's been set in useability, but they don't set the bar because they don't have the image or mind share to do so.
Because they are blind following the one-eyed, that's what you're saying. It does cost extra money and extra care to create a workable touch-screen experience that doesn't rely on "but there are tiny buttons on the wheel and voice controls". Volvo can do that (even though their touch screens are far from perfect), why can't Mercedez?
Oh, right, how can one forget, because horrible UX is "what people want because that's the bar". Cry me a river.
Edit. It's actually amazing that they have a 23-minute overview in a static non-moving car [1], and they keep
- doing accidental touches
- inputing wrong commands
- being very-very careful and precise with what they touch on screen because all the touch targets are so small
In a non-moving car. It's amazing, really, in a horrendous kind of way.
You'll understand that the crux of your misunderstanding, which I've clarified twice now is:
> they made a horrible UX, and then patched it by adding more horrible UX. It's decidedly not what consumers want.
It is what they want.
Go and look at which automaker is worth almost 1.5x Toyota's market cap after launching a car that gets you fined for changing your wiper speed since it's all on a touch screen.
Go look at which car people tout as the most futuristic.
Go look at which interior is shown rubbing shoulders with Bentleys in interior design rankings: https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/g22496899/best-new-car...
See which car everyone drools over setting the bar for form and function: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-interior-is-a-...
I mean seriously, you'd have to be blind to not see that automakers are now chasing Tesla because people have convinced themselves, maybe through Musk's charisma or some misguided aspiration that this is the future:
https://robbreport.com/motors/cars/leaked-images-of-the-new-...
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-interior-is-a-...
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I said it very plainly, you seem unable to divorce your personal preferences and views from reality of what people want.
I hate the giant touchscreens but that doesn't mean I'm going to ignore the fact people rant and rave about the interior that started this trend.
It also doesn't mean I'm not going to give credit where due as a manufacturer kowtows to demands, but manages to pull some additional function out of the burning wreckage that is now "what is in, in car UX".
Maybe if you read my comments through that lens instead of acting like this is some kind of high school debate team practice, you'll finally understand why I'm saying you're missing my point (repeatedly).