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Comment by hettygreen | Hacker News Reader

I knew this thread would be filled will people that dislike touchscreens. I hate them too and and when we bought our first car, we looked at a used Subaru at the last model-year that kept physical controls. I'm a synthesizer designer, so I'm a bit biased towards knobs.

My dad just bought a new Toyota Civic and I've watched him be completely frustrated and overwhelmed by the touch screen. I've also had to use it a few times while driving it and noticed that my eyes needed to be off the road for way longer than I'm comfortable with (just to turn the volume down!).

Is there ever going to be a movement towards these car companies going back to physical controls for this stuff? Or are we pretty much heading towards a steeringwheel-less wrap around touchscreen dashboard that plays advertisements for nearby businesses.

I'm legitimately curious about the safety of these things, and has any studies been done? It's just strange to have car companies investing billions in self-driving cars claiming "you're too distracted to operate a car yourself" and then making current models where adjusting the A/C requires drilling down thru menus.

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Touchscreens in cars are great... for non-essential stuff. Want to change the backlight color for the instrument cluster? Touchscreen is a lot better for that (given a good gui menu system) than holding two buttons at the same time, then holding one, and clicking the other 6 times, waiting 3 seconds, and then clicking through the colors.

Touchscreen for radio control, AC, answering (bluetooth) phone, and stuff... no, thank you, give me physical controls.

> than holding two buttons at the same time, then holding one, and clicking the other 6 times, waiting 3 seconds, and then clicking through the colors.

Why can’t it be a dedicated dial? If you run out of room, maybe it’s not so important

That's the point of touchscreens I think.

Being able to offer users a myriad of config options without the need for tons of knobs.

Not saying I like it, but a lot of people seem to.

I guess the ideal setup would be knobs for essential stuff like volume, AC, etc, and then a touchscreen for the rest of the stuff.

You want a dial to “change the backlight color for the instrument cluster”??

It could go right next to the dial that changes the instrument panel's backlight brightness

You might be joking now, but:

https://www.ebay.com/p/20004588697

I drove a 40+ year old car for a while and it had one of these. Great feature, except that in old cars they always need to be at max these days due to all the street lights, etc.

Now it's been replaced with headlight moving knob in newer cars, which is more awesome.

My panel brightness knob is also the button that resets the trip meter.

No, I think it’s a silly feature. But if someone decides it must be there, then I want it to be a physical thing, such as a dial

Or just have six dedicated buttons for “everything else”:

  BACK |       UP        | ENTER
   /   | LEFT ---- RIGHT |   /
  EXIT |      DOWN       | MENU

Mazda did better: https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur...

The central Commander can be tilted up/down/left/right and pushed. Also if my memory is not cheating, it has a capacitive touch surface.

Mazda and BMW have had something like this in some of their cars for years now. It's been a pleasant experience in the few cars I've used that had that kind of setup.

Here's how that works in a VW for calling back the last person who called you: right-right-right-ok-down-ok-down-down-ok-down-ok-ok. Not exactly what I'd call "pleasant experience". And you must look at the screen for the procedure, luckily they have a small screen for this in the middle of the instruments.

The Mini has a dedicated button to switch instrument panel colours. Or at least, older models did.

> Want to change the backlight color for the instrument cluster? Touchscreen is a lot better for that (given a good gui menu system) than holding two buttons at the same time, then holding one, and clicking the other 6 times, waiting 3 seconds, and then clicking through the colors.

Is that actually on a car that you've used? What a horrible design. A few Ford models have a dedicated button for ambient lighting that cycles through the colors, and a knob beside it to adjust the brightness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2TiKCEzQIA

Do we really need to be able to set the RGB value of the interior lighting? This seems so ridiculous.

Cars have always had ambient lighting. I don't see why adjusting the color is ridiculous, especially considering work trucks like the F-250 have options like heated/cooled massaging seats and heated steering wheels. If you want to talk about questionable options, check out Bentley's Falconry "kit" for the Bentayga.

https://www.bentleymotors.com/content/brandmaster/master/ben...

Yeah, just look at the average office phone, e.g. [1]. Almost nobody knows what all those buttons do, and when you can press them. Just give me a touchscreen like I have on my smartphone!

Same for printer menus. To get the IP address of your printer, you have to wade through 1-line menus and print a physical page, seriously?

[1] https://cdn-web.vtp-media.com/products/CM/CM18445/CM18445_VT...

All of those buttons in the image you linked are labeled. What do you find confusing about it, and how would a touch screen make it any less confusing if you don't know what the labels mean to begin with?

The labels are mostly just one word, so not very helpful. That conference button, what does it do? Will it ask me to type in the phone numbers of to-be-invited participants?

Also the buttons are not context sensitive. Ideally they should disappear when you can't press them. I want a basic interface with clear options, and unfolding menus whenever I want to do something more advanced like making a conference call.

Well nowadays tough screen controls have no affordances, it's not even clear what areas can be pressed, much less what actions it will engage.

>The labels are mostly just one word, so not very helpful. That conference button, what does it do? Will it ask me to type in the phone numbers of to-be-invited participants?

How would a touch screen change that?

>Also the buttons are not context sensitive. Ideally they should disappear when you can't press them.

Ok, so you enter a menu and now you have a "conference" button displayed, but you still have no idea what it does. I think touch screens are useful for actions that require a lot of interaction like entering navigation, but removing physical controls for basic inputs like volume knob or HVAC controls is an obnoxious anti-pattern, especially Tesla moving the wiper controls to a menu. Dirty windshields and worn out wipers are enough to make auto-sensing wipers act inconsistently. Removing the physical controls from them is a stupid fashion choice, much like Jony Ive screwing up the MacBook pro over the last decade in the name of design.

controlling climate via physical is a very bad idea. You only need manual a lot when a climate control implementation is bad. The ultimate goal, is car knows how to keep you in comfort. In electric car heat or cooling is instant( you don't need an engine to warm up). You have a touchscreen controls for the flow settings, that allows you to have preferences, to the point when system can detect your position. I love tesla's climate control. It is ALWAYS in automatic mode by default. It knows I like 71 f, when i'm in the car, it first start with very strong fan on, trying to pick up temp as fast as possible, after that slows down, to reduce the noise, and just keep the comfort temp. I never ever touch it. at all. My girlfriend has a different preferences that changed automatically whenever she activate her profile. Whenever I go to a second car and activate my profile there, it also knows what I like, where to blow, and how strong to blow. Why on earth anyone want to downgrade to manual knobs? In the rare occasions you can tell car, I'm hot, or I'm cold.

Changing profile is a separate story. It changes mirrors , sound preferences, temperature, seat position. I'm doing it that with two touches on the screen. Now imagine you're doing all that manually with old dumb knobs and buttons? Imagine you're doing that every day?

Your kids will be laughing how stupid cars were in 2020's while having all the computers and possibilities to make your car really comfortable.

Changing profile is a separate story.

Separate keys, one for each driver. The profile is chosen by which key is used.

keys are from the past. But if you replace it with lets say your phone, yeah, great, that's where a modern car shines. Your phone key knows who you are , sets a correct profile. You still need a modern car with decent settings that supports deep customization for your profile. Subject of article , BMW, is not great with touch screen or without. Their approach to UX is super archaic

> keys are from the past.

As a surfer, this is problematic.

I think this problematic deprecation of essential functionality comes from forgetting the second half of one of the classic 80/20 rules -- 80% of users use only 20% of features, but all of them use a different 20%.

You can have a UI and menu system with physical controls, too.

It is more difficult because then the state can’t be stored in the position of the physical controls. A switch can’t be on or off, a dial can’t be coldest to hottest air, and so the visual indication of the state of the control from the switch or knob is lost.

Touchscreens in cars suck

> Is there ever going to be a movement towards these car companies going back to physical controls for this stuff?

Mazda and Honda already are: https://www.motorbiscuit.com/honda-and-mazda-ditch-touchscre...

I think Mazda makes cars that have a screen whose controls are physical.

Yes. I had a last gen (2014 Mazda 3) and traded it in for a current gen (2021 Mazda 3) earlier this year. On last gen models they do have touch screen, but the touch part is auto disabled when the speed is above a low threshold (5 or 10 mph). In the current gen they just removed touch part completely.

With the last gen I only barely used the touch function in the pre-Android-Auto days, to help put the address to its builtin navigation system faster. Later they provided the optional upgrade of Android Auto (for $500) and I don't think I ever used the touch feature after the upgrade. In the current gen Android Auto is standard configuration and I never missed touching.

Besides the removal of touching, they also have some other small but useful improvements on the screen on the current gen that I really appreciate:

1. They made the screen wider in the current gen, so with Android Auto you can have 2 apps displaying at the same time, usually maps and music, with one horizontal and one vertical.

2. They made the screen slightly slanted towards the driver in the current gen.

Another thing I think most people don't realize is that the design around non-touch screen could mean that the screen can be placed to a better position. When the screen is touchable, it has to be within arms reach, which usually means it has to been lower, and the driver has to look down when they need some info from the screen. The current gen Mazda move it upper, so the driver only need to roll their eyes slightly to see it.

Another 2021 Mazda 3 owner - I hadn't even realized you last point about screen position, but now that you've mentioned it, it's obvious. And frankly, fantastic. The physical-only controls are the entire reason we went with a Mazda, and remembering my 2016 Civic, watching Hagerty's review of the 8th gen Golf, and reading through this is just vindicating that choice.

I'd recommend a Mazda, on this basis alone, to anyone that asks - and ridicule other brands when it comes up (with someone that hasn't just dropped thousands on a new car).

Yes, they had touchscreens for a while but started disabling/removing them from new cars (pre-COVID) for safety reasons. I believe their 2021 cars have all switched to physical controls plus one of those puck things.

IMO it's about UX than touchscreen vs physical controls.

I bought a new Toyota tacoma and it has the worst UX I've seen in a vehicle. The touchscreen UI is bad, the physical button layout is terrible also. It took me a good 5 minutes to figure out how to turn off the truck bed light. The steering wheel button placement is also horrible.

Even the push to start button has like 3 different modes (which I don't fully understand). A number of pushes for accessories only, accessories + power windows, ignition.

I think it's arguably both. Bad UX means that it's difficult to learn how to do things and can make it easy to press the wrong button even once you are used to it.

However, having driven my share of cars that are exclusively touch screen, even when you know where something is (capacitative volume buttons, touchscreen climate change controls), it takes too long to find and adjust the settings compared to having physical knobs that you can easily reach over and adjust without taking your eyes off the road.

> My dad just bought a new Toyota Civic and ...

Honda makes the Civic, not Toyota.

Don't know about all of their models, but my Rav4 Prime has plenty of knobs and buttons. I think I only really use the touchscreen for changing Apple Car apps and switching Spotify playlists.

Nitpicking is fun

Subarus still have physical controls, so I'm confused by your first sentence. They also include a touch-screen infotainment system, but it doesn't really replace any physical controls (except maybe favorite radio station buttons?)

Your experience with the Honda Civic is largely because of poor UX. You can make thoughtful touchscreen designs and combine them with physical buttons for a great user experience.

Pinching to zoom and using your finger to drag a map around to get sense of the terrain in an unknown area is fantastic. Using a touchscreen to reduce volume is stupid. Etc. Etc.

I specifically avoided Honda/Toyota/Mazda because I didn't like the UX of their touch screens.

People seem okay to Tesla's implementations as well because they also have a very responsive system.

Don't forget that you can have crappy UX with physical controls as well.

IMO only Tesla got this right. I absolutely love the touch screen. Though I wouldn't mind some physically buttons for a few essentials like A/C

Existing research on change blindness would be a good starting point.

http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/#CB

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_blindness

"I'm a synthesizer designer, so I'm a bit biased towards knobs."

Plenty of those still on the roads.

Out of curiosity which Subaru were you looking at? I got a 2020 Forester with a touch screen but 100% of non-home-theatre and 75% of home theatre controls had physical interfaces. I was really quite happy with the balance.

I want to see the marketing studies where marketers provide evidence that touchscreens actually reduce costs and/or increase sales.

As a former mechanic, and some who has only once brought a car to a dealership for repair; my concern is Reparibility.

My father bought his last new truck in 1998.

The salesman ask my father about power windows, and other accessories. My father was a Shade Tree mechanic his whole life. He just looked a me, and said, "I hope I never see the day I can't roll down a window, and those motors are just another thing to fix."

I was comfortable with the computer controlling the truck. I knew they had federal standards, and requirements. I also remember an instructor telling us, you will see a lot of mechanics replace the computer. It's not the computer. The failures rate of a vechicle's computer is extremely low. What happens is the mechanics damages the computer by checking it's ohms with the wrong DVOM, or short it out by accident.

My point is about simplicity, and the availability of parts.

I believe the only computers that the federal government demands high standards for are the main computer that you plug your scan tool into, and in many vechicles the sewerage power train computer.

All those dash computers don't have the same quality demands from the government?

I just don't want to see the day where only wealthy people buy vechicles because of maintenance/repair costs.

It should be obvious any romantic notions of things like helping the environment or saving lives are just costumes for the reality of most modern business motivations: making money.

I don't think these cynical comments add anything to the conversation.

The reality is that even if the knobs and the touchscreen were identical in cost, the touch screen allows for a separation between the software and hardware design teams.

It's quicker to update, enhance, patch, redesign, etc. It's just better from a manufacturing perspective, and aside from the tactile loss, allows more options and more data presentation for the consumer in a much smaller space.

I am also a cynical, if admitting market forces is cynical. :)

The only 75% cynical part of me thought that the move to touchscreens, removing ports, etc improved device lifetime and also lowered the unit cost of things like AppleCare.

The less moving parts the less chance of failure, right?

> The less moving parts the less chance of failure, right?

Of failure by impact and vibration, perhaps. But that's pretty much a solved problem in car dials and buttons - we have decades ols cars with fully functional dashboards and controls.

Otherwise, risk of failure is driven up by complexity, in which case a computer, with all its components, plus an operating system, drivers, etc, and apps on top of it add many layers of complexity in comparison with buttons and dials.

an electric motor, wiring harness and software to control vent direction versus a couple of injection molded pieces of plastic... which is less likely to fail and which is easier to repair/replace?

Software is a moving part - usually a lot of moving parts.

>the touch screen allows for a separation between the software and hardware design teams

it allows for the illusion that there is a separation, which isn't the case because when you're controlling a physical system through a digital interface both are inherently connected.

What it likely allows for is significantly more bad design, because both teams have no idea what the other one is doing or how changes in one system affect the other.

It's like arguing that separating the head from the body allows for better medical treatment because you can ship one to the psychologist and the other to physiotherapy when in reality you end up in the morgue (a fate you might be sharing with the touchpad distracted driver who was staring at data presentations while driving into the busy intersection)

Also it allows nonsense where clearly things are done because they can be, not because anyone in the world thought this was actually a good idea. Look at the latest Porsche Panamera, where the middle vent is directed by using a control on the touchscreen.....directly below it. So you replaced a simple and intuitive dimple on the vent that allows you to easily direct the vent without looking, to something that's hidden under a submenu, that you need to look at to use, and that takes several seconds to adjust because there's now a motor controling the vent orientation.

Like, I honestly cannot imagine anyone at Porsche actually thinks this is a good idea - it exists purely because a team somewhere had to fill a quota for "features" they are responsible for.

ha-ha, they just blindly copy it from tesla, without copy profiles and other features. In all new tesla's including expensive ones' you don't have manual regulation. You do everything with one gesture, saving so many manual frictions. Once you set it up it remember your profile, so you don't need to change it every time your family member decide to use your car e.g. every day or more often.

I mean, I get the idea with profiles, sure, but I just don't understand how that's removing friction in day to day situations? You jump in your car after going to the gym, you want cold air blasting in your face - having to mess with the on-screen controls to change that temporarily is a huge amount of friction in user interaction, especially compared to the previous UI which was literally "grab a little handle, point the vent at your face, done".

Jump in the car, and say "I'm hot" while getting out of parking. Climate control blast the air to optimal temp regardless during first minutes. You adjust it with few taps to you and your passenger. You can even use in some cases camera in the car to point the air to your face. And yeah, swipes gesture also work on the screen, so you can adjust temp without looking at screen, even thought voice is much intuitive.

I was a rear passenger in a model 3 on a hot day and the amount of fiddling the owner had to perform to actually get some cool air flow in the back was ludicrous. In my 2013 car with 20th century knobs and dials I could have done it myself in 2 seconds.

You probably confused it with some other car, back seat on model y and 3 equipped with analog handles. Same as your 20th century car.

I mean, I haven't been in the back seat of a Model 3 personally, but literally every car I have ever had, analog handles or not, you had to do something to make the air flow to the back. Even if you have vents in the back, the air doesn't go there by default. This was usually a button on the dash - so I'm not surprised if even in a Model 3 you have to select an option on the screen to make the air re-route to the back. This is not a critique btw, just a possible observation.

There are also completely unusable by visually impaired people who need a completely different interface. I'm so sick of getting touchscreens shoved down my throat by pollyanna-ish types.

(I am not currently visually impaired but have experienced several weeks of temporary blindness...it's a completely terrifying experience. Suddenly computers were almost wholely useless to me.)

Since we're talking about driver's dashboard here it's a very marginal case.

At what level of visual impairment is one able to still drive safely? I’m not sure touch screens would be the biggest problem in that situation.

Far sighted people can still drive safely, but might need glasses(or a different kind of glasses) to operate screens in a car. Where previously you could adjust things by touch and intuition, well, now you can't.

I assume parent comment was complaining on physical buttons getting removed from many home electronics and a company removed keys from a keyboard and replaced with a touchbar thingy - though from what I read they had the courage to admit the users did not like it but nobody seems to think "let's do a real world user UX test before we do major changes because some vision person thinks this touch shit looks futuristic".

Yep, no more headaches if you have no head. Roll safe.

Ultimately no one really uses these touchscreens cause they are ux nonsense. All this work done on redesigns (crap, where is that thing again?) goes straight to the trash, bypassing any criticism.

more data presentation for the consumer

Never heard it as an argument for buying a car. “Why did you choose BMW? Oh, you know that data presentation thing and more on-screen options!” I can’t help but burst out laughing imagining this conversation.

The only reason this happens is that it is a small thing embedded into a big one, and one doesn’t simply turn the big thing down because of a (relatively) minor nuisance. When android or iphone design team break your workflow again, you sigh but don’t throw it away, because it’s still android or iphone and there are no alternatives. These touchscreen teams get ZERO negative feedback except some whining on tech forums.

I rode in a Tesla for the first time yesterday and apparently drivers are putting up with with a constantly flickering, incredibly glitchy rendering of the car’s knowledge of surrounding objects being juggled around like hot potatoes on the huge display panel. Would you prop up a full size iPad Pro on your dashboard as you drive, playing a YouTube highlight reel of Russian dash cam near-misses? No? Then why would you simulate that experience with these grey ghost cars, of which, in the 20 nauseating minutes I watched them, every single one appeared to be an imminent collision, poking into our lane?

I hope Tesla is internally in shambles leadership-wise, because I would hate to be the person that gave the green light to shipping that and not be able to blame it on endemic dysfunction. What a farce.

That sounds terrible. And the worst part of it is today you can’t rip it out and insert a good aftermarket part anymore.

Hilarious!

I've never been in one (and don't intend to), but that precisely describes what I imagine being in a Tesla to be like from watching videos of it.

The funniest one I've seen was the one where they were following a truck full of stop signs, and it appeared on the screen like a bubble machine endlessly creating stop signs.

These things are funny to watch but terrifying to me that something this half-baked could be released into the public.

There's also the recent one where it was going to drive the car directly into a pole until the driver grabbed the wheel at the last moment.

It's definitely a hard problem, but I believe that Tesla's hubris will NOT be rewarded.

<<It's quicker to update, enhance, patch, redesign, etc. It's just better from a manufacturing perspective, and aside from the tactile loss, allows more options and more data presentation for the consumer in a much smaller space.

So this is my beef with this approach to today's manufacturing. It is never complete and relies on future updates. The final product is never fully delivered.

It started with games, but the demographics skew young and those are not exactly savvy consumers. I lost it when Tesla was allowed to bring this model into cars. Constant updates including ones that affect how the battery you bough operates. Even if you buy the same model, it is not a given that the car will behave the same way ( as more recently evidenced by Model Y and "Phantom Breaking").

And this is the part it don't get. Buying cars is not exactly a cheap affair. It can't be just the case of 'fool and his money', because the trend is being adopted by other manufacturers to an extent so there must be research suggesting people will buy it and anecdotally in my MBA class students were earnestly pitching IoT devices with subscription models for cars along the lines of 'this is about to break'.

I just want something that works. It is a car. It is not a website. It is supposed to a job. You don't need to redesign UI every few weeks just to feel relevant.

GDI, now I really feel old.

"move fast, break things" gets an entire new (dark) dimension in car manufacturing.

>The reality is that even if the knobs and the touchscreen were identical in cost, the touch screen allows for a separation between the software and hardware design teams.

A touch screen is not required for that separation. Physical controls can also be interfaced to hardware in the same fashion. A knob control can be a "soft" knob, where it only reports the direction of rotation (or the current knob position, and the software determines the delta).

Sure, but now it doesn’t have a label, or help text, or anything else you could implement with a touchscreen.

Single-function knobs should be mandatory for anything you might need to reach for while you’re driving, but seriously - what’s with the physical control fetish?

Of course knob cost more than a touchscreen. They are more expensive to produce, since you have more parts, more wiring, more steps to assemble it. Like it's more expensive to produce "analog" electronics than putting a microcontroller and do things in software.

The question is, what is better? To me touch interfaces in cars are very bad from a safety standpoint: they are impossible to use without looking at them, thus not looking at the road. Physical buttons are more practical, since you can just feel them, I don't need to look at my AC controls to change temperature, I just have to rotate som knobs or push some buttons that I know where they are located. Same thing with radio controls, I know where the buttons are and I can perfectly operate them without looking at the radio itself.

Beside that, but it's my opinion, touchscreen are more ugly to see, all modern car seems to have a big tablet, that not only is ugly but it reduces the field of view of the driver, or of the passengers. When I'm on a car trip I want to view outside the panorama, not an ugly 10" display to show me the radio station that I'm tuned to as it did the old 20 character display of my old radio.

I love the dashboards of older cars, with knobs, switches, dials, colored LEDs, an 8 segment displays. Now every car seems identical to another.

If we talk about more data presentation, yes more useless data presentation for sure. Useless information distracts you from driving, and thus makes car less safe. If you want then to extract whatever other data from the car... a cheap ODB-II interface that connects via bluetooh to your car is all you need. Of course to be used only when you are not driving.

Of course. But there's also rare examples of companies going above and beyond for no immediate gain.

https://danluu.com/car-safety/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23689538

Volvo in the short term could not advertise their cars any better than their competition, who was passing the same tests.

However in the long term (and we're talking decades here) them going above and beyond what was mandated earned them a reputation for safety.

HN leans contrarian and older. Car buyers below 31 prefer touch screens. [1]

[1] https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/best-cars-blog/2012/01/y...

Prefer, perhaps, but do they increase incidence of distracted driving? That's really the only metric that matters.

makes sense

> Drivers ages 16-17 continue to have the highest rates of crash involvement, injuries to themselves and others and deaths of others in crashes in which they are involved. Drivers age 80 and older have the highest rates of driver deaths. Drivers ages 60-69 were the safest drivers by most measures examined.

edit: tangentially, physical controls of newer BMW are badly placed as well.

That group has always had the highest rate of crash involvement, even before touchscreens in cars were a thing.

that's the point.

the preferences of people with little or no experience shouldn't drive safety considerations.

why? that still makes no sense.

putting touch screens in cars to appeal younger generations is a legit market proposition, but forcing them on people who are familiar with other types of car controls and have been driving for decades should be considered putting them at risk.

younger people prefer touch screens?

make them optional and let the customers chose if they want them or not.

Ah, but how can you sell ad-space that way?

You think 16 year olds are buying a car for the touchscreen?

original post showed that they prefer them, not me.

[2012]

Generation Y buyers are also interested in cars packed with technology, including smartphone integration and touch-screen interfaces, according to the Los Angeles Times. With systems like MyFord Touch and the Tesla Model S’ iPad-like touch-screen center stack, automakers have already started to address this in the market, but most reviewers say there’s lots of room for improvement. In particular, Ford’s MyFord Touch system has been panned for its labyrinthine setup, hard-to-use controls and buggy software.

Let me translate it from journal-ish. They said they’d like fuel data and music in their smartphones because in-car touchscreen ui is utter bullshit.

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