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Comment by ajsnigrutin | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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...

> 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.

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

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%.

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.

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