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Comment by PaulWaldman | Hacker News Reader

>Mazda is apparently taking the right approach here -- increasing the tactile buttons on the dash and console, and ditching touchscreens.

Huh? After using both Ford's (2022 Explorer) and Mazda's (2022 CX-7) infotainment systems recently for several weeks, I couldn't disagree more.

Android Auto and CarPlay interfaces were designed for touchscreen control. Mazda forcing the use of a wheel, like a joystick is a safety hazard. Turing the wheel unpredictably selects objects on the screen, forcing you to keep your eyes off the road while you keep turning the wheel until the item you need is selected. In Ford's system, a quick glace us all that's required.

What good is tactile feedback when you have no idea what you're adjusting without staring at the screen?

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> Android Auto and CarPlay interfaces were designed for touchscreen control. Mazda forcing the use of a wheel, like a joystick is a safety hazard.

What? How is it a safety hazard? I'm far more distracted trying to touch the button on display or scroll in my Wrangler, than using a wheel in my Miata. Selection is extremely predictable and always the same order, it's a basic accessibility feature of android.

I enjoy using the knob with android auto far more than touch screen, specifically because I don't have to move eyes of the road or have a hand in an uncomfortable position trying to touch something on the screen.

Plus, switching between navigation and media is a press of a button that is always in the same space - next to the knob. Compared to touchscreen... And on top of everything, it remembers which navigation/media I'm using, so switching between radio and android auto navigation is a single button press.

It's like one of the important features why my last two cars were mazdas.

Mazda provides physical buttons for 90% of the controls you need on a daily basis but there's no realistic way to use apple carplay without looking at a screen. Were you expecting mazda to have a "Search for a song" dedicated button on the steering wheel?

In my view Mazda's modern interface is almost as safe as you can get while still having modern features that require a touchscreen. I only wish there was a button to physically turn the entire screen off when driving at night (you can do this but it's buried in a menu).

In my 2020 CX5, the screen is actually a touchscreen as well, but it only works at low speeds which may be safer but is not very convenient when a passenger wants to control it at speed.

There’s a way to put it into developer mode and unlock it, but I haven’t bothered since I like the wheel better.

When will amazon put an echo branded voice prompt car control in? Or whoever.

If it works well it seems like a great solution. Talking on the phone is distracting, but feels less so than trying to find touchscreen areas.

Both Apple Carplay and Android Auto support voice controls via their respective assistants. And most cars come with native voice control these days as well.

I've tried the one on my dad's car but it's pretty crap.

You can press the speak button on the steering wheel and say “turn screen off” and it will turn off on the Mazda 2 door hatch. Might have changed for latest version, I would google it to find the magic phrase incantation.

> What good is tactile feedback when you have no idea what you're adjusting without staring at the screen?

This is what people don't understand about touchscreen vs dial-based UIs. One is not safer than the other if they both require you to take your eyes off the road and look at a screen!

If car makers want to have a button control a feature, then they should simply make a button that controls that feature. Cars worked that way for many years. Buttons, dials, or trackpads that move a cursor or select items on a screen are slower than touch-based UIs, require at least as much driver attention, and are less ergonomic than just putting your finger on the exact item you want.

I can operate basically anything by touch in the car other than the touchscreen.

This is what people don't seem to get...with a set of physical buttons, you can find what you're looking for just by feel, glance down briefly when it's safe to do so to make sure it's the button you want, then press it.

With a touchscreen, in contrast, you have to hover over approximately the location you think you want to press, and either hope you don't hit a bump before you have a chance to look down and make sure it's the right spot or look down immediately.

I put a touchscreen head unit in my car in 2016. If I drove more often I'd dump the touchscreen in a heartbeat.

The idea with the touchscreen controls is that the driver shouldn't really be using the touchscreen at all while driving except as a quick reference to the map.

You're not supposed to be using the screen to adjust your media while driving, there's steering wheel and voice controls.

You're not supposed to be adjusting the climate controls while moving, auto climate should just handle it. Why would I want to be distracted by needing to change the climate controls? I shouldn't have to adjust them while the vehicle is in motion.

I doubt that was actually the intention, and even if it was, we all know that's not how people actually use their cars.

Yeah, they drive while holding their phones on speakerphone while talking into it like they're about to take a bite out of a sandwich.

Other than volume and next track/station, just about any other media control is going to have my hand off the wheel for a bit and probably require me to look at what its doing even if its all just a bunch of buttons and knobs. Like what, change which folder I'm in? Change to a different playlist? Choose a different app entirely? None of that is going to be done by just feeling around the dashboard.

And as mentioned, I'd probably return any car that I have to adjust the climate more than once a quarter. Every car I've owned for over 20 years has been able to keep its climate consistent and comfortable without the need for me to make adjustments for months on end. Why would I want to be distracted making minute adjustments to the climate settings while I drive? Why would I want to have to change the mode or turn it to more heat or more cool or turn the AC compressor on or off while I drive? Shouldn't it just be able to figure out if the car is cold turn up the heat and if the car is hot turn on the AC compressor? Wouldn't it know the optimal way to cool itself? Shouldn't it be able to figure out the best fan speed to keep the climate as programmed ahead of time?

Honestly, why should I even have to tell my car to turn on the heated seats? I don't need to on one of my cars, it turns it on automatically when its cold outside.

> Every car I've owned for over 20 years has been able to keep its climate consistent and comfortable without the need for me to make adjustments for months on end

This doesn’t work when sometimes the sun is shining and sometimes it isn’t.

I think this is a very valid point. The car cannot detect that you are receiving sun rays through the windows. Making you feel much hotter than the ambiant air.

Sometimes you need to adjust the vent to blow in your face more directly, or set the climate control to cool the air further to offset the inconvenience.

> The car cannot detect that you are receiving sun rays through the windows.

I wouldn't get a car that doesn't have some kind of low emissivity tinting on it. Also, all my cars with screens could detect how intense the sun is overall. It can easily adjust.

It could detect it quite easily but this is the industry that thought they were doing you a favor putting a CD player in. There are so many awesome things cars could do but they don’t.

Not sure why downvoted.

For me, this is exactly why I do have to change the "climate control" target.

Last Sunday I spent 9 hours driving through on/off rain and sunshine.

The sun shining in adds significant radiative heat directly to my body. Climate control can keep the air temp constant(convection) but there is more to my personal comfort.

At least with Mazda, yes, the intention was to make driving safer. And just because some people make poor choices, doesn't mean manufactures should encourage poor choices.

If you’re distracted by adjusting the temperature you shouldn’t be driving at all.

as soon as you're taking your eyes off the road or your hands off the wheel to look at or touch anything else you are distracted by definition, half a second is the difference between breaking fast enough to not kill someone in an accident.

The only people who shouldn't be driving are the people not aware of that fact.

Which people obviously do all the time to glance at their nav system just as in past times they'd have done to look at a map or written directions.

You’re supposed to look in your rear view mirror far more frequently than you would glance at your climate controls.

Taking my hand off the wheel and thinking about making the climate change changes my attention and focus, even if only slightly. It's better to not even have to think about it at all.

As the other commenter said, people who don't even notice when their attention changes probably shouldn't be driving.

That is a false binary. Drivers are inundated with distraction at every moment, from the rapidly changing world around them to idle thoughts arising inside their minds. A competent driver is situationally aware and chooses an appropriate moment to be intentionally distracted with a glance away to adjust the climate or radio.

The job of technology is to be extremely predictable and, ideally, multi-sensory.

> You're not supposed to be adjusting the climate controls while moving, auto climate should just handle it. Why would I want to be distracted by needing to change the climate controls? I shouldn't have to adjust them while the vehicle is in motion.

That auto climate thing does not work well for me. I end up messing with it so much because it can't keep me comfortable. The old style where I set it at some level between hot and cold and some fan level from 1 to 5 or whatever and it just does what I tell it works perfectly. Plus I can adjust it if I have to without looking at it.

Honestly, the broader problem that isn't directly car-related is that voice control doesn't generally work as an alternative to punching buttons (whether virtual or physical) and looking at a screen. You can reasonably do some fairly standard tasks using CarPlay such as answering the phone.

But you mostly have to have pre-setup entertainment options, for example. Not that this is really a new thing. People fiddled with radio stations while driving more than they probably should have back in the day.

And, yes, I do need to adjust climate controls now and then while driving although my vehicle does have fairly reasonable physical controls for that so it's not appreciably distracting.

Navigation systems themselves are something of a distraction although I'd guess that overall less so than glancing down at a map or directions on your lap.

> Buttons, dials, or trackpads that move a cursor or select items on a screen are slower than touch-based UIs, require at least as much driver attention, and are less ergonomic than just putting your finger on the exact item you want

Mercedes does this really well. I was surprised.

You can use the screen as a touchscreen, or there's a dial thingy on the armrest that lets you scroll around the UI by flicking your fingers. Similar to keyboard navigation on computers.

The end result is a touchscreen you can use effectively when stationary and an easy-to-use control for when you're moving and need to deal with your arm moving relative to the car. And the sequence of UI selections are intuitive enough that after 20min you can do it almost without looking.

My understanding is they've been working on this combo for 10+ years. Newer models (since ~2018) have a full on touchpad instead of the wheel.

https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/tech/mercedes-mbux-in...

Unfortunately they got rid of all that in new models - e.g. the EQE has no more controller dial and all the buttons are now the cheap horrible capacitive buttons :/

Mazda still provides a lot of those buttons that other manufacturers don't - for things like HVAC/Music - let alone basic features like windshield wipers and gear shift which should never have gone behind a touchscreen IMHO (cough Tesla cough)

I recently got a Mazda CX-5. Previous car was a Ford Escape. I much prefer Mazda’s approach. The touchscreen on the Ford was a pain to use after several years. I think the screen’s touch sensitivity degrades over time. I don’t know. It was especially bad in winter. I haven’t owned the Mazda long enough to know if the joystick will degrade much over time but I find the interface easy to use and navigate. It does sometimes take a while to acknowledge a click. That’s annoying but overall I really like Mazda’s approach.

Wow, that sounds intensely bad!

I haven't actually driven a Mazda, I just heard that they were getting rid of touchscreens and it honestly didn't occur to me that they'd try to shoehorn full Android Auto or CarPlay into that. I just assumed that they would have a minimal interface and let your phone do the work, and then have "next track" and "previous track" buttons and a volume knob, plus climate control and stuff, and the screen would just have various car information; tire pressure and fuel efficiency and various camera systems for parking.

It might still work for me (I'm definitely going to test drive a Mazda when my current car needs replacing), but this is me; I disable CarPlay because I can't stand it; I prefer to just put my phone on a mount and use it directly; I just need the car systems as a speaker for the phone.

I own a Mazda and using Android Auto with physical controls works just fine, no idea what the OP is talking about. All the main driving features are accessible by buttons and don't need eyes off the road.

It's a massive difference in compasion to some brands that require you to use touchscreen to switch to next track or adjust AC temp.

Which cars have touchscreens and don't have steering wheel media controls?

Renault Zoe was the last one I've drove with that annoying issue (at least the model I had).

There was also a BMW Series 1, that requred selecting a media page in dashboard screen and then selecting a next track button. (No support for Auto on that one tho.)

Interesting. It seems like almost all cars sold in the US these days have steering wheel media controls, even cheaper base models. It feels like you'd have to go out of your way to find one that doesn't have it.

Volvo and Ford Edge use touchscreens to adjust AC and there is no steering wheel control for it.

Changing the AC, even with physical controls, is a distraction from driving. I don't get why anyone drives without it being on auto climate as you're inviting more distractions. If its on auto climate why are you making adjustments while you drive?

Maybe because its burning hot out and people need high AC to cool down. Or the opposite in cold weather. Or to defrost windshield/rear window.

Climate control is a great feature. But it's not perfect, and there are instances where you need to manually override. Just because you don't run into them doesn't mean they don't exist.

EDIT: BTW on cars with physical controls all of these things are either button press or dial turn away. I've never had to look at the controls to do these things.

So here's an example. It's over 100F outside, my car is probably 115F inside it at the moment.

Setting my car to 70F inside instead of it's current 72F won't make it cool any faster. Even setting it to it's "LO" setting won't make it cool any faster. The AC compressor is either on or off. The car will set the fan speed to it's best possible speed to cool the car as fast as it can regardless of it being 72 or 70 or 68. Me adjusting things manually won't make the compressor work harder or make the car cool faster.

There's zero benefit for me to touch the AC controls. The car knows it's hot. The car knows how I want it. It will do what it can to get it to that target temp. Me doing anything will just result in more distraction away from actually driving the car.

Wouldn't it engage a heavier fan speed if there was a smaller disparity in temperature? For example if it's 75 in the car and I'd like it to be 72 turning the AC down to 70 would engage a heavier fan speed with the downside of increased noise, so practically I would cool down quicker by setting it to 70 and could then adjust back up to 72.

But more practically, if I start catching a lot of sun from the window I might want to go from 72 to 70 to compensate, even if the cabin temperature is more or less the same.

The car knows how intense the sun is. It has sensors to measure that. Coupled with some decent low emissive tint it's really not hard for it to handle such an idea.

I live in Texas. I assure you I live in an area with high heat and intense sun. My cars have glass roofs. My cars seem to handle it fine.

Perhaps it depends on complexity of the system? I like in Florida and have to do some tuning occasionally, but I think it just has a typical in cabin and ambient sensor and isn't aware of how much sunlight there is.

If it has a screen it probably knows how bright it is as it can probably change between night and day modes. If it can tell it's bright, it can guess you're getting more radiant heating. It's been like that on every car with a screen built in that I've owned, more than a decade of model years.

Alternately, I don't care about he speed of change.

That blazing sun shining on you via radiation directly feels different than if the sky is overcast.

I want to easily tweak the temp to account for my personal comfort. I don't care about the temp of the air except as an input to helping me be comfortable.

I don't want to have to start and then sit in my car idling to wait until it gets to temp only to find out I want a little more or less.

I don't experience much difference. Low emissivity tinting does wonders to make you more comfortable. I even have glass roofs on my cars and it really doesn't make that much of a difference in comfort in my car.

On top of that, my cars also know how intense the sun is. It wouldn't surprise me if that's also an input to the climate control.

I have a 10+ year old car. I don't expect to update it until 2030 at least. I guess I'll get to try out this tech then.

What kinds of cars you driving that are making the process that distracting.

I have three giant knobs inches away from my gear lever to control the climate. Climate control status is on a screen just below line of sight to the road.

I'm moving my hand a few inches and generally not even needing to look at anything to get feedback (I can set the fan speed by ear...), and if I do I can do it without taking my eyes off of the road.

I'm controlling the climate control for my comfort, not to hit arbitrary numbers. If I make a quick stop and spend a few minutes out in 110 degree heat, I wanna get in and have ice cold air blasting in my face until I'm comfortable. I don't care if the car is already a chilly 66f inside. If it's -40 outside, I want it to blow heat directly on my feet when I get in until my toes warm up even if the car is already warm. Hell, sometimes if it's too warm in there and my toes are frozen I'll drive around with the heat blasting and a window cracked to keep it comfortable.

I shouldn't need to sacrifice my comfort so the manufacturers can continue building shitty and dangerous UIs for basic vehicle functions.

Anything you do outside of driving your car is then technically distracting you from driving even if only minorly. Sure, it's not massively distracting to reach over and turn some knobs. But is is more distracting than never having to make an adjustment at all.

Sure!

So we should probably focus on making things people need to do in their car as quick and intuitive as possible to limit the distraction.

We put radio controls on the steering wheel to make it easier and safer to do things like adjust the volume. We don't just tell people "set your volume before you get moving and let the speed dependent volume control take over from there".

I have total control over my car's A/C through 3 rotary dials and can adjust all parameters to my liking without taking my eyes off the road a single millisecond. Doing so also requires much less attention than maintaining a non-important conversation with my usual passenger, who likes to talk a lot.

My Subaru doesn't have any buttons to go to preset radio stations. I can use the steering wheel buttons to go one by one till I get to the right one but it's an awful experience. It takes a second just to switch one time. Several seconds just to get to something that's instantaneous in cases that have buttons.

I have a Mazda and I love it. Also have no idea what OP is talking about.

Steering wheel has next-prev track buttons also the volume wheel can be gently slid left/right to do the same thing.

I love the button approach Mazda takes. Stuff like AC etc is all button controlled. It's a 90s car approach with a bolted on screen your phone can connect to. Stupid simple, tactile, nearly perfect.

> Turing the wheel unpredictably selects objects on the screen, forcing you to keep your eyes off the road while you keep turning the wheel until the item you need is selected.

You shouldn't need to do anything requiring the wheel while you're driving though. All the controls that you would want to have accessible while you're driving are physical (climate control, basic media/phone controls.) For everything else you should be setting that up while you're parked.

Yet, it's not what people are doing. The UIs of cars and other objects should take into account how they're going to be used, not how they are designed to be used. It's been proven again and again that you can only marginally educate or tell people how to behave. It's better to make a system that is safe 7/10 in real world usage, instead of one designed for 9/10, but actually getting 5/10.

The solution to "stupid people won't keep their eyes on the road while driving" is not "force everyone else to take their eyes off the road as well."

Both hands staying on the steering wheel is a huge plus. And the inputs are stepwise and therefore less prone to error, so safer.

And then there is Siri which makes all the things that you might want to do while driving, and probably shouldn't (touchscreen or not) far easier and safer.

How is a touchscreen safer?

I've never said a touchscreen is better. FWIW, I like the button controls on my car and don't need a touchscreen.

I'm specifically replying to "anything else you should do at the parking lot", which we know people don't do. I'm ONLY saying that UIs should be designed for how they will be used. If people never pull over and do things on the go - either disable them completely when the car is moving or make sure the user is done as quickly as possible and with the minimum amount of looking inside the car. If that's a touchscreen, buttons, buttons next to a screen, I don't really know - that should be done with proper UI/UX research.

I'd claim things are more nuanced. There are many reasons why UIs in many places, not just cars, suck. In cars, wether warranted or not, there is also pressure from legal to err on the side of building a cludge that is unassailable vs. a smooth user experience that could be grounds for a class action because it doesn't make enough of an effort to discourage dangerous user behavior.

It’s because the incentives are in the wrong place. When the average Joe goes to a car lot a new truck with a touchscreen is “Futuristic” and “Modern”. The only cars that come with buttons are the base models, and are therefore “cheap”.

The car industry isn’t in the business of building great UIs, they’re in the business of selling cars off of the dealer lot, unfortunately.

Usually me an my wife take turns driving. And we have a tacit agreement that the passenger control this kind of stuff. So, if I am driving, I ask my wife to set a destination on the GPS, play some music, change the temperature, and when she is driving I become the navigator/flight-engineer. Having those controls in the wheel would be incredibly annoying for us.

In my Mazda, the climate controls are physical, but in the center console, and easily accessible to both driver and front passenger. The wheel-based controls are things like skip forward/backward, bring up voice input, or end call. That's also about the extent of things I consider the driver should be focusing on. When I was younger, on family trips, even climate control was something relegated to the passenger; Even for the driver side.

I consider putting in a destination on the GPS, or setting up my music playlist to be 'park the car' types of things if simply doing it via voice control doesn't work.

The controls should not be visible to the driver. Move that touch screen over to the navigators seat and make it nice and convient for them to use. A little angle to the driver can't see it at all would be good.

The driver should have limited controls, all physical, and all ergonomicly designed to be easy to find. Even programming your phone GPS while moving should require the navigator to hit accept.

Screens for the driver should be carefully designed to not be something you look at while moving.

Realistically, however, there often is no navigator so reverting vehicle controls for a solo driver to the situation 10 years ago is almost certainly a non-starter. And even that long ago, it just meant people were using a smartphone instead on an in-car infotainment system.

Sure, but now it isn't the automakers fault when someone does something dangerious. Hopefully the police can start enforcing no phone use while driving laws. Google/Apple may in fact be liable as well and forced to check GPS before unlocking a phone (this would be bad for passenger experience, but if drivers can't keep their hands off their phones it might be required to do this)

The thumbwheel buttons on the Tesla wheel are great, and one of them activates listening for voice commands, which work really well. That usually handles all music switching and climate control setting.

I refuse to believe an UX professional or even a programmer ever thought this could be a good idea. It must have been pushed down the throats of the designers and developers by an edict from some point-haired MBA.

I'm positive this is what happened. My anecodotal evidence: the touchscreen-while-moving functionality was removed when my 2016 got a software update. One day I could just touch the giant map to enlarge it, the next I had to twiddle the knob a precise number of notches and watch the screen to make sure I highlighted it correctly.

It could be worse: Lexus infotainment screens of certain years would refuse to display the radio's RDS song info when you pressed the "Message" button (which enlarges the window to see it) while you were moving. Meanwhile, the RDS data happily continued to scroll by, one word every 3 seconds, in the tiny marquee at the top.

I have a 2020 Mazda 6 and I love the safety focus of its infotainment. But the ludicrously bad latency is infuriating. Button presses - especially <change radio station +/-> will sometimes get buffered for 10/20s and sometimes they're ignored altogether.

The truth is you really shouldn’t be doing anything apart from adjusting the A/C while driving. It’s all dangerous to do, whether it’s a touchscreen or buttons. Everyone does it, but nothing will make it safe.

If you're going down this path, what makes you single out adjusting the A/C? My car has a physical knob to adjust the temperature of the A/C that I can locate without looking, but I need to look at the seven-segment display to see the temperature being adjusted. How is that different from looking at a touchscreen and tapping a button on the screen?

It’s risky too, but it’s pretty much the only thing on the center console that is directly related to your physical comfort which will impact your concentration. That’s why I made an exception for it.

In this case, looking into side mirrors is dangerous, but not looking into them is also dangerous. Thus driving is dangerous, but walking is dangerous too, so better to sit in a safe room away from the dangers.

Driving is dangerous. But looking in your side mirrors is necessary. But looking too long is dangerous, especially in stop and go traffic.

My point is not that we should do nothing because everything is dangerous, but that we should minimize the risk by avoiding things that are unnecessary.

Adjusting the radio is almost certainly unnecessary to drive.

Annoying music makes the driver angry and inattentive, so not adjusting the radio is also dangerous. This kind of risk assessment algorithm is already built into our brains, and I doubt you can improve it with a formal simplistic model, partially because the risk weights depend on circumstances.

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