Hacker News Reader

Comment by Crespyl | Hacker News Reader

Surely none of that requires a touchscreen though? Just basic generic navigation and selection buttons will work fine.

It doesn't require it to be a touchscreen, sure, but it practically requires it to be a screen. But I'd much rather just quickly tap a checkbox instead of press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press navigating the giant array of settings.

And then on top of that people want AA/CarPlay which is designed around touch inputs first, so you're going to have that screen be touch anyways.

None of that should really be changed by the driver when the car is in motion, and you'd have to manage the deep navigation of a bunch of button presses on a screen anyways so arguing you'd be less distracted is a moot point.

Speaking of things not supposed to be done while driving: We tested the Android car GPS thing this summer. The passenger is usually in charge of the GPS so the driver can concentrate on driving. But this darn thing says something like "touch input disabled while driving". So we still have to stop the car to do adjustments on the GPS. Very handy on the Autobahn, you can't just pull over and park... Who does things like this?

Sadly all other GPS navigators we used to use has gone downhill to the state of unusable so this is what we turned out using all vacation.

If in a VAG car you can just disable the driving detection via VCDS like any normal person would and have everything work fine again:-)

Get osmand on a phone and be done with it :D

Will try it again, was a while ago. Maybe it actually works on my new phone, thanks :-)

The commodore 64 had 4 large Function keys on the right. I think 10 strokes per second was normal (I was among 12-14 year olds tho) Menus were structured like

   [F1] FOO
   [F3] BAR
   [F5] BAZ
   [F7] BAL

Small enough to instantly absorb in the wetware. Depending on how frequent the choice was used one would push options further down the sub menus. Say, something like this for HN (I made a tree, they would normally be separate pages)

    [F1] Index
    [F3] Threads
    [F5] Comments
    [F7] More [F1] Ask
              [F3] Show
              [F5] Jobs
              [F7] More [F1] Profile [F1] View
                                     [F3] Submissions
                                     [F5] Logout
                        [F3] New
                        [F5] Past
                        [F7] Submit

After you've submitted 2-3 things you just know you have to bash [F7] three times. To view jobs you hammer the bottom button then the one above. The hands will learn how to use the menus really quickly. I was often surprised that my hands knew how to take me places before really reading anything. Every time one used such menu it went slightly faster and it kept going faster. Pointing a mouse or using a touch screen is really slow. Could say it gets slower every time by comparison.

(The use of odd numbers wasn't even optimal)

You're really going to memorize the menu layouts to adjust the different settings for the seat moving when you turn off the car and open the door? You change that setting enough you're going to get a lot of muscle memory for that setting? Really?

Yes, the lever to move the chair would be like a top level menu entry (It does only one thing)

It seems you're not getting what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the normal seat adjustment that you probably fiddle with a bit especially if you don't have profiles and change drivers a lot. I'm talking about the feature where your seat will go further back than normal to give you more space to get in and out of the car. It's often called something like "Easy Entry/Exit". Then when you start the car it goes back to where either the seat was last or whatever profile it was set to.

On this feature (which itself can be enabled/disabled), sometimes you can choose how far back it'll move the seat automatically for you.

Its this setting that you're suggesting you're going to mess with enough to have decent muscle memory to change without looking. That you'd want as a top-level feature setting option, practically a dedicated button to change it.

The video below shows what I'm talking about. Note in a lot of cars it's just a basic toggle. Sometimes you can set how far back you want the seat to go, if you want the steering wheel to move, how far you want the steering wheel to move, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhM-gJ5cIHA

> But I'd much rather just quickly tap a checkbox instead of press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press navigating the giant array of settings.

If I was making such an interface, that would be a dial or knob instead of buttons.

Ok, so click click click click click click click click click press click click click press click click. In the end I'm still having to pay attention to the screen anyways, and once again the screen is probably going to be touchscreen anyways so it's extra hardware just to have a more complicated input system than just pressing the screen, taking up space in the cabin to have this redundant control scheme. Once again just to change settings I shouldn't be changing while driving anyways like how far back the seat should go when the car is off and I open the door or if the passenger side mirror should tilt down when reversing to help aiding in parallel parking. So critical to operate that with physical controls so one can change those settings while driving!

I've had far more rotary encoders fail than I've had capacitive screens fail, so even an argument of higher reliability is pretty moot. Most damage that would break the capacitive touch is going to damage the rest of the screen anyways.

Finally, if it's so I can change those settings while wearing gloves, wow I'm going to increase the complexity of the car and take up more space so I can change the settings on the secondary keys without taking off my gloves when it's really cold outside someday. So much stuff just so I can do that thing I rarely do anyways slightly easier for a few days of the year, assuming I'm changing those settings while also getting in and out of the car a lot so I wouldn't want to take off my gloves for a minute.

Just put the settings behind a touchscreen. It's fine.

> Ok, so click click click click click click click click click press click click click press click click.

That doesn't sound like a dial/knob. You'd give it a single big twist or scroll to get the cursor around the right spot first. Same as old-fashioned radios.

So a knob that doesn't even have the feedback of knowing when you've gotten to the next selection at all, you have to actually stare at it as it goes through the different choices. That doesn't seem better to me at all. Personally, in this idea of a dial I'd like one that can actually give some haptic feedback. Or even better yet just be able to actually tap on the option instead of needing to turn a dial to move a selector on the screen to choose it.

At least with an old-fashioned radio knob you got the feedback of if you were tuning into the station by hearing it. But moving a selector on a screen?

It's like you're arguing for the MacBook Wheel, as if a knob is the most optimal way to input arbitrary choices on a computer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA

Reply on news.ycombinator.com