[VMisTheWay]

As someone that works in Auto on buttons and works with the head unit team, you are incorrect.

The benchmarking shows nearly every company is moving to screens. Sure you might have a few models that remove the screen, but these are cheap cars with limited features.

You literally can't have a button for every car feature.

And if your car doesn't have all the features, you won't sell well.

And if you disagree with all of this, you probably aren't the type of person to drop 40k-50k on a new car. You'd be happy with a 2014 car for 10k.

[ohazi]

> The consensus regarding automobiles and touch interfaces is starting to form that they are just a bad idea.

> The benchmarking shows nearly every company is moving to screens.

The fact that everyone is moving to screens because they're flashy and cheap ($/feature) doesn't automatically make them a good idea.

GP is correct. The consensus from a safety and usability perspective is that touchscreens in cars are a bad idea. Fuck the bean counters.

[trixie_]

All that matters is what sells. Create a car with tons of buttons and switches today, go out of business tomorrow.

[Silhouette]

That looks like an excellent argument for stronger safety regulations. It is now illegal to drive any vehicle on public roads that does not meet the following safety standards: X, Y, Z. There you go, market for idiots who like flashy gadgets over safe vehicle controls eliminated. We did it with drink driving. We did it with driving on phones (though both the laws and the enforcement are still far from ideal on this one). We can do it with obviously dumb ideas for vehicle controls where there is evidence of severe safety problems too.

[TeMPOraL]

That's why we can't have nice things, only things that are barely fit for purpose.

[rblatz]

The Navy went big in touch screens and is rolling that back. Mazda, by no means a luxury brand, is abandoning touch screens. I think touch screens will stick around for tasks that aren’t routinely done while driving, but there will be a massive correction away from touchscreen as the only interface to the car.

[cryptonector]

What a ridiculous reply.

> The benchmarking shows nearly every company is moving to screens.

Benchmarking? Really.

> Sure you might have a few models that remove the screen

Mazda is removing or de-emphasizing them across their product line if I understood correctly.

> You literally can't have a button for every car feature.

Yes, true, very very true. Also irrelevant. The point is that features like:

  - climate control
  - stereo volume (and other radio controls)
  - defrost
  - etc

should be physical buttons because drivers use them a lot and should not have to take their eyes off the road to use them and should NEVER have to their eyes off the road to see if their inputs took (touch/display latency sucks).

> And if your car doesn't have all the features, you won't sell well.

The features that must have physical input methods, must have them, and the others can be touch screens if you really like.

Also, fewer features is kinda fine, really, if it makes the roads safer.

> And if you disagree with all of this, you probably aren't the type of person to drop 40k-50k on a new car. You'd be happy with a 2014 car for 10k.

I.e., I must be cheap. Or maybe I would be happy with older cars (or newer Mazdas) precisely because they have these physical inputs / lack those dangerous touchscreens that I detest.

[setpatchaddress]

Well, Mazda is going in the opposite direction.

More and bigger screens are certainly the way of the future for most cars/SUVs, but I'd advocate strongly for a large set of ergonomic, reassignable hard controls. The best thing about the Tesla Model 3 controls is the configurable control gadget on the steering wheel (though I wish they'd used better materials -- feels absurdly cheap in a $50k car).

[throwaway_pdp09]

> The benchmarking shows nearly every company is moving to screens

You're confusing a benchmark with... something else. And I really dislike my new-ish MP3 player with it's damn screen that I have to keep looking at to operate, to do anything.

> And if your car doesn't have all the features

My MP3 player has a ton of features and I don't need 90% of them. I want it to do one job well - play my music and a few other basic controls, just like my old, physically-operated MP3 player did. I don't want awesome UX/UI bullshit to get in the way, I just want it to do its job.

(plz excuse rant)

[cryptonector]

Idk why you got downvoted. You're absolutely right.

[Fogest]

That's your opinion and an old-school one at that. The vast majority of customers do not want something that basic.

[BeetleB]

While your comment is valid to the the person you responded to, consider:

My older car with no touch screen has a custom stereo installed - everything with physical buttons. And it can do more than my other car with a touchscreen. Its Bluetooth capabilities are superior. I can set it not to auto-play, etc.

Yes, no need to go old school. But no, you don't need a touchscreen to get a radio/stereo with better features.

[throwaway_pdp09]

I think we agree. I'm not against newer, I'm against worse.

[throwaway_pdp09]

That is my opinion which is why I kept on saying "I". I see nothing wrong at all with 'old-school'. There are too many self proclaimed UI/UX "experts" who keep screwing things up for people (edit: I'll restate that: fucking over their users). I only want what works.

> The vast majority of customers do not want something that basic.

And you accuse me of 'opinion'. Well, provide evidence of this claim.

[filoleg]

This. There will always be a niche of people who want barebones single-purpose old-school experience out of any given device.

Goes for literally anything, from cars to phones to music equipment. I definitely fall into this category for some of the things myself. However, it is important to remember that this is not representative at all of what the majority prefers.

[throwaway_pdp09]

This is a better post than its parent, and in some cases, sure I agree. I can't argue with someone who wants the new & shiny, if it works for them, great. But it's being pushed on us so such luddites as myself have no choice any more - it's all touchscreens now. It's become marketing driven. The choice is gone.

> this is not representative at all of what the majority prefers

I was very careful to not to project my desires on others in my original post, but you're telling me about what "majority prefers". So back this up. I don't think you can.

[filoleg]

>you're telling me about what "majority prefers". So back this up.

Do you see dedicated single-purpose barebones MP3 players having a high demand? Or do people just use their smartphones for that purpose? When you walk into a room and ask people if they would find an MP3 player device useful and would like to get one, what answer do you expect to hear?

Also, try asking the same question from people about smartphones vs. single-purpose cellphones. Yes, there is obviously a niche of people who want to "disconnect" and not have to deal with smartphones. But they are in a tiny minority.

While market isn't a perfect representation of what people want, it is a great proxy, in a lot of cases. And for this situation specifically, it looks like the market has clearly expressed what consumers want.

[throwaway_pdp09]

I asked you to back this up with actual figures. Please do so. Now...

> Do you see dedicated single-purpose barebones MP3 players having a high demand?

I can't buy them. When I looked for a new one, there was none available I could find. I did ring the companies too. There's no choice so actual demand is difficult to ascertain.

Smartphones... OK, that's a good point.

> what answer do you expect to hear?

Irrelevant - give me figures, not asking what I expect to get. Facts please. And if you read the comments here, there's quite a few expressing preference for physical controls.

> But they [non-smartphone users] are in a tiny minority.

A minority or a tiny minority? Give me figures please. Don't just talk at me, throwing words around. Facts please. And BTW I'm one of these minorities. FYI.

> it looks like the market has clearly expressed what consumers want

What's your job?

[paulryanrogers]

Where does the proliferation of features end and concern for public safety begin?

[moduspol]

It might happen when statistics actually show cars with touchscreens are measurably less safe.

It'd be even safer if we removed the radio all together, and banned any physical controls that aren't on the steering wheel (to ensure you don't have to take your hand off the wheel to use them).

Why do we only care about public safety in one circumstance but not the other?

[drusepth]

>Why do we only care about public safety in one circumstance but not the other?

Outside of armchair theorists online, I'm not convinced anyone in charge of car design actually cares about car safety at all.

Car accidents are the leading cause of death for people age 15-29 and the second leading cause of death for people age 5-14. Nearly 3,300 people die every day in car accidents, and double that number are permanently disabled.

If people actually cared about car safety, it feels like these numbers would have gone down in the last 30 years. They haven't. [1]

[1] https://i.imgur.com/FE6lZu4.png

[moduspol]

They probably have gone down per capita, right? We just have a lot more people than we did 30 years ago. A car built today is certainly safer than one from 30 years ago.

My hope is that driverless cars end up solving this faster than we otherwise could politically, but obviously that may be a bit ambitious.

[cryptonector]

Forget about the radio. Climate controls are needed, full stop, and they are distracting if touchscreen-driven.

[moduspol]

Not for me. I'm quite content setting a target temperature and leaving the rest on "auto", although I know for many drivers that's not the case. And obviously it's still in my interests that other drivers not be distracted.

But those, too, could be controlled by physical buttons on the steering wheel and/or voice commands.

[cryptonector]

Mazda believes we're there now.

[moduspol]

Nokia believed we'd mostly prefer smartphones with physical keyboards.

[Silhouette]

And some of us would have done. Trying to write anything longer than a brief text message or Tweet using any modern touchscreen phone is excruciating. Swipe-style keyboards have made entering text tolerable, but correcting the mis-reads or even the most basic editing takes orders of magnitude longer than it needs to. Admittedly, modern phones do provide a neat demonstration of various technologies designed to correct the errors caused by an otherwise slow and inaccurate input device.

[Fiahil]

Higher-end units are using a "control knob" to navigate on the screen. "Touching" is for "lower-end" vehicles.

So, as a matter of fact, yes, you can have _one_ button for every car feature.

[krupp3]

Are you working for American auto maker?

Because Europe and Japan also had this idea how touch screen is cool, new and the future. 2016-2018 were the blunder years with everything being touch. And soon people realized that touch, no surprise, is shit. So for most common operations makers have added buttons back - climate and audio controls.

For never used settings - like should interior lights come up when you open the door, beep sound loudness, interior light brightness, etc - yea, touch screen is good. For stuff that you actually use - no.

It blows my mind people think touch screens are good. If they are so good, why don't we use touch inputs for blinker signals behind steering wheel? For steering itself? Swipe left to go left. Why no touch input for shift paddles? Hell, why I never saw anyone using touch screen keyboard instead of a physical one? Silicon valley devs could easily afford one and to them touch is superior to physical buttons. Nope, 1970s or w/e physical keyboards for every computer, it's like there's a bubble somewhere where "new = always good and old = always bad".

[elsonrodriguez]

I've pasted this before, but there's a middle ground between touch screens and buttons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6YYun90S8g&feature=youtu.be...

[cryptonector]

I will not be buying any cars with that interface. Climate controls must be physical, full bloody stop.