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by moss2 1397 days ago
5. The manufacturer can change functionality and user interface with a simple software update.

If Toyota half-way through shipping their latest car realize it's better to have two knobs on the dashboard, they can very easily add one if the dashboard is just one big touch screen.
2 comments
vincnetas 1397 days ago
What this "we can change it later" option creates is designs that are not very well thought out. When you have physical buttons you must be double sure that this is the best layout that you can come up. You need to commit and double (triple) check with multiple people. Allocate resources for manufacturing/tooling. But you are forced to think about it really really hard.

With touch screen and OTA updates, you can skip the hard part and leave it for future you to improve if needed. But as we all know, when it's already sold there is no motivation to spend money to improve. So touch UI stays half baked. And only gets improved with future models.

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moss2 1396 days ago
You can think about design until your hair starts falling out, but customer needs cab change at any time.
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ajmurmann 1397 days ago
In some way that's even worse though. Everything should stay put. When driving a car, all this stuff is a secondary activity. I need to be able to develop muscle memory to ideally perform these finds blind while giving my main attention to the road. Buttons help doing this without looking. I might be able to do navigate a touch screen quickly if everything is in the same place all the time. Moving things around is just another opportunity to force more attention to the secondary activity
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