[andrewla]

General-purpose buttons whose action changes with context are just as bad as touchscreens. The whole point of tactile interfaces is that the buttons and controls have a consistent action regardless of context. A button that sometimes does one thing and sometimes does another depending on what is on the screen is no better than a touchscreen, since it requires active attention to operate.

[titzer]

> it requires active attention to operate.

It just requires context. How that context is critically important. If it is a hierarchical menu, then the context is the navigation path (i.e. the sequence of previous button pushes, each of which transitions from one state to the next). Importantly, with a fixed hierarchical menu, the path to a button's functionality doesn't change and can be memorized. With some audio feedback, the current state can also be announced, so that a person's mental state matches the state the interface is in.

There are several problems with touchscreens, not the least of which is the context issue. The next issue is there is no tactile feedback, which requires you to look at where you are touching, often because interactive things can appear anywhere.

[andrewla]

Doesn't this assume that you're advancing a state machine from some known initial state? If you are in the middle of a navigation and you are interrupted, in order to figure out what to do next you need to recover context. The more your muscle memory remembers the sequence ( 1 -> 2 -> 2 -> 3/4 for raising/lowering the fan speed ) the less you'll be able to access it consciously and the more you'll have to look at the options to figure out what to do.

The lack of tactile feedback on touchscreens is an issue when using it, but I'm not convinced that it's any better or worse for partial-attention tasks. For full attention tasks (e.g. navigating a settings menu) it's far superior to a button-based approach.

[romwell]

Well, certainly having some buttons with context dependence is still better than having touch screens.

Also, hard no to "just as bad". I have no issue with volume control buttons also being camera triggers on my phone, for example.

Details matter.

[andrewla]

In the context of operating a vehicle I'm going to stick with "just as bad".

When you aren't driving, if you have to set up something (like configure the doors to auto-lock when when you shift into drive or something) then a touchscreen is clearly superior. You can navigate to a menu and read the options and select the appropriate one. But like the camera shutter button, this is a situation where you can afford to pay some attention to the task at hand.

While operating a vehicle, if you're trying to turn up the fan on the A/C, then using a button to switch to climate controls, then using a button to switch to fan settings, then clicking the up button three times, is just as bad as a touchscreen, because if you switched to climate but didn't yet switch to fan settings, and you have to put more attention on the road because you're exiting, you've lost context and can no longer know where you are in the navigation with looking and assessing the situation.

So dedicated climate controls >>>>>> touchscreen or context-buttons. The difference is close enough to be indistinguishable.

If you get a popup saying "there's traffic ahead click here to accept a new route" then dismissing it by jabbing the screen and dismissing by jabbing a button, it's really hard for me to see a lot of air.

[romwell]

Sure, I don't disagree with you here. Climate control should be dedicated buttons.

There's a place for middle ground though: sequences of button presses.

For instance, keying in 1-3-4 to enable this or that feature (where the buttons are 1 to 5).

It can be done purely by touch, but it'd be hard to discover and memorize such sequences without a screen. However, once you discover them, you don't need to look at the screen.

[sitkack]

The solution is to have a "mode selector" so that the buttons have a fixed meaning in that mode. Like a 3 position rotary selection switch, all the way the left could mean basic AC control.

I'd love buttons with braille on the surface so I could read what they said without looking at them. Does someone make mems braille screens?

*edit, looks like there is a bunch of stuff in the works

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=mems+braille+screen&iax=ima...