[rkagerer]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm going to repeat a comment I made a few times before, as I think it's relevant:

In one of the talks at Google I/O a few years ago a VP from Audi (or Volvo?) spoke in a thick and lofty German accent about how "ve haf completely oferhauled ze driver exzperienze". He played a sexy video clip showcasing their new Android infotainment system (something like https://youtu.be/h_7_fKJ0PNs), and the first thing I noticed is how they'd taken away my traditional temperature knobs and replaced them with digital touchscreen ones. They looked just like physical ones, and were in the exact same place you would expect (https://9to5google.com/2017/05/15/android-cars-audi/). So, I've gained absolutely nothing, and now I have to take my eyes off the road and look down at the stupid console just to change the temperature.

TLDR: Tacticle feedback is a Good Thing(tm) and designers should cultivate - not fight - muscle memory.

[prepend]

Audi has always been funny to me as they’ve been a copycat brand for the 30 years I’ve been aware of them.

So it makes since that their “innovation” is a skeuomorphic digital version of a physical dial that costs more and is shittier.

There’s a gnostic origin story of the demiurge who is like a retarded brother of God that sees heaven and wants to make their own version. But they mess up and make a crappy version that is our world. I think that analogy fits when I see groups try to copy another group and fail, especially when they have high resources. The demiurge was near omniscient in power so it wasn’t lack of resources that made our world suck.

I also think it funny that the gnostic origin story was so pessimistic.

I love learning about different cultures and their origin stories.

[bryanlarsen]

The Audi Q4 and the VW id.4 are basically identical cars. The Q4 has a lot more buttons than the id.4, but the reviews I've seen say it makes it worse, not better.