[beloch]

If you're driving, you don't want to be looking at a touch-screen and you certainly don't want to be simultaneously trying to recall how many fingers turns the radio off! Physical buttons utilize spatial memory and offer haptic feedback, allowing users to keep their eyes on the road most of the time. Removing physical knobs, switches, etc. and replicating their function with a center-console touch-screens is a horrible thing to do to drivers, no matter how good the interface is. For this reason, the center-console touch-screen is unlikely to be the center of car-interfaces for long.

Okay, so what's better than a center-console touch-screen for user feedback? A transparent display either in the windshield or just behind it. Yes, a fighter-jet style HUD. The user could be twiddling buttons on the dash or smearing his/her greasy-finger across the inner surface of his windshield (only for infrequently used functions). The important thing is that user feedback comes from the same place that a driver's eyes ought to be directed when driving!

P.S. As a resident of a frigid country, let me just add that the less I can control with a pair of mitts on the less likely I am to buy your car.

[_pmf_]

> A transparent display either in the windshield or just behind it.

You'd be hard pressed to find anything less ergonomic than fiddling with the windshield behind the steering wheel.