Technology

What about extreme violations of privacy? Let me know when that is "out", too.

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-wheels-every-car-brand-reviewed-by-mozilla-including-ford-volkswagen-and-toyota-flunks-privacy-test/

Touchscreens were never popular with customers. Manufacturers kept cramming touchscreens in cars and using them to control everything becuase they were being stupid with new tech.

Edit: I guess I should have been clearer. I was talking about as a replacement for tactile controlls in a car like the article is talking about. Reverse cameras and other things that are good to have a touch screen for make perfect sense but using your touch screen to control your Air conditioning in a way that you have to divert your attention from the road to operate sliders and buttons on a touch screen is dumb as hell.

Can we address headlights that are brighter than the sun now?

They are more safe since people can feel the buttons without taking their eyes off of the road. I don't understand why they thought it was a good idea to use touchscreens.

Also, bring back gauges, instead of idiot-lights. It's nice to know when a problem is beginning (overheating, etc) before it becomes a crisis when you have no choice but to pull over.

Yay, I never left having physical controls for things like HVAC controls and volume.

Touchscreens are great for context-sensitive controls, but less so for things that should be accessible at all times and usable without looking.

I'm so glad I kept my car and weathered through this shitty phase of car manufacturing.

If only there was hope for weathering through the data collection, subscription-based features and the death of sedans though...

Touchscreens can stay, but only for non-essential tasks like changing settings or entering addresses. Climate, media, and all other controls you usually use while driving should be tactile by mandate.

But we've still got a good 10 years of avoiding used cars. This era is literally landfill.

Yes please.

I don't know how much longer my button & dialled up 2012 shitbox is going to last. Being able to buy new without the crap is something to look forward to.

Then again, there's the whole 'car phones home/connected services' thing to consider as well. I like my car safe, but dumb as rocks otherwise.

Back in the 80s, Don Norman popularized the term affordance. Humans need something to push, pull, turn or otherwise interact with. We are physical beings in a physical world.

Driving vehicles is potentially life-endangering. Just because the technology is there and cheaper does not mean that humans can push aside their physiological limitations in a critical situation.

Take the emergency blinker. You know where it is, you see it all the time - it's right there in front of you! But when a real emergency happens, you'll be fumbling for the button, concentrating on the situation at hand. Now imagine that button on a touchscreen.

Should be illegal to have touchscreen controls in a car, it requires you to look at it to effectively control it, which means the car forces you to ignore the road to do anything.

Finally. Are they actually hiring decent UX folks this time or are they using the people who designed 1980s VCR programming UIs again?

God I hope so

Plotnick, an associate professor of cinema and media studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, is the leading expert on buttons and how people interact with them.

I like that being a leading expert on buttons is a profession that exists in this world. You go Rachel Plotnick.

Cool, now bring back single cab light trucks with full length beds.

When I’m driving, it’s actually unsafe for my car to be operated in that way. It’s hard to generalize and say, buttons are always easy and good, and touchscreens are difficult and bad, or vice versa. Buttons tend to offer you a really limited range of possibilities in terms of what you can do. Maybe that simplicity of limiting our field of choices offers more safety in certain situations.

Or maybe being able to consistently and reliably operate the thing without taking your eyes off the road has something to do with it? Hmm... Yes, this is really hard to generalize.

I just want a coffee table book with pictures of these stupid executive's faces who approved the original all touchscreen versions that were becoming ubiquitous.

Touch screens are shit tor buttons. They can be hacked. They can be unresponsive.

There's a load of other reasons, but either or both are enough to realise that a physical button is much safer. Perfect example of safety being lost in technology. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.

No I wouldn't say touchscreens are out, I would say augmenting them with physical buttons is about to get popular.

Fucking finally.

Now make cars look like cars again. Last 30 years has been a parade of Jellybeans and Electric Shavers.

THANK JESUS H. VISHNU.

About fucking time.

Thank god! Touch screens on the stuff in cars are a huge pain in the ass if you have hands as big as mine and the icons are all tiny

But on the other hand, people seem to have a hunger for physical buttons, both because you don’t always have to look at them—you can feel your way around for them when you don’t want to directly pay attention to them—but also because they offer a greater range of tactility and feedback.

If you look at gamers playing video games, they want to push a lot of buttons on those controls.

She talks a bit… weird?