The most annoying thing is that carmakers didn’t move to touchscreen-only because people want it, they’re doing it because it saves them money to ditch physical controls.
“Hey the touchscreen is already here, may as well just put everything on it!”
Yeah how about don’t. It’s such a pain having to fumble for things like climate control that used to just be a knob.
The ideal situation is having both.
It’s surprising that people buy those cars
Our newest company car has volume touch-buttons.
Lovely if you need to quickly silence the radio/media while driving 120kph on the highway =).
But god forbid looking at the phone while standing still at a red light with a running/activated motor.having touchscreen and physical options is the best solution?
My Peugeot e208 has both of them parallel to each other and that was the main reason i decided for that car instead of something like a tesla.
There is no way i’ll be tapping through some iOS like app interface to change the temperature while going 150km/h on the highway…
With a Tesla, you wouldn’t have any problem like that. Just tap while going 220 km/h, problem solved.
You mean if I crashed it wouldnt matter anyway?
I just wanted to be helpful and suggest how to avoid tapping on a touch screen while going 150 km/h on the highway. Crashing is an option too, but I was told it has certain side effects.
By the way, I H A T E Tesla and touch screens in cars.
Exactly. Touchscreen can be a positive because you get dynamic and contextual menus, and the sort of rich user interface that people expect from modern devices.
But for the most common functions, nothing beats the tactile muscle memory of physical controls that are always immediately present when you need them, and can use with your eyes still on the road.
So the best is to have both.
Radio is fine for touch control imo
Hazards and climate control should be physical buttons though.
A radio needs to be able to do two things: Rotate for volume and press for muting.
A dial button is not that hard to implement.
Plus it can work as a on/off switch.
I think even more annoying are touch buttons on the steering wheel. It’s easy to just accidentally activate something with a light touch while steering. And when you do want to push it, it doesn’t work consistently. Mine even has different inputs depending on how long you touch it. I’ve heard that VW has the learned the lesson and will introduce real buttons again but apparently it takes a few years to change this simple thing in a car production even though they’ve been doing it in the past for many years.
Making UX a part of the assessment is a smart move.
everything controling something related to driving safety (windshield wipers, turn signals, lights…) should be mandated by law to have a physical control. Also the control must not be routed to any control computer, that is not exclusively dedicated to that control.
Even ignoring the safety advantage physical buttons are just plain better.
Depends on your definition of “control computer”. ECUs with a microprocessor often have a microcontroller built in for safety-critical stuff. You can safely route control through that microcontroller.
Also, would you allow windshield wipers and turn signals and lights to be allocated to the same control computer or should each of them have their own exclusively dedicated to them?
I hate the trend of replacing a dashboard with a touchscreen so great news for reliability and ease of use
Sometime soon they’ll hide the “break” function in some sub-menu of the “speed” tree, to replace the break pedal.
I love the hazard light button. In my car it’s such a convenient spot and I can push it in like 1s if I need to when the highway goes from 100kph to 10kph out of nowhere.
The last company car I had was the choice between an Audi A6 and BMW 5series. I opted for the BMW, the only reason was that BMW had physical controls.
