Touchscreens Are Out, and Tactile Controls Are Back

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.

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.

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.

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.

God I hope so

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Permanently Deleted

All cars should function like a cockpit- each function has its own independent metal toggle switch that goes 'KAK when switched. I will fight you on this. We need someone to make an interior that does this; sells well, and then the golden age of independent buttons shall return!

thank fuck

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?

Fucking YES

except at rivian. they have stated future models will have an all touchscreen dashboard

The answer is tactile buttons with displays behind them. Not sure why nobody is doing this in cars...

How about just generic opensource communications via Ethernet rj45? Then you just plug in any screen/computer including raspberry pi so you can have whatever system you want.

While you're at it bring back the Amber, its such a perfect color for the dash

Can we return to transparent cases for Consoles and Tech next? I've always thought a touchscreen in cars were pretty scary since you have to take your eyes off the road.

They could go one step further and add braille support directly, it's just nudges. Tactile feeling is the only reason they are back.

Yes, I'm aware there are no blind drivers. The point is not having to look at your controls and doing so with something that already exists.

I've been around just long enough to suspect that this will be part of a cycle going back and forth between tactile controls and touchscreens.

That is, give it a decade and touchscreens will be the in-thing again. And another decade and someone will have the "fantastic new idea" of bringing tactile controls back.

And there'll be a combo breaker of some sort where a new technology comes along (probably no screens, or controls, only voice control) which a small few will absolutely love - due to sunk cost fallacy mostly - and no-one else will buy (compare: 3D TVs), and the cycle will begin again.

Bonus points for: 1) Manufacturers managing to have cycles out of step with others because the market forces aren't quite enough (people not having the money to buy new cars) to bring them all into line. 2) External factors like, say, the world ending, breaking the cycle.

Drivers will see this and say hell yeah

Now if only that were the case for phones. Blackberry keyboards were better than any shitty touch screen.

About. Fucking. Time.

I just want to say that I think this is the dash from my old car a Toyota Yaris.

I miss you ole' buddy. I'm sorry you got rear ended and totaled. You were a great car.

Sick so I can just not get a touchscreen car I waited it out

Never liked them. Modern smartphone is convenient , but a keyboard would be nicer

I was pleasantly surprised when I sat in a modern Hyundai for the first time (Kona Electric SX2) and there were soooo many buttons. Yes, some things are still touch-controlled, but compared to what I was used to in a Volkswagen it was such a blessing

I prefer the tactile controls over the touchscreen. While you're at it, bring back manual transmissions too!

Fuck yeah, I love tactical controls. There's just something nice about something physical you can feel and manipulate.

I'm gonna buy a Garmin instinct because I realized I don't use 95% of my galaxy Watch's "smart" features.

Great! Now bring back phones with physical QWERTY keyboards.

You know what I would really hate? Automatic diagnostics on my dashboard. Nah. Please make those as LED blinks where the mechanic has to supply his own LED, Jerry rigged to the obd connector. And make it so that only one guy in Minnesota has the manual. Every mechanic has to contact that guy. Then the mechanic has to interpret the LED Morse code manually. Oh yes this would be so useful. And to add a 3Ghz motherboard with only access to Apple music. Totally awesome. Make the display show a video of "all I want for Christmas is you" I'll certainly be making use of that.

Finally!

I didn't have a car for a few years and the one I had was 2003 (with a slight stint from a similarly-aged car during a couple-month time I had to drive). I now have a car again and I HATE that my heat/air and such are all flat against the panel (not a touch screen, though). I literally can't adjust anything without looking in my current car. Thankfully, I avoid driving it whenever possible.

Especially EV car makers need to take note.

The article doesn’t mention which cars unfortunately

I just hope they don’t go overboard one way or another. All touchscreen was too much but all buttons would be excessive too

They need a professor to tell them what Liz Lemon did in one lunchtime https://youtu.be/vyZkHjgzGRM?t=83

Personally I'm excited for the Hyundai mobi system

Why not both?

Oh tahnk Satan

Honestly at this point just make a mobile app to control it.

No.

Out the way, boomers.

Hard disagree. Touch screens are more intuitive, can be updated to be made better, have the option for more controls, and don't take any more time with your eyes off the road.