VW has been using capacitative buttons which combine all of touchscreens’ flaws with all of buttons’ limitations. They really nailed having the worst of both worlds.<p>Their faux buttons activate on mere touch, so you can’t safely locate the buttons by feel, and you still have to look! It’s also possible to activate them by accident from brushing your hand. They tried to prevent this by rejecting quick presses, but it only made the buttons feel slower and less responsive and sometimes ignore intentional presses.<p>On top of that instead of tactile feel and satisfying clicks, the buttons are plasticky and creak if you actually press them. They make ID. interior feel cheap. I’m flabbergasted why VW keeps using them. Do they think these are cool? Do they save $0.10 per car on a few tiny springs?
Touchscreens require significant user visual attention. You can't just feel for the button while watching the road and the traffic, you have to look at the screen and place your finger.<p>It's really bad design to require a car driver to be distracted just to perform normal operations. Touchscreens are very much the wrong choice for cars, planes, etc. They're fine for something that is intended to be the users' sole focus, but are distraction-by-design where the user has other priorities.
When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, he said there was a need for a new UI. The issue, as he said [1], was that the hardware of then-current smartphones was present and unchangeable whether or not that’s what the software in use called for. In the context of phones and the assorted software used on them, there’s a worthwhile logic to his point.<p>Car manufacturers (among others), didn’t seem to understand this logic. When it comes to in-car adjustments of vehicle capabilities—heating/cooling, music, etc.—touchscreens offer no benefits to users that exceed the simplicity of usability and the safety of dedicated hardware controls.<p>The irony, of course, is that Apple played a large role in popularizing touchscreens even if the logic the company used for choosing it was lost on so many, even though Jobs made clear the explicit value for smartphones.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/efFvYXsI9og?t=306" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/efFvYXsI9og?t=306</a>
> The US Navy is replacing touch screen controls on destroyers, after the displays were implicated in collisions.<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49319450" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49319450</a><p>It's happened before and it will happen again.
The touch-screen bandwagon is succinctly captured in the BMW G20 3-series, which was first released in 2018, and face-lifted last year.<p>Comparison image (facelift above, original below): <a href="https://cdn.bmwblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/bmw-3-series-photo-comparison-12.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://cdn.bmwblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/bmw-3-ser...</a><p>Notice how the HVAC and media controls have been deleted; the nice instrument cluster and centre console, previously with a sunshield hood for the former, have been merged into one giant display just pointlessly fastened to the dashboard, like an in-car billboard. I hate Tesla for introducing this stupid, dunderheaded standard to cars.
I completely excluded the GTI and Golf R from my recent car buying experience because of this.<p>Bought a Mazda 3 Turbo because Mazda seems to actually give a damn about UX with respect to safety.
My wife has an ID.4, and while it's a great vehicle, the UX is absolutely terrible. They're buried inside of a screen, many of the controls are different from what we've had for the past 40 years. Even worse are the window controls - you only have a passenger and driver side button, and have to toggle a touch control with no tactile or haptic feedback to switch between front and rear.
I grew up loving GTI's. Last year I finally had the money to buy one and was in the market for a new car. I couldn't bring myself to buy a GTI because it was just full of touch screens and piano black. VW was unusual in just how far it went. I'm sure they got lots of feedback and data to show that they made a mistake. I'm just curious how they decided to lean this heavily into touch screens (and piano black). Maybe they just desperately needed to save money after Dieselgate and hoped consumer preferences would change over time?
My wife and I literally didn't buy a VW Atlas a few years ago because we both loathed the infotainment system that has a ton of piano black capacitive touch buttons with absolutely no touch feedback. Absolutely horrible for driving. Otherwise we loved the car.
got a standard car rental at the airport recently, and thrifty/dollar/hertz had lots of model 3's on the lot.<p>Wow, that car is a real nightmare for a slightly tired person coming off the plane and getting in a rental car.<p>window fogged up. (you know where this is going, right?) couldn't figure out how to turn on front defroster, even as passenger hunting through the menus.<p>radio came on (no streaming - need "premium connectivity" for that). Couldn't figure out how to mute or turn down volume - it blares on while looking for the defog.<p>how do you turn on hazards?<p>got out of the car, eveything of value is in the trunk and -- how do you lock the doors?<p>ok, figured out how to lock doors and passenger gets out ... and the door locking was quietly canceled. ugh.<p>really, truly - telsa needs to backpedal and make a couple critical controls physical instead of touchscreen.<p>on another subject, compared to the model S, the model 3 seems to be missing the flyover style navigation hints. Trying to figure out which way to turn on tight streets from the map is horrible. Did they not pay garmin?
I’m not sure why HUDs don’t get more attention. That plus some physical controls and you basically never need to look away from the road. With how cheap LCD screens are nowadays it seems like a no-brainer.
Last year I bought a used 2020 Mercedes GLS450 and both my wife and I ended up not liking it after driving it for only 1 week. Luckily the dealer allowed us to cancel the sale and return it. The UX was awful. Far too many functions in that car were buried deep in menus. There were some redundant physical buttons, but in general it was a much different vehicle than the previous generations we had been owning or leasing since 2008. Everything had a cheap and junky feel to it, and it wasn’t nearly as rugged. It just didn’t make sense for the price we had paid and the huge depreciation hit we were going to take after owning it just ONE year. There are days when I wish I could just buy a NOS mid-90s SUV and drive until it dies.
Chevy Silverado XLTs have touchscreens too. I haven’t listened to any audio for more than 20 minutes in 3 years. The screen is totally unresponsive & starts ghosting soon after ignition. Trash.
This not only goes for cars but for almost all devices involved either in human movement or health: vehicle dashboards, headphones, lamps, public transport interfaces, avionics, medical devices and equipment, etc.<p>Any device that involves moving or healing someone without actual physical buttons puts human beings in danger in some way or another at some point specifically because of said touch interface.<p>The reason, in my opinion, why we observe so many devices turning button-less, is not ergonomy or usability. It's one particular community of users who is so much attracted to touchscreens that they would pay a premium to get rid of physical buttons and a touchscreen instead, even when that design decision can put their lives in danger.<p>I can't even mention these users explicitly here because I would probably be downvoted quite aggressively, but I guess some readers will recognize who I'm referring to.<p>I remember very well the moment Tesla cars arrived on the market and people reacted to the huge screen installed next to the dashboard. It was clearly obvious at the time that it was a very bad decision being happily welcomed by a specific category of users. Manufacturers of all sorts have been favoring these users in particular for the last fifteen-ish years although they know their products to become less durable, and less resilient to the unexpected.<p>I'm glad this problem is starting to be acknowledged and recognized by manufacturers.<p>p.s. the community I'm referring to, it has nothing to do with gender, age, race or religion.
Touchscreens are okay-ish, almost inevitable for majority of functionality except climate.<p>It's the capacitive touch buttons that is the biggest wtf.
In part it's touchscreens... But these are also slow, laggy, unresponsive systems.<p>That often aren't great. If users could load their own launchers, could have flexibility, they might be more agreeable.<p>Touchscreens are a tool of software, but these are hard-cast experiences. That loses most of the advantage right off the bat.
BlackBerry was working on actuators under the touch screen to provide haptics, since kiosks and car screens aren't as dynamic as phones, these are good first candidates.<p>Plus it makes driving more accessible to people with impaired vision.
I find my 2017 car is the sweet spot between tactile controls and touchscreen: the touch is useful for the GPS nav, but for everything else there are buttons.