The parent post is a chef’s-kiss-perfect illustration of the problem with modern tech.
Perhaps we will have a "Beijing regulatory effect" positively impacting the world like the Bruxelles and California ones.
Similar thing with batteries on airplanes, tube trains, ferries and underground garages. China cares about fire hazard, other countries care about ideology.
Not even ideology anymore, see US. Democratic country has been attacked in a biggest war since WW2, and they've decided to halt all support and attack Iran instead.
Dieter Rams is the only UX/UI designer, who became famous - outside of Germany. Hartmut Esslinger kind of popularized DR, what an irony, that two Germans made history, but of course not in Germany and even in Germany DR wasn't well known. Braun was a brand and statement, but because the devices were and still are extremely convenient. Braun never put design or beauty in the spotlight - it wasn't recognized as such and therefore not of value to capitalize on.
VW? "No one needs Apple Car or Android. We are the world wide Nr. 1 in car business, what does a computer company know about cars? hahaha"
Hubris, resulted into a failed attempt to build in 2 years a complete Car OS. It was so bad, I was mocked back then, because I bet against it.
I am the only one who successfully build a No Code platform in financial services that became such a hit internally, that it became the standard. dbCORE is its name.
Very long story, but design by committee is the norm in Germany, and since outsourcing is the way to go, vendors sell changes all the time otherwise they lose the customer.
Value chains like Apple or Google are inconceivable and no one in Business has a background in CS.
Porsche 997-2 had the best UX/UI there was. Fantastic blend of nobs and touchscreen. It blew my mind, really. This was 2008. The iPhone came to light 2007!
Really, highly impressive, extremely functional and almost no friction at all. 90% was top.
And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally. Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom. And I gurantee you, no one fell in love with its UX/UI...
I have no idea what you are talking about. I think all recent VW cars (since 2018) support Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. CarPlay works great with our VW ID.3.
Also, since a refresh a few years ago, the in-car system has had great UX/UI. We are perfectly happy with it and this is after almost two decades of iOS + having tried the systems of various different cars (including NIO).
We do not have anything to complain about, except more physical buttons would be nice, but the latest generation is bringing them back (e.g. the new ID.3 NEO). We are considering upgrading to the ID.3 NEO soon (or maybe Hyundai).
It's the same old story about how hardware companies can't do software UX, except extra amplified because of the strong emphasis on hierarchy, formal degrees and their, errm, heavy processes.
VW was supporting CarPlay from launch and the VW MEB dash was on all pro material of Apple for ages.
6000 people to develop a software stack for VW.
Go figure. The fact VW supported CarPlay early is footnote in this comedy.
Many of these German car companies are following what sells well in Chinese markets, more and more screens. IMO, nothing beats the feeling and assurance of tactile buttons/toggles/knobs.
I really struggle to understand what's so damned difficult about this. They've admitted touchscreens annoy the hell out of drivers and capacitive touch buttons are even worse. Is it really going to take yet another lifecycle before they actually do something about it?
Or dashes that are fully lit at night even if the headlights aren’t on, so the driver doesn’t have an obvious visual indicator that their tail lights aren’t lit.
So many rules I’d enforce were I king of the automakers.
Remember you have the stupid stuff that Tesla pushed hard during the peak Elon reality distortion field time. I regularly are in a Toyota, BMW and Honda, and all of these have well thought out touch/knob implementations.
... I cannot believe they actually put them in a base model Sprinter.
Do they hate tradespeople?
I would have imagined that car infotainment controls would be a small fraction of the BOM, so I've been wondering if it's not really a cost thing. Sort of like small phones or 3D TVs from the early 2000's.
Source - I work in an OEM.
1. Put them always in the same place. Especially the "back" or "exit" button!
2. Each button should do one thing, not switch between 3 or more modes that you should look to understand which one you've just activated. Negative example: one button to cycle from cuise control, to drive assist, to speed limit, and back to off.
3. The area where a tap is interpreted as a button press should not also be where a swipe is recognized. In moving vehicles it is too easy for your finger to swing just an inch before touching the screen.
4. The active area of a virtual button must be large, larger than the icon it displays, so large that you shouldn't be distracted from driving just to aim at it!
IMO luxury manufacturers like MB and BMW tried to squeeze larger screens, more of them and there was not enough space to put those screens, buttins and vents. Some luxuty brands make vents supper slim.
I am a big believer in keeping "product people" away from UI design for dangerous machinery.
The eyes and the attention of the driver should be on the road. All the audio visual noise from the car is just plain dangerous. I don't want my car to draw my attention to itself for anything less than a critical engine/tyre pressure failures. I do not want beeps on anything else distracting me while I am driving.
My Volvo will, for instance, flash the same type of visual alert when fuel level is low (permanent "do you want to navigate to a fuel station" modal window obscuring navigation, speedometer and so on) -- as when it encounters a serious engine malfunction. It will steal a bit of my attention when it pops up. One of those days, someone will have an accident because of this moronic design, its statistically certain.
Same with wipers fluid level low. I need to click on the button to hide the message.
It will on occasion beep very loud when it thinks I am not braking hard enough. The map in the google android car navi rotates when i am just trying to pan. When I want to select an alternative route I need to very precisely touch a very small area on the screen, and more often than not instead of selecting the alternative route it will actually rotate the map.
It is clear to me that either the people designing car UIs are staying away from those cars, or are just incompetent. (Or, I guess, both).
Engineers should be delegated to the worker-bee level and you should just get some gear heads and some soccer moms to design to UI.
This, but unironically.
Big Tech, WTF guys you let gen-z/millennials design your interfaces and ship w/e works for them alone? Seniors have money and can’t use your products
the_homer.jpg
I recently rented a high end car in a foreign country that had all the safety features turned on. Before I arrived I was worried about driving in an unfamiliar country. After I wondered, could I have crashed at all? I was so augmented.
I mean, there are product people who can do UI design for dangerous machinery. Put them back in charge. It seems like in the last decade, these product people were replaced with product people from Internet Attention-Monetizing companies and Gacha games, where you are rewarded if your product "attracted eyeballs" and "fueled engagement" and kept users hooked. These guys moved into car companies and are trying to do the same thing to drivers who are trying to navigate their cars at high speeds.
I think if I were a car company OEM trying to do it right, I'd look at every resume that came across my desk and if they ever worked for an internet software or game company, I'd chuck it in the trash.
What do you think the best implementation would look like? Seems it would still have to strike a balance. It's dangerous to tell the driver they're low on fuel if we distract them. But it's also dangerous for a driver to run out of fuel on the highway if we didn't catch their attention.
Also guessing you’re relatively detail oriented and don’t run out of gas, per:
“I don't want my car to draw my attention to itself for anything less than a critical engine/tyre pressure failures.”
The general public though… uh oh!
Touch screens are (IMHO) terrible for cars because there's no tactile feedback that allows you to use them without looking at the screen. Dials, buttons and switches can be felt and used. It goes beyond being lazy. It's unsafe.
The only reason we got trouch screens in cars at all is cost-cutting.
They now resell a Chinese EV with a very Tesla model 3 inspired interior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_6e#/media/File%3AMazda6e...
I didn’t find the original press release but you can find a lot of copies like the following article.
https://www.motoringresearch.com/car-news/mazda-getting-rid-...
1. Reflections make you tilt, just to make some pesky highlights go away. Even if they are angled properly, there's always something (like a sun reflected by a watche's face) what causes nuissance at any angle
2. Car can go from a tunnel to a sunny valley in few seconds. That's 5 to 8 stops of dynamic range difference, that a human eye is easily designed to handle. Auto adjusting screen brigtness is never as bright as necessary in sunny conditions. Even if it were, it would be a significant battery drain and an element, that heats the cars interior already unnecessarily.
3. You don't have pure blacks in many of them, so that annoying halo at the corner of the eye is often present. You can solve it with an OLED, but those are even worse in bright daylight
4. All of the usually mentioned tactile feedback facts - you can reach with your hand to a AC knob, feel it's current set by finding the bulge with a finger and gently turn exactly how you want them. Zero lag, no eye contact necessary at all (keep that on the road!), instant feedback. Nothing that any screen can ever give.
5. Biggest gripe of all - modality. I think that there were some high ranking studies done early in design exactly against this type of input for high risk applications. Modality is the biggest enemy of discoverability and throws extra delays into otherwise instant input
WINTER AND GLOVES!
Yes it’s a first world proven that I have to take gloves off to turn on my heated seats but buttons made sure stupid problems like this never happened in the first place
amelius•1h ago
ginkgotree•1h ago
greenavocado•52m ago
Legislatively
markus_zhang•49m ago
cf100clunk•47m ago
Mercedes-Benz?
baq•44m ago
cbg0•38m ago
satvikpendem•33m ago
SpicyLemonZest•23m ago
aenis•4m ago
Right now its just ok. My friends S class has visibly mis-aligned buttons (a 200k car). My other friends electric S-class bean-thingy has squeaking doors (a 2 year old, 120k-when-new car) and feels surprisingly cheap to touch and drive. Sure, small sample and all of that but I don't think those are exceptions.
I only drove one Chinese car, and it was just a normal experience - what I'd expect from a volvo, bmw, or audi. Good UI on the infotainment, was below average annoying. No big difference vs. a merc. For sure not a qualitative difference in levels of refinement.
manoDev•16m ago