I have a 2021 Mazda and I can't say enough good things about it's infotainment interface. The dial and 5 buttons on the center console behind the shifter is wonderful, I can glance at the screen while using the dial and I know what each of the 5 buttons do across the system. I've been in a few vehicles from Honda, Toyota and Chevy and the Mazda is multiples better at interacting with the system while driving.
I always buy gadgets with physical buttons when possible.
- Microwave ovens should have a knob-button combo that I can work in 0.5 seconds without looking or reading the manual
- Ovens and stoves should have knobs I can turn with wet or oven-mitted hands
- Cars should have volume buttons I can twist or smack into silence without thinking about it for more than a moment
- Same with seat heaters, wipers, and anything I might do while the car is moving
Ovens and stoves should have knobs I can turn with wet or oven-mitted hands
Ooh, yeah this is a big one for me now. A few years ago I got a new range and the controls are all capacitive touch. Mitts are a minor inconvenience, but also sometimes cooking is messy and liquid gets spilled here or there. Now imagine how your phone works when you get some rain on the screen... yeah, it's not great. I've learned enough tricks to live with it since it's honestly the only thing I don't like about that range, but next time I'll probably shell out a little more for knobs if I have to.
I have a clothes dryer with capacitive touch buttons. When the ambient conditions are just right, static will build up when it is drying clothes, and it will change its own settings randomly.
Aren't dryers grounded?
If a dryer circuit was installed before 1996 there is a good chance it won't be grounded. Before 1996 the US national electrical code allowed 3 wire dryer circuits. Two hot wires and one neutral.
In 1996 that was changed to require new dryer circuits to be 4 wire. Two hots wires, one neutral, and one ground. Existing 3 wire dryer circuits were allowed to remain in use.
Regardless of being grandfathered in (allowed), you should update your drier to a 4-prong cord/outlet (which is ACTUALLY grounded). This does not always require stringing an entire new circuit — NEC (US) allows driers to be grounded with just a single 10awg wire.
Particularly if you operate rentals, the legal liability is perhaps almost as much as NOT retrofitting GFCIs into baths/kitchens.
SRC: not your electrician
Yes. Although I'm not sure if mine was designed to ground the plastic front panel that the buttons are on.
my washer/dryer also has capacitive touch and will usually pause itself this way during a dry cycle if I forget to put the keypad lock on.
it's an absolute failure of product design in my eyes
I've used a stovetop like that in the past. I don't understand how this crap gets through even rudimentary testing. First time I used it I damn near started a fire because the controls became unusuable at the worst possible time. And false inputs are a real problem too.
One of the reasons we chose our current oven was the simple, easy controls and clear display:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WHXlXwYWETA/UbHwdsgx5dI/AAAAAAAAA_...
There's a reason the most important controls on phones (which are all about interactive interfaces) are physical buttons!
The microwave oven we had in the 80's when I was a kid had two knobs, and a single button.
Knob 1: A rotary timer. Twist it so the little arrow points at the time to cook (+/- 30 seconds)
Knob 2: Nobody knows. This was some sort of a "mode" selector that wasn't touched in eight years as far as I remember.
Button: More similar to a space bar on a mechanical keyboard - push to start cooking.
The door was just a simple "pull to open", there was no "eject" button to open the door.
When it was done cooking, there was a single "ding".
Panasonic I bet, with woodgrain printed metal case. I can still feel the satisfying clunk the door on ours made.
Nope, Amana Radar Range
When I first got my own place I scored a Litton (!) from a thrift store with the same layout. It must have weighed 20 kilos; the thing was a tank.
Team Amana Radar Range, represent!
Nailed it. The thing weighed like 100 lbs too.
Some microwave ovens without an open button develop arcing problems when users open the door while power is on.
Ovens and stoves should have knobs I can turn with wet or oven-mitted hands
Stoves with touchscreen buttons that become completely unusable as soon as more that 4 water molecules get within a 2 metre radius are infuriating beyond belief.
I sometimes had to disable the fuses to turn off the indiction stove. I kid you not. It would beep incessantly if something spilled near the controls (it was all one flat surface, so easy thing to do when e.g. boiling anything) and I just couldn't turn the fucking thing off.
I genuinely wonder if the people who designed this have ever tried using it themselves in any real-world conditions. It's just broken.
I have had a couple of AEG capacitive touch stoves, and they've been pretty good. You do need to have a tea towel to hand to aggressively wipe any spills near the controls - but the stove detects if the controls are wet, locks them out and then gives you about 10 seconds before it turns itself completely off - which is normally enough time to dry the spill.
The benefits in ease of cleaning outweigh the negatives in my opinion. And I use that stove a lot.
I don't recall what brand I had, it was at my previous rental, and it would indeed "lock up", which is fine but it was damn near impossible to unlock it after that and it just kept on beeping at a it "hurts my ears" volume level. And dealing with the finicky controls while that's inflicted on you while your food is burning ... yeah, I'd rather spend a bit of extra time cleaning.
If your food is burning, you can always lift the pan off the stove. It's pretty rare that I'm cooking something that is 10 seconds away from being burnt anyway.
Saying that, I suspect there's a whole load of manufacturers who put different levels of thought into their capacitive controls. I only gave my example because I'm really happy with it - and so in my opinion it's not a universal problem with touch controls on stoves. Every time I stay in an AirBnB I'm surprised by just how bad a lot of cooking appliances are though - really unintuitive timers, poor quality knobs, very primitive technology (precisely controlling temperature really isn't that hard!)
n=1, and I can't comment on your stove obviously, but I hated mine with such a passion that I will never get anything like this ever again if I have any say in the matter.
One of the difficulties of these sort of things is that it's really hard to know if something is any good unless you've actually used it in real-world conditions a few times.
> Microwave ovens should have a knob-button combo that I can work in 0.5 seconds without looking or reading the manual
Alas, a knob is no guarantee of a decent user interface. I have a higher-end GE microwave with a knob that is completely inert until you know what you're supposed to press first. Granted, "cook time" is not an entirely unintuitive prerequisite, but why the designers didn't at least consider that this would be the 95% use case and simply default the knob to that function is beyond me.
a higher-end GE microwave with a knob that is completely inert until you know what you're supposed to press first
Breville has, in my experience, nailed the interaction between physical knobs and digital input.
I have a Breville toaster oven and it has the best UX of any of my kitchen appliances. It really feels like they thought through all the details.
Every Breville appliance I have feels that way.
I’m minutes away from replacing my instapot purely because I feel like it’s ui will cause an explosion one day and the Breville won’t.
My wife and I just bought a very expensive range, to replace a very nice one that was probably twenty years or older. Every time they showed us something with a touchscreen or display I was like, "next". Imagine how stuff like that is going to age. With most home fixtures I have found the more basic and standard (although not necessarily the cheapest) the more likely they are to survive and be repairable. No fancy faucets please! I can measure water myself.
Yeah it's crazy how my process for evaluating expensive purchases (cars, appliances) has changed from looking for what I do want to mostly focusing on what I don't want. So many products have gotten bogged down with anti-features like touch screens, AI nonsense, or shitty phone apps.
When I was car shopping a couple years ago I immediately disqualified at least half of the ones I looked at because of garbage features. Now I'm looking for a new fridge and that market hasn't gotten as bad yet, but it's already bad. I have no interest in a fridge that has a camera and a wifi connection, or needs an app to change the temperature.
I swear, we've reached the point where the budget models, which lack almost all of that crap, are the best models you can buy.
I bought a Dacia Duster and I love the physical buttons and knobs. It's a cheap brand with tech lagging behind the current by about ten years (guesstimate), which is annoying when it comes to safety features, but I love that I don't need to read the manual back to back to understand all its features and I can control the AC in curvy mountain roads without hesitation. And, big plus, they didn't invent their own silly overly complicated custom OS, you just connect your phone and you are good to go.
>I bought a Dacia Duster and I love the physical buttons and knobs
You know what's funny? The 2024 Dacia Duster, still a cheap but functional car, has 4 physical switches to control the windows, unlike the mess that's the VW ID.4 which went full cost cutting mode to the extreme.
How did VW fall so low? If a budget Franco-Romanian brand can school them on UX, then the Chinese will eat them alive.
Yes, that has been one of my biggest gripes with our Ford Fusion. The seat heater control is on the touch screen which is (a) not very responsive or accurate when cold and (b) taken over by the rear view camera when backing up. If you miss the seat heat button, it goes to another view where the buttons move and are only slightly bigger. Almost all of the climate and radio controls are mirrored in touch buttons under the screen that also can't be felt while driving or operated with gloves.
I really like the climate controls on my slightly older Jetta, with three knobs: temp, fan, and position. The left- and right-most knobs have a button in the center that controls the heated seats. VW had a perfect system and I hope more automakers rediscover knobs and buttons soon.
Microwave ovens should have a knob-button combo that I can work in 0.5 seconds without looking or reading the manual.
We have a microwave with a knob to set the duration and another to set the clock, with two small buttons (one is 12/24 hours, the other I can't remember).
Every guest we had who tried to use the microwaive failed it, because it was so not intuitive to just turn to set the duration ... and then wait a couple seconds before heating starts automatically.
I wish there was a physical start button.
The best UI on a gadget more complicated than a toaster that I've experienced was on a Maytag commercial washer/dryer combo. Just knobs, no buttons, let alone capacitive buttons or touch screens. Reminiscent of the old dumb machines but a sprinkling of smarts that made it better, not more complicated.
It also shows the power of a good vendor. My uncle had a dealer he knew well and trusted, so bought them sight unseen when his old ones broke. Probably paid extra for the commercial line rather than the consumer line, but I assume they will last way longer too.
Modern induction stove tops driving me insane ... All touchscreens. Everything else is better about them but just can't find any with actual physical controls.
Just like everything else I remember at the time most of HN were singing songs and praise about the Tesla infotainment interface and everything touch screen. People who preferred buttons were the minorities. "You already have to look at buttons for playing songs or X why not make everything touch screen."
Now the tide has finally turned. Sigh.
I haven't driven a Tesla, but perhaps the interface is more intuitive? I feel like on VW and others with terrible interfaces, it was more of an afterthought, kinda like a web app that spent $200k on the API and then had a budget of $10k for the front end that needed to go live in a couple of weeks.
The Tesla interface reminds me of the iOS settings page. A huge list of options and you have to drill down multiple levels to find the setting you want to change. Definitely not easy to use while driving, IMO.
There have been lots of complaints because there are no physical controls for things such as windshield wiper speed on some Tesla models. They just put out a software update in response to complaints about that, but people don't seem to like the "fix".
https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaModelY/comments/1305970/finall...
I test drove a Model S but ended up buying a RAV4 Prime plug-in hybrid instead. The controls are much better on the RAV4. There are physical buttons for almost everything.
A huge list of options and you have to drill down multiple levels to find the setting you want to change.
I'm confused by your concept that there are multiple levels -There isn't. There is the car page with 10 tabs, all with only top-level information and the default tab has steering wheel and mirror controls, both are set-it-and-forget-it with driver profiles.
The wipers suck, for sure. I honestly think they could fix that in a software update or at least make more intuitive controls. Currently the wipe speed menu pops up if you hit the wipe button. That said, zero of the settings in the car menu should ever be used while driving. The auto-headlights work well enough and it has a traditional stalk for that anyways.
I'm confused by your concept that there are multiple levels -There isn't. There is the car page with 10 tabs
Ten tabs? This sounds complicated.
I assure you, attempt to find a way to turn off the interior ambient lighting on a VW. The Tesla design is organized - Controls, Steering, Autopilot, Safety, etc all clearly labeled on one menu. VW has two different menus for the car and hides some settings on weird pages with at least four levels deep. For all the settings that exist, Tesla is close to the most simple. Android Automotive on the Polestar 2 is about the same difficulty.,
What settings would you ever want to change there? The settings in the settings menu are something you setup when you buy the car and generally never touch again.
Why sigh?
Why downvote a simple question?
Comments without content and humor is a sure fire way on HN to get downvoted.
Oh the drama. I'll downvote them, as payback haha.
I had a rant about a the whole thing, but I deleted it before posting but somehow left the sign there.
Just like everything else I remember at the time most of HN were singing songs and praise about the Tesla infotainment interface and everything touch screen. People who preferred buttons were the minorities.
My recollection is different. I recall there was always a significant sentiment against eliminating buttons and knobs in favor of a centralized touch screen.
That happened much later. The sentiment of eliminating buttons and knobs came post 2016 / 2017. And it started to grow since.
These are not necessary the same people ;)
There is a sea of distance between the UI on a Tesla, and the UI on the Volkswagen. The lack of buttons in a Tesla is mildly annoying but everything is still pretty usable.
On the VW the software is so bad it makes you want to scream in despair, and the buttons they do have are the worst of both worlds: unclear, unresponsive, no feedback, and invisible in the dark.
I think in VWs case there was the additional circumstance that their touch screen was just abysmal.
There's a big difference between classic Tesla Model S, which had lots of physical buttons for the traditional things that cars used physical buttons for; but also had the big touchscreen...
And the Model 3, etc... which, well... sorry, I won't drive one.
Yes, I know you can program buttons on the stalks and crap, but I'm the kind of person who has used emacs for 30 years with the stock keybindings, so...
Had a 20' Jetta and then a 22' Taos, a Volvo Xc40 and now a Tesla Model 3. Comparing VW MIB with Tesla's OS is like comparing a knockoff android TV streaming stick plugged into a 720p tv with an iPad Pro. Just miles of difference in UX, design, and performance. After having it for three months, so far my take is that the VW does exactly one thing better - Wiper controls. Notably, the Tesla Auto Wiper is pure trash and the VW one works well so you don't need to play with it. You are constantly in the Tesla menu because auto-wipers just don't work correctly.
Touch screen is good for setup and info display but should not be used for active control while driving.
Hiding the wipers or lights or temperature controls deep in menus is a flippin' disaster.
Hyundai has about the right balance from what I have seen.
Hyundai has about the right balance from what I have seen.
Owner of a '23 Ioniq 5 here. Hyundai has struck a balance, but not quite the right balance. There are physical buttons, but they don't control the climate or seat warmers. In fact, one of my few annoyances with this car is when I use the physical volume button, my finger often brushes up against the capacitive "climate" button area, hence flipping on the heat when I just wanted to turn the podcast down.
Now, there are the usual physical controls like wiper and turn signals, but that's not because Hyundai are paragons of control design, but rather because they're not idiots. And the complaints above are not that big a deal, as the "buttons" are right at hand. But with just a minor tweak or two, they could have done much better. And, as other commenters point out, it could be much, much worse.
There are physical buttons, but they don't control the climate or seat warmers.
Most Hyundai's I've seen have a physical button for the seat warmers and a nice 1 knob control for automated climate. Just turn to the temperature you want and the car handles whatever is needed to get you there. It don't get any simpler.
Ugh, “one knob” controls are the worst in cold climates.
I'm curious, could you expand on what makes them bad for cold climates?
Off the top of my head, what you want in a warm car when the doors have opened and a shivering passenger gets in is very different from what you want when the car is cold and you're sitting in a cold seat is very different from what you want when a burst of mild humidity from a conversation or bag of hot food hits the windshield is very different than what you want when you want the interior to warm up as fast as possible without regard to windchill because nobody is in the car right now.
The issues are similar to tying the seat warmers into that single control.
Ioniq 5 is at the top of my list for when we go car shopping, probably late next year. Coming from a pre-touchscreen-era 2011 Mazda, I'm pretty nervous about the UI disaster cars have turned into these days. I wish Mazda would build a good EV, but it sounds like it's not happening any time in the near term.
Also consider the EV6, since they're the same platform (very much the same, though have a few UX differences, as I described in another comment)
Cheers, will do.
Oh, it's not so bad that I would not consider buying the car (like we did with VW). Day-to-day it's not a huge deal. If the auto-climate is already set to what you like, then you just hit the clearly-labelled, but-still-capacitive, "climate" button and you're done. And the voice control actually...works; what will they think of next? :-)
But it certainly could be better.
Own a Kia EV6, the sibling to that car. I'm unsure if it's the case on the Ioniq 5, but the GT Line has that same problem, but the lesser trim that I have (Wind) actually has real buttons for those controls. (Wind doesn't have HUD, auto door handles, or sunroof)
We have the top-trim Ioniq, but AFAICT the controls are the same as lower-spec vehicles. It is interesting how the two cars are badge-engineered, but have such different interiors.
IMO it shouldn't be a touchscreen at all. By nature you have to look at it to interact. Just have a nontouch screen for display purposes, and physical buttons to interact with it as necessary.
I can't put my phone in a cup holder and change songs at a red light, they'll take my license.
Yet the car comes with a device I also need to take my eyes off the road and poke around at.
Which you don’t need to poke at while you are driving.
Unless there are safety critical controls on those screens, which was the root complaint in this thread.
Yes, it's kinda comical isn't it.
It's illegal to use your cellphone while driving in many areas --- so they built a cellphone UI into the car --- which is every bit as distracting and dangerous to use while driving.
I bought 3 VWs, then switched to a Mazda for my last car after they went full-touchscreen. And I told my dealer that was the reason when they called me. I assume they ran that up to the boardroom in Germany, and that's why this changed. You're welcome, everybody. /s
This is reassuring for the simple fact that actual buttons just work. The touch sliders and whatnot in the Mk8 Golf and ID.4 are finicky, only operating like they should some of the time. They also aren't backlit, making them difficult to find and use in the dark.
I'd frame it differently. It's not that, under certain circumstances, buttons work better than touchscreens. It's that there are particular situations when touchscreens are superior to physical buttons (nav is one of them), and for every other use case, buttons provide a more intuitive, consistent, discoverable, pleasurable experience for users. Because I can do GPS nav on my phone anyway, if I have to choose one, I'd say it's reasonable to conclude that physical controls are superior in general as UI for cars.
The other problem with touchscreen interfaces is that, paradoxically, they can result in worse design. You'd think that an all-software interface would give designers more options. What it seems to do—and many designers will recognize this antipattern from the real world—is make it so that you don't get as much time to think about the right design, and you don't have to make the difficult decisions that result in a simple, opinionated design. Instead, the UI ends up being an afterthought because it's just software, and every VP with a dumb idea gets to have it crammed into the design. That's why touchscreen controls for cars still suck, 10 years into them being ubiquitous, while a dashboard from the 1970s can be controlled by a child.
I took a class in cognitive design (fancy name for controls design) with Donald Norman (he wrote Design of Everyday things) and his standard assignment was to ask us to make the controls for a clock radio television. This was a long time ago. One of the points of the exercise was to make us realize that combining different devices and their controls didn't always make sense. In the same sense in a car their is a lot to be gained by keeping the controls for audio and the controls for temperature separate. The only good reason is to save money on buttons and knobs.
Awesome was this class at UCSD in the cogsci department?
Yes
The only good reason is to save money on buttons and knobs.
That’s not quite right. At scale the buttons and knobs are cheap. Having designed many control panels for a wide range of applications, I can tell you that good design is an excruciatingly long and painfully expensive undertaking.
You cannot recompile your way out of a poorly working physical control panel or bad design. You can’t just throw something together for testing and finish it while other teams complete the design of the rest of the car, machine, etc.
As a real example, you might have to evaluate hundreds of button designs for tactile, audible and visible feel. Once sub-selected, you might evaluate over a dozen full scale control panel mock-ups before design lock. Etc.
Touch screens allow you to eliminate a huge portion of what goes into creating a user interphase.
Good to know! I always thought it was to save money.
The VWs/Cupras I've driven recently have had these insane buttons on the steering wheel, that aren't physical but supposedly does some weird vibration/haptic feedback when pressed. Makes it absolutely impossible to control the cruise control etc. Just insane. Reason alone for me not considering those cars at all when buying.
Touch buttons yeah. Combining the worst of both worlds. By being both touch and buttons and at the same time not being buttons physically so not having the ergonomy of the button and not being a touchscreen and so not having the flexibility of that...
I really was baffled by this decision. Not believing this headline until I see it.
Apple got away with it on their mouse pads. I’m still surprised it’s more efficient than an actual button.
When the whole thing is one big button, it works. Not otherwise.
When many people vote with money, they have to listen.
I’m not buying a Tesla precisely for that reason. Physical touch is powerful.
You don’t need to look, the fingers just do what the Brian thinks.
I bought 3 VWs, then switched to a Mazda for my last car after they went full-touchscreen. And I told my dealer that was the reason when they called me. I assume they ran that up to the boardroom in Germany, and that's why this changed. You're welcome, everybody. /s
Thank you, sweetheart!!!
I know you jest, but really, thank you -- assuming the bit where you told the dealer is actually real. ;-)
Believe me, you’re definitely not the only one. Every single person I know that drives a recent Audi or VW hates it — even I wrote it in a feedback form when I got my car from the factory in Wolfsburg; the employees just told me they know, they agree and it’ll probably change very soon. Hilariously they said “you know how the design people up there are, this year needs to be different from the other car makers, this and that, don’t worry, they’ll obviously go back”
Does anyone have a reasonable explanation for why this is done?
Then there's the ID.4, which only has two window switches on the driver's door, with a separate button that shifts their controls between the front and rear windows.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/vw-ceo-admits-frustrating-golf...
Unreal. Note that explanations like "they want to make everything software" don't work, because it was still physical buttons. At best you are reducing the number of physical buttons by two, but then also increasing the number of haptic buttons by one.
Here is a video by VW that tries to explain it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDj4sSyNl_Y
Just absolute lunacy.
In my career, I've found that a lot of poor decisions like this get made in a committee that's already been at each other's throats for 7 hours and just wants to go home for the day.
And option 3 is 11c/unit cheaper.
Probably a consultant like Munro told them that two buttons fewer is saving them $2 per car, they make million cars, so they’ve just saved them two million bucks, and "it looks cleaner".
I have come to read things like "it looks cleaner" or "it's minimalistic" as being a big red flag that the UI is awful.
Oddly enough that is the only thing I like about the ID models. I constantly roll down the rear windows on my VAG car when I enter car parks accidentally. On the ID.3 this does not happen, because I just never tap the mode switch button. Operating the rear windows is such an uncommon operation for me, that I really do not see the need.
Haha that video is actually insane... that the guy even had to call someone to get it explained to him. And that you can hold the touch-sensitive surface that doesn't look like a button at all until the "REAR" label on it blinks (which you can't see because it'll be under your fucking finger), and that means the switch (which one?) will control all 4 windows... what the actual fuck.
touch buttons are cheaper and 3 buttons are cheaper than 4. They must have save a huge 1$ or something.
"no modes"- Larry Tesler
Does anyone have a reasonable explanation for why this is done?
It‘s cheaper. That’s all there is to it.
Automotive design is heavily influenced by bill—of-materials cost, there are committees upon committees deliberating and ultimately deciding on saving cents per unit.
Designers running rampant with no UX oversight combined with 'Hey it is cheaper'. Anything to look cool to the next buyer.
It’s the same stupidity on the latest top of the line Volvo XC90 as well. It feels like the designers have never driven a car.
I think the transition is jarring for many people and while ultimately I think physical buttons are often better, I am the type that will gladly accept a little degradation in favor of progress and minimalism. I also think there's an extremely vocal minority that feels like no-buttons is backwards progress.
Note, this is not an excuse or justification for touchscreen-only interfaces, but my personal feelings towards the matter.
I have two Teslas and I have never found the touchscreen to be a problem when the "automatic" setting is GOOD. For example, I almost never touch the AC. I set it to the temperature I like and it keeps me comfortable during the entire ride.
However, when things like the automatic windshield wipers are bad (and they constantly fluctuate between disastrous and good enough between software updates), I get really frustrated because I have to tinker with the bullshit screen too much.
Personally, I think the end game is minimalist physical buttons (some multipurpose) + software that is actually good enough to not interact with the touchscreen very often. Most companies that aren't Tesla really struggle on the latter portion.4
After having these 2 cars for a couple of years, I find most cars extremely cluttered and almost claustrophobic. I really like how clean and simple the Tesla interior is. I hope we don't overcorrect back into the 2010s and even 80s style of "put a button right in front for EVERYTHING." But I do think there's a ton of room for healthy middle ground.
accept a little degradation in favor of progress
What does this mean?
Progress means making it better, degradation means making it worse. It can't be both.
Too many industries seem to confuse "new" with "better".
New just means it is a recent change, it might be better or much worse.
New does not make something better. Better is better. Sometimes what is better is how it used to be.
I mean when two concepts are at war and are sometimes incompatible.
For example, I am a PC gamer. I think mouse / keyboard is the best way to play many types of games.
But it impractical to have a M/KB on a phone.
So when I play a mobile game I wish I had a M/KB, but I am OK with sacrificing it because I have a portable form factor that was previously not possible.
The new Volvo CX30, for example, put a lot of very simple buttons in the center so they wouldn't need to manufacture a left side driver and right side driver model with completely different layouts. It's likely not as intuitive, but the reduction in manufacturing costs allows them to deliver EVs for cheaper.
This is the kind of idea I was trying to convey, but I admit it was confusing.
Surprisingly nobody else has mentioned having physical buttons on a phone. But IMO a keyboard is absolutely practical for a phone. One of the first smartphones I bought had a slide-out keyboard. It's nice to be able to tell when you hit a button and that you're hitting the right one. My fat fingers can't handle on-screen keyboards well, and swiping words never works as well as I hope. So I end up frustrated and trying to fix my text constantly.
So your argument is basically, "touchscreens are OK as long as I don't have to actually use them"? And I don't get your argument about degradation in favour of progress -- progress towards what, exactly?
Yes. When I am charging, or not moving, I GREATLY prefer the touchscreen over hundreds of physical buttons scattered all over the car. The minimalism is appreciated. Less moving parts to break, less clutter, and everything is extremely centralized.
When I am driving 85mph obviously I don't want to have to look over at a screen to adjust windshield wiper settings.
One day, ideally most of this stuff is handled automatically or through a simple interface like voice. Stuff like window controls should always exist, but things like windshield wipers or speed should ideally be automated one day.
"New" isn't the same as "progress". Touchscreen-only interfaces are a degradation in favor of degradation.
I think you are intentionally ignoring the benefits in favor of your point.
Controls are centralized, I have everything in one place which I greatly prefer. There are far less physical buttons that can break or wear out. Manufacturing is much simpler. Visually it's far less cluttered.
And no cars are going "touchscreen only." Even Tesla with its aggressive move towards less parts still has controls for windows, hazards, lights, etc.
I am the type that will gladly accept a little degradation in favor of progress and minimalism.
Is it really progress if it's a degradation? And what's so awesome about minimalism that it's worth a worse UI? Just trying to understand the cost/benefit analysis here.
I'll give you an example of something that I think is progress and some may disagree with me.
For vent control on a Tesla, you have to pull up a visualization and "drag" the airflow to where you want it to go. Kinda silly compared to just moving your vent like in the old days.
But when I use it on that screen, I can adjust airflow for ALL of my passengers from one spot. I can change the airflow for multiple areas of the car, I can change heated/cooled seats, I can split the air, I can turn on biohazard mode, etc.
To contrast this, on my previous car, the physical "heated seats" button was in a different place for every single seat. So if my wife or kid left theirs on, it stayed on unless I reach across the car to turn it off or get out and go into the backseat.
I get that this is an extremely minor example, but I do think a combination of good centralized physical buttons and a well made UI can be a good combo.
Another small simple example I'm thinking of off the top of my head is sound balance. On my previous car to change fade/balance to avoid waking small children on a road trip, it was a physical button click and scrolling through menus to scroll an arbitrary number for left/right, then backing out, then doing the same for an arbitrary number for back/front. In a Tesla, I just pull up the visualization and click one time in one spot for exactly where I want the sound to be centered.
These little things add up and I think eventually someone will nail it.
I agree Tesla's touchscreen is perfect.
I would love to disable few things in UI (i.e. some minimalistic mode with speedo only) but it's fine.
What I do hate with climate is the stupid vents. I know many people hate when wind blows to their face, but I love it and it's impossible to get it right in mine. Even if you dial it down to be barely acceptable it seems to reset after each drive.
I guess I'm in a minority, as I like the minimalist elegance of a Tesla touchscreen and voice controls.
For me, "I press the button and it does what I wanted" is both minimalist and elegant. Form must follow function.
I'd disagree, because a button for everything means a button for every function. This very quickly becomes cluttered, which is the opposite of minimalist.
Everything can be done badly; a digital design can be just as cluttered as a physical one. And conversely, a physical design with few, well-chosen functions doesn't need to be cluttered.
I also didn't say I wanted a button for every function. But this is getting off into the weeds.
My aim was to say that "minimalism" can be applied in different ways. For example, minimalism in the number of features, or in the complexity of the overall system, or in the ease of operating it.
This is honestly the first time I've ever heard anyone describe Tesla's "glue a giant iPad to a dashboard" approach to interface design as being elegant. I'm guessing the voice controls are the elegant part? Because that screen is my least favorite part of my Tesla, and my Tesla-owning friends feel the same.
I personally prefer tactile interfaces on everything — cars, home appliances, tools , etc. But producers are not to blame here. Consumers are buying these products based on appearance and not usability. The flashy-but-useless UI trend will continue until consumers purchasing decisions change.
If VW produced a 90s style interior today, would anyone buy it? Yes it would be more usable and safer , but it wouldn’t sell.
This is a good point. Some of us would want different products. Is there just not enough of us or is this a situation similar to the instant fashion where someone else just decides what is "best for the people"?
The Corrado was amazing in its day!
Have a 2023 ID.4. There are three things I do most frequently:
- Connect my phone via CarPlay (as only user).
- Adjust AC depending on outside temperature and passengers.
- Plug car in at home to charge after midnight (cheaper rates).
In all three cases, the car forgets previous settings, requires multiple taps (up to 5-6 at a time), or makes it hard to find the screen to make the adjustment.
My last car ran fine for 20+ years. This is the third VW I've ever driven; the first two were a long time ago. I intentionally leased this one since I figured EV technology would evolve, so best to hold off before purchasing outright.
Unless they figure out how to make those features be 0-touch (or even 1-touch) operations, this will be the last VW for me. The EV part works fine, but I grit my teeth every time I get in or out of the car.
My sister got an earlier ID.4, and after a weekend trip to our cabin I got to experience the horrible AC controls.
I got a Renault Megane e-Tech this summer, and it does the things you mention right. Not only does it remember AC settings, CarPlay/Android Auto and such per profile (my SO uses Android Auto, I don't), but it has physical buttons for adjusting temperature, fan speed, max AC, rear window heater and air recycling.
While they have physical buttons they can also be adjusted via the voice interface of course.
Having physical buttons for those key operations is one of the reasons we got it. Not having it was a hard pass.
Compared to our previous BMW i3, I also really enjoy having easy access to the regen settings via paddles on the steering wheel. I live in the suburbs, so drive a lot on both fast and slow roads, and actively switching between regen settings depending on speed limit and traffic makes it more enjoyable to drive.
We rented a cheap 2022 Clio this spring and I was really impressed with how ergonomic the controls were. The car actually did everything I wanted for me, even automatically closing the doors when I left or openng them when I was nearby.
Even before I used adblockers I purposefully bought a speakerset with one big volume knob to turn down the volume whenever an ad or otherwise annoying sound 'hit' my computer. No more fiddling with mouse clicks in menus to regulate the volume. Also no buttons to gradually turn down the volume step-by-step, just swing the wheel. Best purchase ever for peace of mind.
I'm spoiled by keyboards that have a single button for mute. That said, one of the best keyboards I've owned was a Das Keyboard Pro with a giant volume knob like you described.
Nice one! Integrated in the keyboard would be even better for me.
I had a Volkswagen Arteon Shooting Brake as a rental car on holiday this summer. Me and my family just loved the car, but the buttons on the steering wheel were really weird. I am not sure if you can get used to it, but I really prefer classic buttons on the steering wheel, so I get clear feedback when pressing them.
Too bad the Arteon will be phased out and the ID7, which looks like a great car, will have the same buttons. At least the new Passat seems to get the haptic buttons again.
Off-topic: Is this only my perception or many things lately that come in single digit tiers (with some mostly irrelevant prefixes)? It is not a bad trend really (number big -> thing pricey), but funny to see.
Volkswagen just wanted to make everything new with their electric cars. Therefore they chose the "ID" prefix, which is probably supposed to sound futuristic to the average buyer. But Audi for example had something very similar going on for a long time with their A2, A3, ... A8 and Q3, Q4, ... Q8.
My wife has a 2023 ID.4. As the article says, it's a good EV ruined by the touch controls. It is without a doubt the worst UX I've experienced in any car. Prime example: a touch toggle with no real feedback to switch between the front and rear window controls, since there's only one button.
(also a driver of a 2023 id4): That switch between rear and front windows is mindbogglingly terrible UX.
Other bad UX:
I also only have one user profile setup and I have to hit "okay" every time I start my car.
The self parking feature works maybe 40% of the time.
You cannot disable child locks independently, it's either on or off.
The alert that my phone is charging everytime I put it into the wireless charging spot.
Cannot disable assists without disabling acc.
I also only have one user profile setup and I have to hit "okay" every time I start my car.
I blame Netflix, fairly or not, for this UI pattern.
The idea of "choosing a profile" on startup is a UX that I don't think was common before Netflix made it the de facto in streaming.
Now every video streaming service, regardless of how many profile _actually_ exist (for me, only one), asks you to pick a profile on startup. Absolutely annoying.
I am definitely in the minority here. I want a touch screen and I want control. I did (and do) love the VW tactical knobs in my VW Golf, but the Mazda knob is horrific for me.
I want dumb TVs that I can control in my house. I want dumb screens that mirror my phones UX in my car. I want dumb pipes delivering my internet. I want control.
That said, I do agree outside of "infotainment" I want knobs and buttons for the actual car processes like A/C, windows, etc.
I do agree outside of "infotainment" I want knobs and buttons for the actual car processes like A/C, windows, etc.
I'd be fine with that, since I wouldn't be using the "infotainment" stuff to begin with. But everything that I need to adjust while driving needs to be a physical control that I don't have to look at when I use it.
I would expect something like a new VW car interface, that is put into millions of cars, to pass some kind of internal design review. How do these things (like touch controlled AC sliders without backlight) get introduced, which would take two minutes of usability testing to be thrown out? Can this just be explained by cost savings, or is there something else going on?
The entire industry shifted, from the suppliers to OEMs.
Thread from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38678853
That one only spent 21 minutes on HN's front page and the source looks a bit dodgier, so maybe we'll let the current thread run as well. Interested readers might want to look at both.
Too bad Volvo needed to burn an entire (upcoming) model generation with their own UI/UX experimentation:
https://cdn.motor1.com/images/mgl/Akg2QO/s1/2025-volvo-ex30-...
All I wanted was an electric version of the V90 wagon. Instead, Volvo wants to sell us space-cars ... Tron-mobiles ... eInitiative iCars.
Since a model generation is something like five years long, it's going to be a while.
Two summers ago, I went Volvo shopping.
The dealer was absolutely disconnected from his product offerings, and ultimately I left frustrated. The "Inflation Reduction" Act revoked their rebate, which had me balk at Volvo's pricing. Thankfully, I did not purchase a Recharge Hybrid Volvo (they changed mid-year, as did their infotainment provider).
Even VW's physical buttons don't guarantee an intuitive UI. I tried to set the clock on a Jetta and had to look it up online. At first I went through the infotainment system's screen, which had settings for just about everything else. Why not the clock? Who knows. Anyway, there was a promising looking button on the dashboard to the right of the steering wheel (i.e. fairly near the clock) that did something with the clock, but no combination of pressing it actually let me actually set the clock. It turns out there is a second button on the dashboard, on the left side of the steering wheel, that is used to configure whether you are setting the hours or minutes, and must be used in conjunction with the button on the right side of the dash. I consider this a hard UI fail.
I consider this a hard UI fail.
Absolutely. I shall henceforth refer to this as the Kmoser UX Test: Can the clock be set intuitively?
Great that they're putting them back, but even then, the included pictures make it clear they have no idea why they're putting them back or what the actual issue was with removing them. Hiding them, essentially, behind the steering wheel on the driver's left hand side instead of putting them back in the center console is really, really dumb. Less dumb than the touchscreen, but still dumb.
It's so people get into accidents and they can say 'oh told you so'
Good. I have an ID4 and really like but the touch panel for climate controls is definitely a nuisance, physical buttons are definitely preferable.
Glad to see this trend is going in reverse.
I have the climate control to resume, so I don't often need to adjust it.
I also use the siri shortcut to start climate control a few minutes before I leave the house.
..and the piano black stuff please.
I recently watched this video: "NEW BYD Seal vs Tesla Model 3 vs VW ID.7" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-f9mLCxgrw
Shocked at how ugly the VW interface was, esp in their next flagship.
I will say this: I used to have the first gen VW CC. Loved that car, especially the physical "Jump" (that's how it was labeled) button that took you to the first radio station preset. So I got used to ordering my music stations by preference, so I could move through the list by the steering wheel arrows but go back directly to #1 whenever I wanted. Can't believe how much I miss that feature.
>Shocked at how ugly the VW interface was, esp in their next flagship.
And bear in mind that this is the end product after VW spent billions on a sister spin-off company, Cariad, that would just focus on creating the best possible in-car software separate from their archaic car business. And this is what they got. Now they're gonna lay off thousands.
There's something with big German companies and consumer facing software that never manages to click no matter how much money they spend. If you have a broken design culture/process with terrible managers, it won't matter how much money you spend or how many people you lay off.
Everyone - This isn't about the touch screen. This is about the buttons in recent VWs that are touch based, including the steering wheel and window selector switch for the window buttons. All of these are capacitive and are horrible.
Yeah, capacitive buttons, my old nemesis. Worst of both worlds. Guess I need to read up why those were invented even.
Tesla please read this article.
UI is hard for any carmaker to get right. The target user range (from pops to teen to soccer mom to SV tycoon) is way, way wider than the typical user that gets a figma-designed UX on top of React. Being conservative pays off in this arena, but, duh, we do need innovation and evolution in cars too, specially .
I tend to get confused when cars have too many buttons, console cluster areas and there are cars where, after years as a owner, I just couldn't find the alert button, the rear defogger or some of the other "quick-fire" buttons, such as the "resume" cruise position on the steering wheel right joystick on my wife's Kia. Yes, things buried deep in a menu can also be annoying. To me the best compromise is: give me a steering-wheel "mouse" so that I can at least hit a shortcut somewhere without lifting my hands off the steering wheel.
I would be willing to pay an extra $5k just to have the exact layout of the 2006 Honda CR-V.
I could manage every setting of that vehicle without even looking.
It was standardised across most Hondas, so I could do the same in any other vehicle of the same model era range.
https://static0.topspeedimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uplo...
05/06 CRV were the best vehicles Honda ever made. Absolutely reliable and super easy to work on. Crazy amount of rear legroom. A hatch that swings sideways instead of up. Roof rails that you can bolt a 2x4 to to haul stuff around. And they have a picnic table in the back!
That's good to hear. I test drove a Range Rover and it was bewildering. Buttons would change function based on which mode they were in. It became very confusing very quickly and I had to pull over and spend a few minutes to figure it out. Even then it was awful.
Were you really considering one? They're rated consistently at the bottom in terms of reliability and have for 30 years or more. Porsche and BMW make a much higher quality vehicle in that price range.
(Don't get me wrong, I'd love an old Defender 90; those are cool)
Buttons aren’t necessary if the UI doesn’t suck.
I'd love to see even a single example of this being true. How can a touch screen UI be so good that it can be operated without looking at it?
In my first car (1989 Ford Escort, 3-door) I could adjust both temperature and radio volume without loosing eye contact with the road. I felt under control and safe. Recently I've rented a Tesla Model 3 and man, how far did we come since then. If just the voice control did not keep telling me "Sorry, I can not do that yet".
My dad (65yo) just bought a new car with a mediocre central display. It makes me super uneasy to see him drive. The man used to slap me over my wrist for looking at my phone while driving. Now it takes him 1+ seconds JUST TO adjust his eye sight to be able to while switching from the road to the display and back! Then he has to navigate the touch menus...
I am really worried he is going to hurt himself or someone in 10 years time he will likely own this car.
I don't know why car manufacturer need to re-invent things in interior.
Many people are familiar with shifting knob but now companies are introducing switches (Tesla takes it up notch in their latest cyber truck, they are putting drive switches below rear view mirror) I would prefer for critical activities like wiper, heater where I can rely on muscle memory.
Woohoo collective sanity prevails! Now let’s do Tesla!
The TV in the center console needs an off button
Related, it's good to see that while VW was unable to resist the cargo cult of touchscreen maximalism and must now course-correct, they presumably (based on the images in the article) never adopted the dreadful ergonomics pioneered by the Prius and popularized by Tesla of eschewing a driver-side instrument cluster for a single, central screen.
Audi e-tron 50 or A6 digital cockpit disasters should go into design books: https://www.leasefetcher.co.uk/guides/car-technology/audi-vi... Screens on the left, on the right and in the middle. Good luck playing with that on autobahn speeds.
At last, touch screens are terrible for most things while you are driving. Misclicks and finger slide make for a frustrating experience in my opinion. Even just having some physical buttons under or alongside the screen would be great. A large physical ok/yes/go button and a cancel/no/escape button that I can hit without concentrating would solve 3/4 of the interaction problems.
About damn time.
It'd just be so nice if there was any starting place for user defined or malleable systems.
All these "software" driven systems seem cast in stone, lack flexibility to let users do the right things for them, and so back back back the pendulum swings until eventually the hype train turns things back around again.
Two points of reference come to mind. The well known-ish one, Steam and the Steam Deck. My gods, the flexibility steam has builtin for wiring up a controller to do whatever is godlike. I don't know how to speak even 1/4 justice to the powers here. It's the most flexible user facing software system on the planet, maybe short of Excel; there's so much capability on tap. I tried playing Jedi Academy recelty, an ancient game, and went & downloaded a bunch of shared profiles. On some of them there's like this gorgeous multimodal popover, press a button then swipe the joystick to pick a force power or weapon, which shows up in game as an overlay with actual graphic pictures someone baked in. The potential for man-machine symbiosis is parsecs afar of where most of the out-of-box(-is-all-you-get) unadjustable cloudware world has left us.
The other data point that keeps resonating for me is an old consumer-oriented iot system, Webinos. There was a bunch of car interest, where exposing all the HVAC and lighting and even realtime radar proximity sensors. The whole system was a user-sovereign API system, where user's had control over where data went & could talk to their cars securely/remotely. The system was a general iot system, but it was neat to see car people leaning in, a decade ago. It never closed the loop though, and layered in programmability to the builtin infotainment system, which feels like what we need now.
Its wild how we have all this software, but the interfaces are still all manufacturer provided. Most people don't, but on Android for example one can change their launcher which radically reshapes the whole experience. I think of that as a breeding ground, a permissive layer to sustain & keep staleness out with. Cars went all in on touchscreens, while caging users into very limited experiences. Ideally users would have hybrid flexibility, would be able to use some manufacturer presets that are touchscreen or physical centric (with both being available to some degree) and then to take the experience further. A static manufacturer defined system has to be simple & reliable first, and the modernization failed too many basic requirements (not remembering settings seems to be a big one in comments. Moved in to a new place recently with Lutron caseta everywhere & the dimmers have a little light showing brightness level... A "nice" affordances that an old old old dimmer switch had!). Not feeling at ends is what technology is failing to give us, and products keep suffering for our e-matter's severe lack of soft tweak ability; we keep taking the problem on in this sector or that & trying to find a balance, but the modern world lacks a software parallel of reconfigurability, is sort of pre-interchangeable-parts. The base of the pyramid to enable products constantly being unadaptable tech-nightmares is basically missing!
One of the things I really like about my Subaru is the over-abundance of buttons, and the really hands on wheel button controls. The touch screen is perfectly supplemental and that makes it much less irritating.
I have a hybrid volvo with 5 drive modes. In order to change the drive mode you touch a small settings icon on bottom right corner. Touch Drive on the navigation list and then touch the desired mode.
Whoever thought this was a good idea is an imbecile.
Eureka! Now i am going back to VW again
In the ID4’s steering wheel buttons are sub-par. In a d-pad layout, right hand, they decided an “up/down” was necessary so they made vol- and vol+ left and right.
Well now you can’t have skip/back, because those _have_ to be left/right. Meanwhile everyone’s phone vol-/+ is vertically oriented, up/down, so I’d argue that’s a folk default.
Here’s the thing: I don’t use the up/down buttons for everyday use. I’m guessing they work a menu. They are clearly an over-prioritized affordance. And I’m stuck with it until the lease is up.
I’ve done 40k miles in a model 3. The cabin temps are automatic to the temp I like. I never change it. It’s easy to pick the last few things I listened to from the touch screens. I can use Siri for other things (Bluetooth, no CarPlay)… buttons are overrated.
Here's a good video from Jason Cammisa about the new (at the time) mk8:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGbPHp6QfkQ
I had a mk7 and it is the best interior + UX I've seen in a car. Everything is as simple and ergonomic as possible. The volume adjustment is a knob, with soft rubber knurling and indents for feedback. It's not some awful feeling smooth afterthought that you see on certain Toyotas or Hondas. It's not a push button (beep beep beep beep) you find on old Pioneer stereos from the '90s. It's exactly what you want to adjust the volume. The AC is similar. Heated seats are a button with 3 LEDs indicating high/med/low. Everything just makes sense.
And then VW got cheap and greedy. The mk8 is almost the complete opposite of what the mk7 was.
My honda accord euro 2013s UI incredible... each set of main controls for air temp, volume, etc have a characteristic....weather it be a single small knob, large knob, concave button, convex and so on - you can feel your way without looking at it - once memorised - easy to feel for again.
Brilliantly thought out car imo.
There are also aftermarket physical buttons that can be added to cars. I thought I had seen an esp32 CAN project but can't find it now. Here is a commercial example:
Airplane computers already have touch knob interface figured out.
Display in the middle physicall buttons and knobs to control the interface.
This past summer, I budgeted $120 for an air fryer [if you haven't used one, do].
Ultimately, I walked out of WallyWorld with their $24.00 entry-level unit — because it has physical knob controls. Not a digital circuit in sight, and when I need tendies crisped [chef's kiss] PERFECTO. It even has a real bell which [dings].
Here's hoping that VW is a trendsetter on this.
[dupe]
More discussion yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38678853
One of my favorite feature on Mazdas... never seen anything like it before
I’m not sure, but what’s being described sounds a lot like BMWs iDrive which I love and has been around for a while(15+ years).
That's funny because as I recall the BMW iDrive was widely derided when it came out. I have one on my old BMW and I like it, never understood the objections.
Here's an NYT article at the time, from https://web.archive.org/web/20150527202158/https://www.nytim... :
Norman wrote more about it at https://jnd.org/design-as-communication/ .
Basically, I can access it without looking while keeping my arm on the arm rest
Mazda copied BMW's iDrive. iDrive was derided when it was introduced in 2001 [1], but it has turned out to be a good compromise.
Unfortunately BMW moved to eliminating a lot of hardware buttons in the latest version of the iDrive with a giant curved screen. They still have dial and buttons on the center console, plus few additional buttons under the main screen. But they have removed one of another great features - eight programmable buttons in the center. These are great and you can assign any function from the touch screen to them.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_iDrive
Thought it was called Commander or was that Mercedes?
Mercedes had COMAND, now MBUX.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_COMAND
Audi cars used to have a system like this (dial based), but don't anymore.
Straight up the best method of interacting with the infotainment system I've ever used. It was a breeze.
I rented one with the last year of that system, and they'd integrated it with Android Auto, and I was surprised with how well it worked. Someone at Google was clearly thinking about this modality.
However I doubt Google has done the work in the interim to keep the UX in Android Auto working well with dial controls. Esp if only Mazda is doing this.
It’s very similar to BMW’s iDrive system. I believe Mazda’s UX, in several areas, was inspired by several car manufacturers.
Most other tier 1 manufacturers have had this - BMW, Merc, Audi, Lexus...
Yeah, the Mazda physical interface is great. More car manufacturers seem to be adopting the wheel to control CarPlay which is a lot nicer than reaching over to use the touch screen.
I just wish the Mazda software was similarly well-designed. They have so many on-screen popups, for everything from "Warning, screens can be distracting! Select okay to acknowledge." to "Your XM radio has lost connection" when I'm not listening to the XM radio. And they display their own popups over CarPlay while CarPlay is active, which I basically never want to see.
Who? Virtually all makes are moving to all-touch infotainment systems, even VW here. The VW change is that they were using weird touch-sensitive 'buttons' for volume and steering wheel control and you literally couldn't rest your fingers on the steering wheel. The only reason touch suckls on Mazda is that the display is placed too far away to be reached on purpose.
... because there's a dial, obviating the need for touch. Beyond that, without needing to use touch, the screen can be placed further up and forward - meaning there's less "travel" for your eyes between looking at the road and glancing at the centre display.
Well, I can see it being a personal preference. I rent a bunch of different SUVs when I travel so I have some experience with most of the different companies' alternatives. Some of them have rotary knobs / scroll wheels, some don't.
I prefer using the knob to touching the screen. It's much faster, primarily. You have some touch feedback so you don't really need to be looking at the screen for very long. You don't need to move your torso, so you can manipulate the wheel while you're driving normally with your left hand.
I can see it depending on what you're doing with the system. Personally I'm either using Spotify or Google Maps, both of which work quite nicely with the scroll wheel.
Well, that certainly makes it worse on Mazdas, but those touch screens are terrible on everything.
> And they display their own popups over CarPlay while CarPlay is active, which I basically never want to see.
What year/model is this? I've never had a popup on top of CarPlay, except for the volume bar that appears along the bottom of the screen.
I got a Carlinkit wireless adapter so I don't even see the Mazda UI except for a couple of seconds while the adapter boots up, or if I want to put it on the clock screen because there's nothing on CarPlay that I need.
2019 CX-9
Definitely been improved since then, 2023 Mazda 3 doesn’t have pop ups over CarPlay.
There’s the usual “screens are distracting” notice when the car turns on but after that it uses the speedometer screen to say things like “Service due” or “Safety and Driver Support Systems Temporarily Disabled. Front Radar Obscured. Drive Safely”
It’d be nice if there was more control out of the box but the HN crowd would probably appreciate that it can be customized with a little hacking https://mazdatweaks.com/
Oh, yeah! I'd love a car with this kind of after-market tweaking.
I got a mazda because I liked their interface design. Owning it for a bit, I agree the software design is horrible. Obnoxious seat-belt warnings while in park is also frustrating.
My 2015 Mazda has a lovely feature where if I get a text message while backing up, the screen is covered in a warning popup prompting me to download the message.
Honestly the head unit is one of the worst I've ever used, though the interface is at least moderately well designed. They clearly had at least one intern try using it while driving. It's just the rest of the entire operating system that's garbage
Fun fact - Mazda actually ranks pretty poorly in this category in consumer surveys. https://www.torquenews.com/sites/default/files/j.d._power_te...
^ Check it, dead last in the industry according to people who bought the car.
The system is coated in buttons...but most units do not allow you to use Carplay with touch. That's right. You need to navigate the UI as if you were using a keyboard to use windows. 'spin spin spin, highlighted?, select, spin spin spin highlighted?, select' The outcome is considerably more time spent looking at the screen no matter how proud they are about killing touch. Carplay and Android Auto are both noted by customers as the number 1 technology priority in new cars.
The system is virtually unchanged in UX since 2012 with only a UI refresh in 2019. They claim it as if it is an intentional design when they really are just selling 12 year old tech on $60K CX-90s.
This is no rebuttal to you, if you love it, that is great! But here and reddit both seem to think that Mazda's UX is amazing when customers truly hate it.
No offense, but is a JD Power survey what you're citing here? :)
Seems like my 2016 CX-5 ignores touch inputs if the car is moving, and CarPlay can't override this.
For what it's worth, the CX-9 since 2019 at least does allow you to use CarPlay with touch, or the scroll wheel, either one. Personally I strongly prefer the scroll wheel but it sounds like peoples' opinions differ on this.
Quite the opposite. The wheel has discrete clicks while rotating so muscle memory becomes a thing. I've got half a dozen "workflows" memorized so I don't even need to look at the screen to do things like love a song, add it to my favorites, switch between apps, report an accident, etc.
Wow yeah, nice clarification. I would be furious if I bought a new car in 2023 that made me use one of those fiddly wheels for CarPlay. That’s terrible.
I had a BMW with a wheel and it was insanely annoying. But that was 10 years ago!
This reads that the innovation score is lowest. It makes sense, because the innovation is basically zero for physical controls. I don't think this is the same as ranking UX overall, nor do I think it is indicating that users "truly hate it".
That graph does not mean what you think it means.
Agreed! I have a 2021 CX-5, and it's not just the infotainment controls (which are great, and work really well with Android Auto), but also just having real buttons — some with indicator lights, even — for all the heating/cooling/demisting controls.
I've rented several other cars in the last couple of years that have been touchscreen only (or, at the very least, very heavily biased towards touchscreens), and the amount of extra time needed to orient where you're pressing is honestly kind of terrifying when you need to, say, demist a windscreen quickly.
The worst I've come across for this was taking the MG4 for a test drive. The whole thing felt like it consisted of programmer art (mismatched, inconsistent, ugly etc). I quickly found the windscreen misting up on a cold evening - and had to stop to figure out enough of the interface to find the correct button.
I drove a mazda cx-5 on a multi-day road trip and was pleasantly surprised with the interface. Clearly some thought was put into it and I appreciated it... and I'm one who hates the move to monitor screens in cars (not to even say touchscreens).
When I bought my 2015 Mazda 3, there were already articles on how they had found buttons and the dial superior to touchscreen only. They were quick on that and now have a decade more work going into it.
Every few years since then there has been an article like this that another brand "discovered" the same thing.
Mazda had been consistently delivering good design for the last decade, if not more.
I find the newer Mazda red to be far sexier than Ferrari red. (Ferrari red is still best choice for Ferraris though)
I have a MY2013 CX-5 and that's the only model CX-5 that cannot get Android Auto/CarPlay, which saddens me a bit. The infotainment system is actually completely useless.
It's a shame, because I can see the usefulness of the input controls.
I only use the back-up camera. It's super cool that Mazda actually managed to retrofit this in all the other old models though. I don't think many car manufacturers would bother with that.
It'd be a bit expensive to replace the head unit with an Android-based aftermarket one, so I'm not sure it's worth doing. Depends on how long I'll keep the car.
I have a 2023 CX-5 and I love using the rotary dial. But their infotainment needs some work - the eternal disclaimer popup when turning on the car and lacking the ability to go to the next folder directly when listening to music. Some minor tweaks and their software would be perfect, but that's not yet the case even on their latest models.
I agree that the navigation is pretty well done (in my MX-5 ND2), but one horrendous thing is this Gracenote thing that tries to guess music tags and covert art on external media (i.e. USB drive), but in the process completely ignores AND mangles the tags I've carefully put in my Vorbis files. Of course, you can't disable it.
I also think that the whole interface is quite sluggish in general.
Yes, totally agree. We just got a 2020 and it’s really nice to have physical controls.
When I was 16 there was no other car I wanted more than an Audi A4. I vowed that when I got my first job I’d get one. Then came dieselgate, and I’ve never considered an Audi or VW since.
Instead I went with a Mazda and stayed with them since. Just great all around cars: safe, reliable, low maintenance, freaking fun to drive, and always good tech (Love the heads up display!), upscale fit and finish. Not super expensive but expensive enough that you’re getting a good car.
I would easily choose my CX-30 over an A4 any day.