lunedì 28 agosto 2017

The 2017 Hyundai Elantra Sport: when physical buttons make more sense than a touchscreen

The 2017 Hyundai Elantra Sport: when physical buttons make more sense than a touchscreen
by Ashley Carman  @ashleyrcarman

Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge



Cars have become expensive, rolling gadgets that are full of screens, speakers, and sensors — but are they actually good gadgets? In our new series, ScreenDrive, we'll review cars just like any other device, starting with the basics of what they’re like to use.

I pulled up to my friend Colin’s apartment in Queens, New York two weeks ago in a silver 2017 Hyundai Elantra Sport. “Damn girl,” I think were his words. The shiny metallic exterior, the leather seats, the two displays: this car is sharp. And considering we usually meet at a corner on our block and walk to the subway together, he really couldn’t complain.

The affordable Elantra Sport has a $21,650 base price and can be upgraded with additional tech and gadgets. My Sport included two displays: an eight-inch, high-resolution, full color touchscreen and a 3.5-inch TFT (thin film transistor) monochromatic display on the dash. Throughout my weekend with Colin and the Elantra, the screens proved helpful for getting around and controlling music, but ultimately, the car’s physical buttons became my go-to. Sometimes, even when you have the option to tech, the old way of interaction just makes more sense.

My core problem with the Elantra isn’t its hardware. The displays look fine, and actually, I grew to love the smaller, middle dash display, which became my default reference point when looking for directions. It clearly laid out my next step and other essential stats, like trip mileage and tire pressure. No, the Elantra’s biggest issue is Hyundai’s confusing software. The Elantra runs Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, or Hyundai’s proprietary software. I spent my driving time with Hyundai’s software, and found that the company’s user interface truly makes no sense.

The space to enter an address, for instance, sits in the right-hand corner of the display and blends into the map. Even after entering multiple addresses, I struggled to remember where that bar was and how to access it. Other poor UI decisions include listing directions from the bottom up, so my next direction populated the bottom of a list as opposed to the top, which again, makes no sense. Maybe I have an odd way of comprehending directions?

More than anything else, I continuously struggled to return to the main menu to access different apps. Hence, the physical buttons. When I was already in an app and wanted to get back to music, for instance, I didn’t always remember how to get there. This shouldn’t ever be a question. While yes, a virtual back button exists, it didn’t stick out as the proper way to navigate. I instead ended up resorting to the physical buttons that clearly stated “media” and “map.” These never failed me, made sense to use, and didn’t require scrolling through a page of apps while operating a vehicle. However, other than the strange UI decisions, the software itself functioned. It got me where I needed to go and generally worked well. I wish I could have natively loaded Google Maps on the car’s main display, but I have an iPhone and can’t use it through CarPlay. That’s not Hyundai’s fault.

Hyundai knew how to get me where I wanted to go but its maps lagged a bit if I strayed from the chosen route. During one drive, the navigation redirected me when I crossed through a parking lot but still took the initial street it suggested. Errors are bound to happen but a slow refresh time is a killer. I missed exits and opportunities to get back on track while the car was thinking. But hey, at least I still got to my destination.

The Elantra also struggled a bit with voice commands, like when I tried to navigate to Mister HotPot in Flushing, New York at 33-42 39th Avenue. The Hyundai couldn’t handle that hyphen. Good luck using voice control in cities plagued by hyphenated addresses. Siri wasn’t any help, either. Every voice-controlled gadget struggles with complicated phrases. Addresses are long, so I don’t fault Hyundai necessarily, but it’s just one more pain point. I’ve learned to be patient after spending hours playing around with different devices, but for drivers like my friend Colin, who don’t play with new tech every day, it’s infuriating to deal with glitchy voice control.

Now, with that all in mind, the driving experience itself was fabulous. It was smooth, and I kind of felt like I was floating. This makes it easy to speed, so I had to set my cruise control for small towns where the limit drops to 30 mph. I guess my tip would be maybe don’t take your Sport through small towns, or rather, don’t do what I did.


Generally, I enjoyed driving the Elantra and was sad to give it back. Its microphone worked well during phone calls, its navigation got me where I wanted to go, and it was an easy ride. I only wish Hyundai would work on its UI and more thoroughly consider how people interact with its displays. If you’re looking into a package for the Sport, I don’t think you’ll need the premium one for $2,400 to make the car worthwhile. However, for the SE, I would suggest the tech package for $1,300, solely because that 3.5-inch dash display was a godsend. Ultimately, as long you have those physical buttons installed, you’re going to be just fine controlling the Elantra.

The Verge

lunedì 21 agosto 2017

Ford admits touchscreen defeat, puts the buttons and knobs back into Ford Sync

Ford admits touchscreen defeat, puts the buttons and knobs back into Ford Sync
by Bill Howard




Ford Sync is getting a new look. Again. This time Ford is adding more knobs and buttons to Ford Sync. At the same time, Ford says voice control will do more with fewer, shorter commands. More Sync-linked applications will be offered for your smartphone. Look for the changes on Ford’s major-redesign 2015 models, including the Ford Mustang sports car and the Ford F-150 pickup truck.

Lincoln, Ford’s upscale sibling, is moving away from the capacitive touch volume and fan sliders. It will also offer a built-in telematics modem, much like GM’s OnStar. Previously Ford and Lincoln handled telematics through the driver’s connected smartphone.

The All-New Ford Mustang GT

Sync continues to evolve (so it doesn’t die?)
The All-New Ford Mustang GTFord Sync has been out since 2008 and today covers virtually all the Ford and Lincoln line. Sync is a phone-and-music, Bluetooth-and-USB link to the car, co-designed with Microsoft. Ford Sync has been though two major iterations of the screen interface and five or so Sync software versions. The second-generation interface, currently in use, is MyFord Touch. It’s based around a touchscreen, 8 inches diagonal except on small Fords such as the Ford Fiesta, and a screen segmented into quarters.

The touchscreen home screen has four quadrants with phone commands upper left, navigation upper right, entertainment lower left, and climate control lower right. That’s pretty much how MyFord Touch has looked since 2011. Software revisions increased the font size in between and some text was dropped to clean up the screen.

But note all the physical buttons and knobs on the new Mustang: seven for audio, 15 for climate control, with plenty of overlap with the touchscreen, such as the seat heaters and seat coolers. Some physical controls on older Fords have been changed to knobs.

Ford’s Amy Marentec, a Ford group marketing manager, said the changes were based on customer feedback. More accurately, Ford has gotten hammered on J.D. Power Initial Quality Survey and downgraded by Consumer Reports. They are near the bottom on both surveys.

“Ford is making the change due to negative feedback they’ve received regarding several aspects of MyFord Touch,” says Chris Schreiner, director of Strategy Analytics‘ user experience practice. “The system can be sluggish to the touch, while knobs and buttons obviously have a much quicker response. The four-quadrant system is also very text and information heavy, making it overwhelming and confusing for some to do even simple tasks.”

Big buttons on the Ford F-150

The 2015 Ford F-150 carries the same MyFord Touch interface and almost 30 infotainment and climate control buttons below the touchscreen on this vehicle. It is virtually the same center stack as on the 2014 F-150 because buttons never quite went away on pickups. Ford says, “Designers have optimized the physical interface for MyFord Touch to accommodate truck users who may be wearing work gloves.” As for MyFord Touch, the screen “interfaces for climate control, entertainment, navigation and hands-free touch are identical” to Ford cars, meaning it would get the simpler voice structure. The new F-150 is expected to ship late summer or fall.

ExtremeTech

lunedì 14 agosto 2017

Designing A Sexy, Safe Touch Screen For Cars Is Harder Than It Looks

Designing A Sexy, Safe Touch Screen For Cars Is Harder Than It Looks
There are reasons why the latest concept dashboard UI hasn’t been made a reality.
by John Pavlus   





A few weeks ago, a gorgeous concept video of “a new car UI” made the rounds of the Internet, gathering praise as it went. With good reason: The video, created by product designer Matthaeus Krenn, shows a working prototype of a simple, sleek touch-screen interface that relies on glance-free gestures instead of cluttering the screen with tiny skeuomorphic buttons. The idea is simple: The less you have to look at the touchscreen in your car to effectively manipulate it, the better.

Then Apple’s CarPlay system came out. What was the result of Cupertino’s vaunted think-outside-the-box interface design process? A screen filled with tiny buttons. Sure, there’s a lot of voice control on offer via Siri, but if you want to use that touch screen, you still have to take your eyes off the road and use them to aim your finger at haptically invisible digital controls. What’s stopping designs like Krenn’s from becoming a reality?


David Young, an interactive designer and former creative director at BMW Designworks USA, expressed misgivings about Krenn’s concept on Twitter, so we asked him for some constructive criticism. (Krenn did not respond to interview requests.)

Young praised Krenn’s design as a “beautiful, innovative, and unexpected” alternative to “the current hierarchical menu-driven interfaces, and all-buttons-at-once touch-screen interfaces we’re currently seeing.” However, Krenn’s focus on re-creating the gestural simplicity of physical controls comes at the expense of flexibility. “Vehicles are increasingly complex systems, with lots of information to display and a wide range of customization and configuration options. Krenn’s interface, however, only supports adjusting eight settings,” Young says. “It’s not nearly expandable enough for the complex demands of a modern vehicle.” Instead of truly solving the problem of “too much information and buttons on a car’s touch screen,” Young suspects that Krenn’s design merely avoids it.

There’s also the problem that all gestural interfaces still have: They’re unfamiliar and all have different rules that must be learned.
There’s also the problem that all gestural interfaces still have: They’re unfamiliar and all have different rules that must be learned. Krenn’s UI is admirably “logical,” and “everything works fluidly,” Young says, but “at a glance, it’s not immediately obvious how things work.” That might amount to a minor quibble on a smartphone app. “But for drivers unfamiliar with the interface–new drivers, infrequent drivers, car renters–it will be as perplexing as the icons on your clothes that give washing instructions,” Young says. By re-creating an iPhone-like, icon-driven interface for CarPlay, Apple may not have wowed any futurists. But in the year 2014, pretty much anyone who gets behind the wheel of a car also knows how to operate an iPhone. That said, CarPlay is designed to augment the iPhone’s display, not function independently like Krenn’s. But Young’s point–that in the context of safely operating a motor vehicle, usability and familiarity are nearly synonymous–is well-taken.

Smartphone screens vibrate–by now, a familiar kind of haptic feedback–so why can’t dashboard touch screens do the same?
Finally, Krenn’s UI has no haptic feedback. “So when changing a setting that doesn’t give immediate feedback, such as changing a climate option, the driver is required to look at the display to see if their gesture is complete,” Young says. This is less a criticism than an acknowledgement of hardware limitations–the iPad that Krenn used to mock up his concept has no vibration feature, after all. But there’s nothing stopping car manufacturers from including this kind of haptic feedback into their designs. Physical knobs and dials often have catches or “detents” in their movement, which let you know that the knob has been turned sufficiently to register a change without having to look. Smartphone screens vibrate–by now, a familiar kind of haptic feedback–so why can’t dashboard touch screens do the same?

This isn’t to tear down Krenn’s creation. Like any concept design, it exists primarily to drive constructive dialogue, and we’re glad that David Young has added to the back-and-forth. Carmakers can do better–and the more voices we have telling them how to do so, the safer our dashboards will become.


[Matthaeus Krenn’s touch-screen concept]

lunedì 7 agosto 2017

The Sad Death Of The Knob, Switch And Button

The Sad Death Of The Knob, Switch And Button
by Jason Torchinsky        jason@jalopnik.com     @JasonTorchinsky


The Sad Death Of The Knob, Switch And Button

I want to start by coming out and saying I'm not one of those car luddites who think everything should hover in some magical past; while I'm very fond of old-school cars, there's an amazing amount of amazing new tech in cars, and LCD dashboards in so many new cars here at the Detroit Auto Show are a genuinely great advance. Except for one big issue: Knobs, switches and buttons? They're now officially doomed.

Knobs are still around, albeit in reduced numbers, but it's very clear they're considered vestigial holdouts and it's just a matter of time before they're done away with completely. Looking at forward-thinking cars like the Tesla Model S demonstrates this, as its dash is basically just two big iPads, one in landscape orientation and the other in portrait.

A booth from Denso, a major supplier of auto parts and electronics, shows a prototype cockpit of the future — and it's all touch screens. Touch screens are great on our phones and tablets; so why wouldn't they be great in a car, right?

The problem has to do more with the "screen" part than the "touch" part, though both are factors. On your phone, you're looking at the screen, interacting with it very directly; the visual feedback is essential for operating the interface.

When you're driving, ideally you're looking mostly out of the big window in front of you, and you operate most of the ancillary controls with no more than a quick glance. Touch screens don't work like that; little buttons on smooth glass surfaces have to be targeted with a pair of eyes.

All you need to do to prove the point is to look up.

Have you ever peeked in the cockpit of an airplane and seen the levers in between the seats? Those levers have funny-shaped knobs: Spool-shaped, crown-shaped, star-shaped — it's the marshmallows from a Lucky Charms box. There is, of course, a great reason why they're like that: so pilots can know what lever is what just by touch.

That's exactly what is being given up when controls move to the touch screen. Tactile feedback and the ability to feel what a control is has long been part of driving.

Traditionally, we can feel and know what's a radio knob, what a climate control lever feels like, how the notches feel as we move them from one setting to another, and it's worked great. Even without any interior lights or dash lights I bet most of us could find and use the essential controls on our cars.

Touch screens are awesome for many, many things. They look great, they can show an incredible amount of information, but they should never be the only components on a dash.

Oh, but that's not the only problem. Some cars, like the Chevy Volt, the Cadillac ATS and everything from Lincoln are replacing standard buttons with sleek capacitive touch plates with big clusters of identically-shaped buttons. Capacitive technology refers to using electrodes to sense the conductive properties of objects, such as a finger. So, basically, rather than physically depressing a button you've fumbled for while your eyes remained on the road, you'll turn on and off four different things before finally looking down to find what function you want to change. Then you crash and die.

So those suck in about the same way touch screens do, and they look like they came off a VCR. So knock that off, too.

Automakers, I'm pleading with you, spare the life of just a few knobs, just some essential ones, even if they have redundant touch-screen controls. Leave me some knobs in the cars of the future. Nice, chunky, clicky knobs, and maybe a lever, switch and button or two.

I'll even let you make them look cool and LED-lit or whatever you want.

http://jalopnik.com

See also:
Any Carmaker Still Not Using A Touchscreen For Their Infotainment System Is An Id...
by Jason Torchinsky

... I like physical controls for things like, say, radio volume and tuning, too. This is not a screed against physical controls. It’s a screed against terrible physical controls used to control an on-screen interface that is clearly, obviously, much more suited to touch controls.