Reach Out And Touch Something … Screen or Knob?

Reach Out And Touch Something … Screen or Knob?
by Doug DeMuro

I recently had the chance to test out the “new” Volkswagen Passat, which is so new that the designers were explaining to a whole group of journalists how the position of the rear reflectors has changed compared to the outgoing model.

Actually, I kind of like the new Passat. It was impressive in a lot of ways, right down to the new touchscreen, which finally sees Volkswagen catching up to some of the technology and features rival models have been using for roughly five years. As I was driving it, I couldn’t help but think to myself: I like a good touchscreen.

What I don’t like is a knob.

It seems that these are our only choices in today’s infotainment world: a touchscreen or a knob. Some cars have touchscreens. Some cars have knobs. And given that basically every new car has an infotainment system, this is an important choice. Do you want to control your screen by touching it, like a smartphone? Or by moving around a controller located on the center console, like a computer?

Automakers appear to be largely split on this issue. Most mainstream car companies, the Fords and Chevys of the world, offer a touchscreen. You touch, it screens. The benefit of this is that you touch exactly where you want, and the system does exactly what you want, unless you are in a Chevy, in which case it does what you want after it thinks for a few seconds/minutes/it’ll do it this weekend.

High-end brands tend to prefer knobs. Lexus has its famous Remote Touch Controller, which is sort of like a computer mouse in the sense that you move around a little arrow and you click on stuff, but not really like a computer mouse in the sense that you’re supposed to do this at 75 mph. BMW’s iDrive and Audi’s MMI both work similarly: you move a dial to control the infotainment system. You could touch the screen, but it wouldn’t do anything, and you’d just end up getting fingerprints on it.

Me, I personally prefer a touchscreen. Let me tell you why: because it’s incredibly easy to use. A button says “MAP.” I press “MAP.” The MAP comes up. This is very different than in, say, a BMW 7 Series, where a button says “MAP,” so you grab the little dial, and you move over to the button, and you’re about to click on it, but then there’s a bump in the road, and you accidentally click somewhere else, such as on a button that says “CLIMATE,” and now you have no idea where you’re going, so you crash into a bus shelter.

Of course, I am not saying that the BMW 7 Series is scary. What I am saying is that the BMW 7 Series is incredibly scary.

But the manufacturers that use knobs don’t see it that way. They say that if they put the knob in the center console, they can move the infotainment screen higher on the dashboard, away from your reach, which means you have to take your eyes off the road less in order to do things. This is true, of course, but I would like to point out that I would take my eyes off the road even less if I could just touch the damn screen wherever I want.

Maybe the best manufacturer is Mazda, who undoubtedly had this argument in some engineering meeting, which likely led to raised voices and harsh words and maybe even some good old-fashioned chair throwin’. So what they did is, they put in a knob and a touchscreen. This allows you to use both hands to control the screen at any one given time.

No, I’m just kidding, what it allows you to do is use the touchscreen when you’re feeling touchscreeny and use the knob when you’re feeling knobby. I think this is Mazda’s greatest decision since 2002, when they decided to start making decent cars.

Unfortunately, it’s not a decision anyone else seems to be making, as other automakers have all staked their claims: some have gone touchscreen. Some have gone knob. But I will continue to hope that in this great war of in-car screen controls, the touchscreen people will slay the knob people and claim victory over the Great Land of Infotainment. Until then, I will do my best to keep from crashing into bus shelters.

by Doug DeMuro

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Five worst new car features reinvent the wheel for no reason

Five worst new car features reinvent the wheel for no reason
by Robert Duffer    -   Contact Reporter  - Copyright © 2017, Chicago Tribune

The shifter of a BMW 740L diesel is seen at the media preview of the 2014 Chicago Auto Show at McCormick Place in Chicago on Feb. 6, 2014. Gear knobs that default to a middle setting make it unclear what gear a vehicle is in. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

The state of the auto industry is one of opposites. There are sport utility vehicles with more horsepower than sports cars, and pickup trucks equipped like luxury flagships. Americans hold on to their cars for over 11 years yet new car sales broke records in 2015 and again in 2016. Yet we're also paying record high prices of more than $34,000 to load up our vehicles with stuff that aggravates us.

So much stuff. Even though there are few new car duds, consumer complaints are on the rise because of technology ranging from balky voice commands to glitchy touch screens and enough dings, blings and dongs to make you dizzy.

In this cutthroat competitive market, where horsepower and mpg are incrementally maxed out, the next place an automaker can stand out is with in-car technology. At best, it makes us safer and provides convenience. At worst, and too often, it makes us confused.

Complaints on the suite of systems generally known as infotainment accounts for 22 percent — the largest category — of consumer complaints in the first three years of ownership, according to the 2017 J.D. Power vehicle dependability study.

From voice recognition fails to Bluetooth drops, either owners are expecting in-car technology to be as intuitive as smartphones or carmakers are hamstrung about how to safely offer such levels of connectivity.

"Increased complexity equals increased problems," Consumer Reports warned consumers (and automakers) in its 2016 car reliability survey.

Here are the biggest sources of new car frustration.

Touch screens

Looking at it from an evolutionary view, touch screens had to happen to get to the next thing. With the backup camera mandated in all 2018 model year vehicles, it made sense to combine audio, climate, navigation, phone and vehicle info functions into the screen. But too often, especially in Asian makes, the buttons are too small, the interface too layered to safely execute a simple command. It becomes something many drivers would rather not use.

On the other hand, Tesla's massive 17-inch touch screen is intuitive and excellent. Most automakers are dialing down touch screens with the return of climate and audio buttons in sleek, spartan designs that complement the display screen. While we prefer the Germans' and Mazda's use of a control dial to access all that valuable information and all those pricey functions, some makes such as Chevrolet have done well using redundant steering controls to access the info in a condensed screen in the instrument cluster. It's as easy to use as setting the cruise. The roads would be safer, and drivers less frustrated, with the elimination of the touch screen.

Touch-sensitive controls   ... continue on Chicago Tribune

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In Praise of Knobs

In Praise of Knobs
by Phil Patton (writes about design and cars for the New York Times)

Don't call it a comeback: Knobs could save infotainment.

I like knobs. Steve Jobs liked knobs. John Varvatos, the fashion designer with his own Chrysler 300 edition, likes knobs. In fact, Varvatos has created what might be thought of as a temple dedicated to knobs. In his New York store, occupying the former CBGB’s, the legendary punk bar on the Bowery, he displays a prime collection of 1960s and 1970s audio equipment with large, brushed-metal knobs, solid as the turrets of Admiral Dewey’s battleships, faces gleaming with ever-shifting reflections. Touch the knobs on such equipment and they convey to the fingers a solid feel, light but sure. Turning carefully calibrated knobs can be immensely satisfying. They have the quality we are searching for and find largely missing in the many interfaces in our lives. We want the same happy relationship of finger to surface in a touch screen, say, as we swipe and pinch or drag and zoom. No wonder the knob is making a comeback. Especially in the complex infotainment systems where voice and touch have come up short, knobs are back. Ford executive Joe Hinrichs recently said he would fix the much maligned MyFord Touch with more knobs. Steve Jobs, who of course put a knob on the original iPod (Apple called it a “scroll wheel”), was also a big fan of the stereo equipment on display at Varvatos—those huge units from Pioneer, Marantz, and McIntosh, with big two- or three-inch knobs that could be tuned precisely. Jobs loved stereo equipment, and legend holds that McIntosh, along with the apple, was one of the inspirations for the Macintosh name. However, the ultimate knob experts may be Audi’s knob gnomes, researchers who are part of the company’s haptics team, which focuses on sensory—especially touch—experiences, in Ingolstadt, Germany.
The knob gnomes are proof that car knobs have become more than simple utilitarian controls; they are now elements of brand differentiation. Jaguar’s shift knob rises dramatically from the console on startup, and Audi is proud of what it calls the “Audi click.” The lab guys can show you on a machine the exact resistance that makes for the Audi click (it’s really a double click). Getting a knob’s feel right would seem easy, but after visiting Audi, other vehicle knobs suddenly felt sticky or mushy. A good knob can be as satisfying as precise steering or well-balanced brakes, while a bad one ruins the experience.

Knob design is part of the haptics discipline. The sense of touch depends on ­several different kinds of nerves. Each is named for a scientist; Ruffini endings and Merkel mechanoreceptors convey pressure and texture, for example, and Meissner’s corpuscles offer information from a lighter touch while Pacinian corpuscles, located deeper beneath the surface, require more pressure. But measuring the responses of these nerves is difficult. “Haptics are difficult to express in numbers. Haptic evaluation is very subjective,” explains Audi’s Johann Schneider, director of the company’s lab. The goal is for the driver to immediately feel comfortable and have a sense of precision. The knob team tries to define such elements as ease of motion, well-defined end stops, uniform actuation sound, and clear feedback. “You won’t be able to please every customer,” says Schneider’s colleague, Manfred ­Mittermeier. “Actuation haptics and operating acoustics are usually perceived subconsciously. If we achieve 80 percent, that means we have a very good concept.”

People often speak of good controls as intuitive, but that usually means they follow familiar patterns. Although a knob’s operation generally needs no explaining, it is not an especially apt control tool for every job. In his classic 1959 text, The ­Measure of Man and Woman: Human Factors in Design, designer Henry Dreyfuss states that the input device needs to fit the nature of the input. He advocated one- or two-inch knobs for selecting amounts of things or quantities. Push buttons are ­better for choosing among discrete entities, such as park and reverse.

Even so, knobs in cars are taking over new functions. Ram is very proud of its dashboard shifter knob and highlights it in television ads. Car knobs are indirect evolutions of stereo knobs, and are, in part, based on the turn-and-push knobs devised by the late legendary designer David Lewis for Bang & Olufsen electronics. He told me once that he first devised these knobs for a 1960s audio project, inspired by the big knobs already on stereo equipment, but placed flush with the surface and equipped with a “dimple” for fingertip control. “That tactile feedback of turning and clicking is reassuring,” Lewis said. “The idea was to concentrate many functions in one button.”

The best interfaces, he said, are those based on years of familiarity. “We were building on established conventions that were known and understood, going back to the early telephone.” Considering that today’s handheld phones are often nothing but a screen, tomorrow’s knobs will have to be good if they are to survive.

Phil Patton

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Why Does Every Car Infotainment System Look So Crappy?

Why Does Every Car Infotainment System Look So Crappy?
by Thorin Klosowski

from Cadillac's CUE

User interface design is hard, but we've been getting better at it over the years to the point where even a thermostat is easy to use. Automakers, however, seem to have their heads in the sand, taking their design inspiration for their infotainment consoles from old Winamp skins instead of any type of modern interface.

I've been car shopping recently, which means I've sat in a variety of models new and old with a salesperson attempting to justify why their shitty infotainment system — the little dashboard that usually controls at least the radio and phone options — is better than the competition. Pair that up with a number of rentals over the years and I've seen about every car infotainment system around. With a couple very rare exceptions, they're universally horrible and feel like they're designed by someone who hasn't used a computer since 2000.

Most automakers have their own brand of infotainment systems and their bad design is more than skin deep. For example, Audi has MMI, an insane system that uses dials for menu navigation instead of a touchscreen unless you pay to upgrade it. Audi isn't the only one to eschew modern innovation either, BMW's iDrive and Mercedes's Comand both rely on dials for input as well. For years, Lexus has relied on what was basically a mouse for navigation which is as insanely stupid and challenging to use in real life as it sounds.

Most carmakers at least use touch screens, though their interfaces are cluttered and ugly. Ford has SYNC, Nissan has Connect, Toyota has Entune, Kia has UVO, Subaru has STARLINK, and so on and so on. As an example, here's Entune one of the worst options, which looks more at home on a laptop running Windows ME than it does in a brand new car:

On most of these infotainment systems, the menus seem devoid of logic, settings you need to access frequently are often buried beneath several submenus, and when there is a touch screen, they seem sluggish and clunky. There is a 100% you will need to look in the manual to change a very basic setting. Even something simple, like icon design, is the worst. The icons on Chevy's MyLink look like they were pulled from a cheap clipart collection:

On most of infotainment systems you'll find horrible icons that are probably included free with MS Word, weird fonts that don't suit the screen's size, and app integration for services that I'm pretty sure nobody actually uses. Like, who goes to movietickets.com and why would I use whatever Aha radio is? After sitting in a bunch of cars, I was actually longing for classic Winamp. Heck, cram this into a Toyota's center console and I'll buy it today:

I'm not going to even touch on how bad the navigation systems included with these things are, but rest assured, they're as horrible as you remember. For whatever reason, classic car GPS systems have been behind smartphone options for a long time, and even if it didn't take 35 minutes to type an address into one of those things, there's a very good chance that all you'll see on the screen is a pixelated blown-up mess of a map that's near impossible to read.

It's not all bad news, of course. Tesla at least seems to be on the right track, though the 17-inch touchscreen includes in their cars is so comically large that I imagine it's a huge distraction. Not that I'd know, since I can't even afford to sit in a Tesla let alone drive one. Volvo also seems on the right track with Sensus, which for some oddball reason is a vertical screen instead of horizontal, but is otherwise the minimally designed interface that you'd want in a four ton moving vehicle. It's easy to use, you can customise it to a small extent, and it's generally inoffensive. It's also brand spanking new though, and the previous Volvo systems weren't much to look at.

Then there's Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which feel like what happens when the carmakers give up on their own systems and just let someone else make it. Both options leverage the power of the phone you already use for music and navigation to power the car's infotainment options as well.

This comes with its own set of pros and cons. Android Auto and CarPlay are pretty much universally improvements to automaker's awful first-party infotainment options, but they still have some issues. Namely, apps have to actually support the two services, which means that you can't always access every app. For example, with CarPlay, you're locked into mostly first-party Apple apps, like Apple Maps. For iOS users, this is a huge downside, because even though Apple Maps has improved over the years, it's still not as good as Google Maps or Waze. Thankfully, you're not locked into Apple Music or Apple Podcasts at least, as Spotify, Pandora, Pocket Casts, Overcast, and others support CarPlay. Android Auto is a little better, but still pretty limited in the third-party options you have. With either option, there's a good chance at least one of the apps you use for audio won't work with it.

One minor quibble with both is that you'll still need to actually use your car's shitty infotainment system occasionally, as neither CarPlay nor Android Auto can handle any car-wide settings changes. Still, both are an improvement, and if nothing else is at least a sign that automakers have given up entirely on trying to force their awfully designed systems down our throats.

But still, not everyone has an iPhone or Android device, and not everyone wants to link up their phone to their car stereo in the first place. No matter what, these car infotainment systems and their stupid names will be a part of lives for years to come, so it'd be nice if they could at least look like they were designed in the last decade.

We don't need much here! Just don't nest menus deep inside other submenus, hand over your icon design to an actual designer instead of snagging some icon from Shutterstock, use large buttons that are easy to tap while driving, and spend a few extra bucks to give the whole thing a modern sheen so it doesn't look straight out of 1998.

Look, I know this is hard and expensive to do. I know that cars often only have ancient hardware in them that can't run much more than a text interface. I know this is near the bottom of the list of priorities in cars, but maybe it's time to move it up a bit.

Heck, you could even cut off access to any setting that could get me killed if I adjusted it wrong, then open up the entertainment portion Linux-style so I can install whatever I want on there. If nothing else, it'd be nice to at least have OS upgrade option so that I could at least have hope of change.



lifehacker.com.au

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