Never liked them. Modern smartphone is convenient , but a keyboard would be nicer
Technology
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
Especially EV car makers need to take note.
No I wouldn't say touchscreens are out, I would say augmenting them with physical buttons is about to get popular.
Plotnick, an associate professor of cinema and media studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, is the leading expert on buttons and how people interact with them.
I like that being a leading expert on buttons is a profession that exists in this world. You go Rachel Plotnick.
I’m just shocked that’s a cinema and media studies professor. I’d’ve expected human factors engineering or psychology, especially at such a psych school
Professors don't always teach in their actual area of expertise. I had a German language professor whose PhD was in Philosophy and activity published in that field, in English, German and French journals. It does seem like an odd combination, but probably not a lot of students signing up for a class in usability of buttons, even from the fields you would expect to study them .
Leading expert on buttons says to use buttons?
Mild shock
Seriously though they are needed for many features especially cars or eyes away
Leading expert on buttons says to use buttons?
It's exactly what Big Button wants you to think!!! Wake up sheeple!!!!!1!1!11
Touch screens are shit tor buttons. They can be hacked. They can be unresponsive.
There's a load of other reasons, but either or both are enough to realise that a physical button is much safer. Perfect example of safety being lost in technology. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.
The worst is all the ones that cheaped out and put a resistive touchscreen. Making it 10 times worse.
And they dont work with gloves when it's cold.
Touchscreens can stay, but only for non-essential tasks like changing settings or entering addresses. Climate, media, and all other controls you usually use while driving should be tactile by mandate.
Here's my rule: Anything in my Chevy S10 that you control by turning a knob, moving a lever, or momentarily push a button? That needs to be a physical control in a car. Anything where you push and hold a button, or mash a button multiple times (like setting the clock or turning off the DRLs respectively) can be moved to a settings menu in a touch screen. These things shouldn't be done while moving.
And no, touch sensitive single-function panels like the climate controls in my father's Avalon are not good enough, it needs to be a mechanical control that you can feel for without activating.
The answer is tactile buttons with displays behind them. Not sure why nobody is doing this in cars...
Because they are expensive. More importantly, how often does the function of a button is changed? Top right corner button on android is usually a back button (arrow/ x) or a profile icon. How often does a bottom navigation in an app change? Dashboard is an app that rarely changes.
I will do you one better. The screen in the button goes out. If the button changes the display based on the context, what does the button do? Is software responsible to recognize it cannot display an action and do something? What does it do? Should the user be responsible to remember what does the button do based on the context? This article is about return to physical buttons because they are reliable. Do you see any button on your cars dashboard that is unlabeled? Do you remember looking up in a manual what a weirdly iconed button does? On any piece of hardware.
This is from users perspecrtive alone.
Lets do the manufacturer. Imagine that screen buttons have SKUs. Dashboards have SKUs. Screen buttons have versioned drivers. Screen buttons need power delivery. Data lanes on pcbs. And fuck else.
Now imagine that you have a physical button. It costs cents. It closes one lane. Maybe needs power for a led.
Who the fuck wants screen buttons?
Finally. What the fuck multiple screen buttons solve that a single screen that can be any number of any buttons couldnt?
Because sure as fuck they wont solve for context, clarity and reliablity.
Because touch screens are cheap and put the onus of design onto the programmers of apps.
Thank god! Touch screens on the stuff in cars are a huge pain in the ass if you have hands as big as mine and the icons are all tiny
It's not that the icons are tiny, rather people driving usually operate by touch because their eyes need to be on the road.
They are more safe since people can feel the buttons without taking their eyes off of the road. I don't understand why they thought it was a good idea to use touchscreens.
It had nothing to do with being a good idea. It was just the more profitable idea. Tactile controls cost more to install than a cheap touchscreen with a dogshit GUI. Bonus being you have a proprietary part, the consumer can't easily swap out later if they want. So you've baked in some nice obsolescence to boot.
Ain't capitalism great? Race to the bottom.
One word. Tesla.
It became the Apple of automobiles and everyone was rushing to copy them. Then came the fall of Elon and everyone is realizing how full of shit the company is.
That's true.
With a T9 phone, I used to be able to send a complete text message without ever taking my eyes off the road.
Now that I've got a touchscreen I'm swerving all over the place every time I try to text. It's way less safe.
Cool, now bring back single cab light trucks with full length beds.
Id settle just for a truck that isnt very clearly pandering "im a big boy!" energy. There all way too fucking big for no god damn reason other than validation of ego. Bunch of weak fucking man babies need some million ton 3 lane wide truck just so they can pretend theyre a big strong man to themselves and everyone else, despite never using the truck for what its purpose is supposed to be.
Should be illegal to have touchscreen controls in a car, it requires you to look at it to effectively control it, which means the car forces you to ignore the road to do anything.
Can we address headlights that are brighter than the sun now?
my issue isn't really with the brightness, it's the height. Don't get me wrong bright headlights are annoying as fuck, but a huge ass truck behind me with their headlights literally higher than my back window is insane.
I'm so glad I kept my car and weathered through this shitty phase of car manufacturing.
If only there was hope for weathering through the data collection, subscription-based features and the death of sedans though...
Also, bring back gauges, instead of idiot-lights. It's nice to know when a problem is beginning (overheating, etc) before it becomes a crisis when you have no choice but to pull over.
I'm gonna buy a Garmin instinct because I realized I don't use 95% of my galaxy Watch's "smart" features.
I just want to say that I think this is the dash from my old car a Toyota Yaris.
I miss you ole' buddy. I'm sorry you got rear ended and totaled. You were a great car.
What about extreme violations of privacy? Let me know when that is "out", too.
I didn't have a car for a few years and the one I had was 2003 (with a slight stint from a similarly-aged car during a couple-month time I had to drive). I now have a car again and I HATE that my heat/air and such are all flat against the panel (not a touch screen, though). I literally can't adjust anything without looking in my current car. Thankfully, I avoid driving it whenever possible.
Touchscreens were never popular with customers. Manufacturers kept cramming touchscreens in cars and using them to control everything becuase they were being stupid with new tech.
Edit: I guess I should have been clearer. I was talking about as a replacement for tactile controlls in a car like the article is talking about. Reverse cameras and other things that are good to have a touch screen for make perfect sense but using your touch screen to control your Air conditioning in a way that you have to divert your attention from the road to operate sliders and buttons on a touch screen is dumb as hell.