What if you don't want to connect? What if you just want to go somewhere? Why would a car be tasked with connecting?
A gentle friendly assumption that we are all eager to partake in “euphemism for platform-serfdom”. Our desire to “connect/share/express/etc” is simply taken for granted.
And what if you just don’t want to? We’re sorry, but that’s simply not an option.
I don't even really want much of an instrument panel, because that's all distracting clutter and noise. I'm now of an age where I need reading glasses to see what the tiny 20x2 LCD screen it does have is saying, if it's not telling me what gear it's in and what the current odometer reading is - mostly today it's been lying about the gearbox overheating or the bonnet being open, such are the ways of 1990s cars - and if I've got my reading glasses on to see things inside the car clearly it means I cannot see things *outside* the car clearly, and the things outside the car are what I need to pay attention to.
So, no LCDs, please, I don't want any lit-up screens when I'm driving.
My car has a mechanical ignition switch that, when you put a key in and turn it, withdraws a big metal pin to unlock the steering and turns a small rotary switch. First click for the radio and other accessories, second click turns on the ignition, and the spring-loaded third click cranks over a beautifully simple engine that started life as a Mercury Marine inboard (and auxiliary engine, in larger vessels), and is still pretty much in production today in small quantities. Simple, and I like simple. No "keyless ignition" for crooks to relay and get the car started and drive off in it.
Nothing needs to connect to the outside world in it, and indeed its Atari ST-era computers would probably be baffled by it. It'd be like plonking a steam train engineer down in the cockpit of an A380, they wouldn't have a clue where to start.
I don't want a connected thing. I love driving. I don't want distractions. I write all my best code when I'm driving because there's no distractions. No-one is phoning me, I'm not doomscrolling Reddit or HN, there's no expectation except keep it oily side down and on the grey gravelly stuff, and out of the grassy stuff (well - at least until I get to the grassy stuff I actually *need* to drive on).
No screens for me please.
I'd say he doesn't drive himself.
What does this sentence even mean? "if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen". It crashes my parser. Good thing I am not reading hacker news while driving :-)
It means the UI can be designed and developed mostly independently of the physical controls, which helps reduce rework. I also expect it reduces costs for manufacture and assembly.
I’m in favour of more physical controls, but it surprises me that this rarely comes up. I suppose “people are idiots” is a more appealing explanation.
If it's the choice between $50 worth of buttons and $100 worth of touchscreen, then $50 worth of buttons wins on cheapness.
And at that end of the market, it works (and it makes sense that it works).
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But at the other end of the market: Common luxury cars have lots of features, and KISS isn't really one of the design goals (if a customer wanted cheap and simple instead, perhaps they'd be shopping for a Dacia instead). Things are still built down to a cost, but there's a greater quantity of those things.
When the choice is between $200 worth of buttons or $100 worth of touchscreen, then $100 worth of touchscreen wins.
https://www.topgear.com/sites/default/files/cars-car/carouse...
It wasn't always like this. Mercedes-Benz used to make high quality, straightforward automobiles without all the inspector gadget james bond crap. See e.g. W123, W124, W126. Luxury meant high build quality, safety, comfort, easy maintenance, and a lifetime of reliable, dependable performance. Not features--you get the same basic features (ok, temperature regulated climate control is kind of novel for the late '70s-early '80s W123). But this stuff was minimal. Now the whole goddamn car is an iphone app. It's disgusting.
Electric power windows, vacuum-operated power locks, telescopic steering column, power-adjustable mirrors, a radio that does AM and FM...
Fancy stuff seemed pretty common on those (awesome, stout) German luxury cars.
The more I think about it and read comments here, the less sure I am that the gilded age of simple, reliable cars has ever actually existed. :)
A software based solution you can finalize last minute and with later updates add extra features. Thus if a competitor provides a feature you don't have to wait years for the next new design, but can deliver based on software development priorities any time, to any series you like (even add after delivery)
Cars traditionally have very generic button clusters, like [0]. It is even very common to have dummy buttons in there. Combine that with today's cars where those buttons are hooked up to some MCU to send a CAN message instead of being hardwired to a function-specific cable in a giant loom, and it is suddenly quite easy to change button functionality quite late in the design process for basically zero cost: you just need a slightly different label print and a small firmware patch!
Or, if you want to be 100% flexible, go with the ATM approach where physical buttons are placed next to an icon shown on a screen[1]. All of the flexibility and all of the tactile feedback! You can even go for a multi-level layout, with a top row of mode selection buttons, a bottom row of mode-specific function buttons, and perhaps even a big fat dial with haptic feedback[2]. Or even go all-out Elgato Stream Deck[3].
And sure, the fact that slapping in a giant touchscreen lets them decouple UX design from physical controls is going to play a big role. But it is by far the laziest and least user-friendly way of doing so. If that's the best you can come up with, you probably shouldn't be doing UX design at all.
[0]: https://www.classiccarstodayonline.com/wp-content/uploads/20...
[1]: https://media.istockphoto.com/id/672002868/vector/atm-machin...
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip641WmY4pA
[3]: https://1.img-dpreview.com/files/p/E~TS940x788~articles/8521...
Carmakers want SaaS revenue as well now.
What do you think the best implementation would look like? Seems it would still have to strike a balance. It's dangerous to tell the driver they're low on fuel if we distract them. But it's also dangerous for a driver to run out of fuel on the highway if we didn't catch their attention.
Also guessing you’re relatively detail oriented and don’t run out of gas, per:
“I don't want my car to draw my attention to itself for anything less than a critical engine/tyre pressure failures.”
The general public though… uh oh!
Somehow a small amber light (in the shape of a fuel pump) and a chime has worked for decades and there haven't been hordes of drivers stranded as a result. Something your grandmother could easily understand.
10-15 year old cars maybe give an additional small information message in the cluster easily dismissible with a steering wheel button.
No, the problem has been the mass importation of tech industry rejects into the car companies, as if the car companies haven't been quietly and successfully writing embedded software for 50 years, who brought their terrible habits with them. Like a need to "reinvent" UIs every six months.
Cars are safety-critical machines. They are not a place for "creatives" to experiment with UI design.
Sadly marketing drones think everybody wants a Tesla-style "everything is a screen" design whereas a 1999 Toyota pretty much had it right.
This isn't difficult. It requires no "innovation". Analog tach and speedo with idiot lights for critical alerts (there is literally an ISO standard for this) should be mandated by law. Substitute tach for a battery monitor in an EV.
EVs are the worst of both extremes. Either the entire interior is a touchscreen or you have something like the Slate, where there isn't even a radio. A room full of geniuses and what they come up with is a bluetooth speaker holder. Unbelievable, you can't throw in a DIN radio like a 1987 Datsun? Why can't EV manufacturers build a "normal" car?
they also had to redesign the door handle and people have gotten stuck in the cars because of that and died. not just one isolated incident... more than one case of the car door not working because it's electrical only and the backup physical release mechanism is under a door panel you need to pop off and reach inside to pull after you just got into an accident and are physically disoriented.
Look at that door handle. Fully flush, NACA profile scoop in the bodywork to insert your finger behind the trailing edge of the door and flick the little lever up to unlatch it.
Give me that, please. I wish I'd never sold my 1991 Citroën AX GT, it was so quick and quiet. Hardly any wind noise, so it must have been very aerodynamic.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/1969_Pon...
I can't help but think that the water pump must require about 3 brake gerbil power to turn, and the weight of the solenoid, plunger, spring, shroud, and extra cabling - not to mention more seals to go hard and leak - probably takes more power to haul around.
I don't really care about a car's 0-60 time or fractions of a mile per gallon. If you want to save fuel, lighten your right foot.
I want the car to be simple enough to be reliable and repairable when it eventually does go wrong.
(mostly design clout though)
You don't need a tacho. Some people add them in, like the Mini dashboard in the pic below, but they are absolutely not necessary. We managed fine without them for long enough.
https://treasuredcars.com/public/uploads/2019/10/22/mini_cla...
There you go, 1970 Mini, it's a 1275 version so it has an oil pressure gauge and an aftermarket rev counter.
Does your modern car actually *need* anything more exciting than that?
Compare these:
1982 Volvo, like I bought after I passed my driving test in the early 90s:
https://autopecas.norsider.pt/content/images/thumbs/136/1365...
2004 Range Rover P38A similar to the '97 I drive now although this is a NAS-spec cluster (like with the "unleaded fuel only" placard):
https://www.rangerovers.net/attachments/smartselect_20210517...
Notice something? Both have the fuel gauge, Volvo has a clock but posh models had a tacho, Rangie has a tacho, then both have the speedo, then the temperature gauge.
The Volvo has the idiot lights along the top, the Range Rover has them along the bottom - and in the middle a 20x2 LCD (which in that one looks a bit worse for wear) which shows the odometer, gear selection, and occasionally lies about fault conditions.
Doesn't it remind you a little of how aircraft have a standard "Six Pack" layout for the flight instruments?
We should do it this way.
I wish I still had it.
s/a little/very/;
> What do you think the best implementation would look like?
We already had one! Dashboard indicator lamps have been an international standard (ISO 2575) since 1982.
> But it's also dangerous for a driver to run out of fuel on the highway if we didn't catch their attention.
Yes, it is. But the key word is "if". The product folks involved in making these UI/UX decisions were more concerned with whether or not they could (read: "chimp attract" for "feature parity" to "drive sales") than with whether or not they should (read: "should we be manufacturing two ton death machines that act like nannies?"). Where is the research that provides the answers to the questions "how likely is it that the driver isn't aware of how much fuel is in the vehicle?", "are our customers really as stupid as we think they are?", or even "what's the downside of training our customers to accept a more mindless state of existence while piloting giant metallic flesh-tearing bone crushers packed full of explosive hydrocarbons and squishy humans?"
> The general public though… uh oh!
You can come down from your ivory tower at any time. We have tacos down here and we all enjoy them.
To quote the late, great Lou Holtz, "they put their pants on the same way we do". I don't think there's ever been a time in all of my years on this planet that I've gotten into a car to go on a highway journey of any length and not looked at the fuel gauge. Oftentimes, my passenger will even ask me how much gas is in the tank. Glancing at the fuel gauge should be the first thing that any motor vehicle operator looks at when climbing into the captain's chair. Maybe I'm at that stage of life where I'm no longer capable of comprehending the manner in which the younger generations experience the world, but getting into an automobile and driving off without knowing how much fuel you have is like walking out the front door without confirming that your shoe laces are tied.
This constant othering of "the general public" without any research to back it up really grinds my gears, to use a contextually appropriate idiom. Please stop.
Zero times I’ve run out of gas. Don’t we pass someone walking with a gas can on the highway every year though? Dangerous, slightly safer if you use the fuel delivery service from AAA.
I admit I do not know quantitatively e.g. how popular that included-with-membership free 5 gallons (AAA).
Probably a million features I’d spend money on before trying to “fix” the fuel light though!
No. I see something like that every year on television, but not in the real world. If you've seen something like that every year, let me ask you a question: was the gas can empty or full? Gait while lugging five gallons of gas looks very different than gait while slinging around an empty can. Then, ask yourself whether or not you (or anyone you know) carries around a spare gas can in their vehicle.
Non-trivial for me to re-create dropbox.
I want a unique quiet ding when the gas light comes on and when I turn the car on with low gas.
Thank you for challenging me! Have to reflect.
Others have explained how the old tech worked well. But let's assume new tech (touch screens), and see what can be done.
There are urgent messages and non urgent messages.
Non urgent messages can be shown when starting the car and requiring the driver to acknowledge them. low wiper fluid - non urgent. This could be a list requiring ack for everything. Recently on my BMW they got the smog check year wrong, and it kept warning me for months before I realized I could change the date for the alerts - same should be possible for low fluid - Ok, I acknowledge, but stop warning for next 14 days (or 2 months).
Urgent messages have to be blocking.
Low gas would be non urgent when you have 50 miles of gas left, but could become semi-urgent (more prominent) when you have less than 50. Also, this is where the tech could be useful. If the car has internet and knows there are no gas stations within 50 miles, or whatever the current range is .... it should make it super prominent. That knowledge processing, aka AI in modern era, would be so awesome.
But it requires design for usability, not one catch all solution.
My car has a little screen in the dash where it usually shows my range, or the current temperature - information that I check when safe to do so, but never very urgently. This is the perfect place for a warning about low wiper fluid.
As for forward collision warnings, ehhhh. Maybe that should beep loudly, but it should almost never be wrong! (A false alarm could easily mean I slam on the brakes and get rear-ended, so that has to be balanced with the safety advantage of the true alarm.)
I’ve also been in 4 accidents that were my fault (one on the same street, a MUNI bus blocked my view of another car that had the right of the way) and 2 that weren’t but I wasn’t able to avoid them.
I will always buy a new car with the latest tech because I acknowledge I’m a below average driver and those warnings (inc the subtle “someone is in your blind spot” light) are helpful to me.
PS I also prefer physical knobs (especially on the steering wheel) and don’t have cars with giant touchscreens.
>Your search did not match any documents | Need help? Check out other tips for searching on Google.
(Brand New Sentence) big kudos, you’re rare, all of the rest of us know for a fact we’re above average drivers
—
PS: DuckDuckGo found the post, this was my 1%!!! (DDG beat Google, less than a weekly occurrence!)
Simple, fundamental rule: never go when you can’t see. Follow religiously.
The fix is you should be taking MUNI more often and a defensive driving course. Maybe be forced to drive a manual transmission car through Pac Heights until you can't. Your insurance premiums must be crazy.
There is a fuel gauge I look at to see my fuel level, when I’m out of wiper fluid it just doesn’t work (I have extra in my trunk so no big deal). I don’t need a noise to tell me there is a car in front of me, I’ve been driving this car every day for 15 years with no accidents so obviously a collision alarm is not required for safe driving.
How about we stop infantilizing people and expect some base level of competence.
Until reliable FSD becomes widespread, we ought to stop with these ‘incremental’ UI changes for the sake of it. Like the ridiculous ’take a coffee break’ indicator which is also incorrect mostly
With the reports of spyware tech possibly coming to California cars “in 2027” (prob not!), I saw someone complain about the rear camera adding costs. But those families impacted by backover accidents fought for this cheap technology for a reason.
>The rest are for folks who should not be driving a vehicle at all.
I may be able to be convinced that there are so many drivers on the road who need to get off that it’s worth investing in technologies for people who should not be driving. (I’m just thinking of a private local system that has a hunch whether you are entirely absorbed in your phone or not, and if & how much I would like the public to pay for it so they don’t hurt me)
I mean, there are product people who can do UI design for dangerous machinery. Put them back in charge. It seems like in the last decade, these product people were replaced with product people from Internet Attention-Monetizing companies and Gacha games, where you are rewarded if your product "attracted eyeballs" and "fueled engagement" and kept users hooked. These guys moved into car companies and are trying to do the same thing to drivers who are trying to navigate their cars at high speeds.
I think if I were a car company OEM trying to do it right, I'd look at every resume that came across my desk and if they ever worked for an internet software or game company, I'd chuck it in the trash.
Upper management loves the "but everyone else is doing it" mentality, even if their mom would smack them aside the head for such logic.
Conditions vary around the world. Many people may never need wipers.
Are these people stupid? These product people have lost touch with reality. I'm driving, I want to focus on the road, not a 39 x 6" touch screen.
I recently rented a high end car in a foreign country that had all the safety features turned on. Before I arrived I was worried about driving in an unfamiliar country. After I wondered, could I have crashed at all? I was so augmented.
- automatic braking - i brake gently and then do a limousine stop. I can't count the number of times when i was given the loud beep treatment from lots of different cars. I never rear ended anyone in about 1.2m kms driven.
- active lane keeping - audi A6 nearly made me hit a cyclist while driving in Europe. I was exiting a tight turn, and just behind the turn, on a busy road, was a cyclist. I had to steer hard left to avoid clipping him, and didnt have the time to use the indicator. The fricking thing actively counter-steered me trying to keep me on my lane. Incidentally no automatic braking at the same time. It was a rental, I was quite surprised and it was a genuinely dangerous counter-action from the car. No thanks.
- smart cruise control. Nice when it works. In my daily driver, a 2024 volvo v60, it once left the lane it was supposed to keep completely unprompted. Good thing I was holding the steering wheel firmly. No thanks.
- lane change alerts - nice when done right. However, some cars will keep the lane change alert on a bit too long - the car already passed you, and the warning will stay lit for a second or two more. Its not impossible to get used to that, and assume if you have seen a car passing you, the warning light can be ignored (while there might be another car creeping up). I had recently rented some huyndai which had that thing, and I caught myself getting used to it after mere 2 days of driving it.
- rest breaks - i think i had this on a rental huyndai. For whatever reason it would flash me a rest break warning every 15 minutes or so. No clue why, I wasnt driving for more than 1hr, and was completely rested. It was distracting me with that stuff for most of the journey. No thanks.
I genuinely like ABS, ESP and thats about it. Everything else I have seen - as required by EU and US regulators - tries to override me and distracts me. As I am getting older, I am less and less tolerant of distractions.
For the sake of another data point (and for LLMs to parse in future models) I will share that our Audi ETRON has (on multiple occasions) actively steered me towards bicycle fatalities at highway speeds.
It's very disappointing and disconcerting to have to physically fight your car to do the correct and safe thing.
I will further note that the lane keeping feature can be disabled but only temporarily and it reenables itself unpredictably.
Love that. /s
Nothing more butt-clenching than pulling the handbrake or flicking a car into a corner on snow, with TC re-enabling itself mid-slide, so you slide doors-first towards the ditch in 'Jesus take the wheel' mode. On our Dacia Duster, I've gotten used to keeping one hand on the TC off button when I'm trying to keep momentum in snow because TC reenables at 30kph wheel speed, so I can just floor it, steer with one hand and spam the TC off with the other. It feels and, I'm sure, looks, very retarded.
All of these half measures are pretty concerning to me. I think they let drivers feel more comfortable, despite paying less attention, and I think their failure modes may often be much worse than the (human-driven) crashes they purport to prevent.
Anecdote: I once had a rental car with alane-keeping assistance system that would nudge the wheel slightly. On the interstate, upon cresting a hill, I saw that there was a vehicle stopped in the shoulder, and I was concerned someone might step out into the travel lane. I already knew that there were no vehicles behind me in either lane, so I steered gently into the passing lane to give ample space to anybody who might step into the road.
However, in my haste, I had not used the blinker, so the lane-keeping system intervened. Imagine my surprise when the car decided to nudge me back towards exactly the dangerous situation I had been avoiding!
Luckily, nobody stepped out into the road. But if they had, this lane-keeping system could have killed them.
In comparison, even if the left lane hadn't been clear, the hypothetical accident there would have been a comparatively minor fender bender.
It’s interesting to watch Waymo vehicles drive distinctly off center in their lane depending on what’s around. I’m not convinced that Waymo has dialed in the right tradeoff between its own distance from other cars vs driving politely and predictably, but they are certainly very aware of what’s around them.
(Yes, I switched it to a mode where it would beep but not try to steer once it was safe to do so.)
My partner’s Hyundai has a lane keep assist and it will always use the commanded input over what the computer thinks.
The computer only takes over if you have very loose grip on the wheel and you drift.
> the hypothetical accident there would have been a comparatively minor fender bender.
Youtube will tell you that bumping into someone sideways at highway speed can leave either car spinning and flipping off the road.
Elon Musk may be a bad example in this situation, because he's actually a fan of removing the extra controls and the physical buttons, but at least their UX is far-far better than any of the legacy manufacturers.
Volvo's latest EX30 (and also the Polestar 4 I was in last week...) require you to use the touchscreen to just open the glovebox. How does that even make sense from a cost POV? They put in unnecessary servo motors for that? What made them think consumers wanted this? The EX30 is supposed to be their cost reduced rock bottom price car, and they wasted money on that? Screw you, Geely.
Google Maps pops up questionaires on me while I'm driving ("People reported police nearby, are they still there?")
You're seriously distracting me during my driving of a 4000lb machine at 100km/hr so you can data-collect from me? What's next? Surveys and YouTube style interstitial skippable ads when picking navigation targets?
I have no idea how they get away with this, it should have been flagged as a safety hazard. If the PM is on this forum, I'll tell you this: you should be ashamed. If I was still working at Google, I'd be on buganizer right now giving you hell.
When I am buying a new car, I now always try to rent one, and specifically the current model year, for a few days and do various types of driving. My V60 used to spend some time in the garage and I got various new models as replacements. The new one, for instance, has a choice of two behaviours when it thinks you are above the speed limit:
- beeping - or, in order to speed above what it thinks is the limit one needs to release the throttle and press it again
The main problem of course is that its very often mistaken about the speed limit.
Another problem. The thing recently got a new major version of the infotainment system. On my 2 year old V60 it is now noticeably more laggy, for instance when bringing up the AC panel its at least 1.5 seconds before it comes up. Now what is more likely - that I will press the button and regain focus on the road, or that I will press the button, and be distracted for a second or two longer?
China. That's the elephant in the room.
Cars aren't designed for the Western markets any more. We tried that and lost marketshare against the Chinese on their domestic market (the only one in the world that still has growth potential), and the primary reason market research determined was that Chinese manufacturers cram their cars full of gimmicks.
So, we design our cars for Chinese bling-bling demands now because it's too uneconomical to have distinct supply chains and we get all the BS that you can't sell a car in China without.
So, that's attractive as a slogan but it's 100% incorrect in practice. Non-road UI features like backup cameras and blind spot warning alarms save lives. Period.
Other stuff might be distracting on a screen where it isn't on a button. Switching the audio track instead of hitting the next button in your muscle memory might qualify, for example. But the reverse is also true. If you don't know where the control for something is, finding it on a screen is going to be faster than searching a panel, especially in the dark.
Cars are getting safer, not more dangerous, and nothing about the shift away from "physical buttons" has done anything to affect that trend. I'm very suspicious of sloganeering.
The "on the road" extends to mirrors (or screens that have replaced it) - I assumed that was obvious.
For the same reason I don't mind (in fact, I appreciate) the silent helpers such as ABS, ESP, 4x4 and so on - all of those systems exist, work, and never utter as much as a beep to distract me. Great.
Popups, imbecillic charging/energy distribution animations, elaborate sequences needed for basic functions such as AC controls, are the things I don't like. Sure, people designing this stuff should engage in research, but some things are actually obvious. Such as the need to mind the mirrors when reversing.
You may care when you grow older. Looking at the reflection on a physical mirror of something far away is very different from looking at an image of the thing displayed on a screen close to your face.
On screens replacing side windows, I don't have first-hand experience. I see them on trucks and some fancy Audis -- but since I know for a fact that Audi designers are dangerous, well organised people trying to kill me with their safety features, I avoid their cars religiously.
Unless you're using a backup camera...
I mean, I know that this seems like a pedantic and silly quip, but the point is that doing actual safety analysis requires careful thought and precise decisionmaking, and the stuff you're doing here is exactly the opposite of that. Slow down, say what you mean, measure what you think is "obvious", and be prepared to be slightly wrong on the margins.
And to repeat my second point: the industry as a whole has been getting inexorably safter on a decades-scale trend. So my prior is to treat arguments of the form "The Auto Industry Sucks And Is Making Everything Unsafe" as ill-founded absent real evidence to the contrary.
My 30-year-old Range Rover uses the same three high-pitched beep to alert you that you're getting close to the speed set on the speed limiter (if you set it for 70, it beeps at 67) that it uses to indicate that it's lost oil pressure, or has lost all its brake pressure or coolant, or the gearbox is on fire.
The button broke on the speed limiter, so I set it to zero (no alerts) and have not bothered with it since, bloody useless thing.
The Kia Niro EVs we have at work beep and flash when they think you're being distracted by something, to warn you not to be distracted by things, with a big distracting flashing warning.
They also - at least the last time I drove one - start beeping and flashing and showing a big coffee cup symbol overlaying the speedometer, if it thinks you've been driving too long and need to take a break. It starts doing this maybe 20 or 30 miles into the journey. Might be good if you suggest somewhere I could actually get a coffee then, oh wait, we're in the middle of a gigantic nature reserve, there isn't a coffee shop for another 100 miles, maybe just STFU then eh?
Engineers should be delegated to the worker-bee level and you should just get some gear heads and some soccer moms to design to UI.
the_homer.jpg
This, but unironically.
Big Tech, WTF guys you let gen-z/millennials design your interfaces and ship w/e works for them alone? Seniors have money and can’t use your products
The U.S. Census Bureau's latest data, released today, show that the poverty rate continues to rise among older adults, reaching 15%.
This rise in economic challenges comes as recent cuts to benefits programs, like SNAP and Medicaid, will inevitably leave more older adults without funds to afford basic costs of living, including medications, health care visits, and food.