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When I went car shopping recently, I was amazed by the autonomous technologies in most new models: automatic lane-keeping, braking to avoid collisions and parallel parking, for example.
But I was appalled by the state of dashboard technology. Technology sells, so car companies are all about touch screens and apps these days. Unfortunately, they're truly terrible at designing user interfaces (UIs)—the ways that you, the human, are supposed to interact with it, the car. A good user interface (a) is easy to navigate, (b) puts frequently used controls front and center, (c) gives clear feedback as you make a change and (d) is apparently beyond the capabilities of today's car companies. I asked my Twitter followers to help me nominate the World's Worst Car UI Designs—and I was flooded with responses.
Source:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/automobile-dashboard-technology-is-simply-awful/
Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:18AM (10 children)
You should be able to feel for controls without looking at them and without accidentally operating them.
If you do look, there should be clearly readable descriptions. Mysterious pictograms are unacceptable. The idea is that some people don't read English, but that is a poor excuse: you can at least type English into a search engine and get a translation or explanation. I can't even type... that... emoji thing, whatever it is.
I gather that aircraft do this well. In nearly every part of the world, descriptions are in English. A toggle switch often has to be pulled before you flip it; it is locked in place otherwise, preventing an accidental adjustment.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by frojack on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:27AM (7 children)
You've really got no time to be reading anything when in traffic.
If it's more complex than a gas gauge, it needs a voice capability for both input and output.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday April 12 2018, @07:17AM
> If it's more complex than a gas gauge, it needs a voice capability for both input and output.
Simpler: How about not discarding safety conventions which have been refined for decades, just for the fun of "disrupting"?
(Score: 5, Funny) by SomeGuy on Thursday April 12 2018, @11:46AM (5 children)
You are supposed to read them BEFORE you start driving.
Yes, most people just want to sit down and start driving. Having controls labeled in proper English makes a quick dashboard scan nice and easy. Stupid symbols means looking everything up in a manual.
Voice capability for input and output?!?!? Brilliant idea. Thanks for forbidding hearing impaired people from driving.
In the USA you have to be able to read English in order to read road signs. It is a basic safety thing.
Then again at the rate things are going, in 20 years the new revised road signs will no longer read "Atlanta 20 miles", but instead have a blue LED back lit symbol of a penis followed by a wavy symbol that means "it still be a ways further"
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @12:49PM (1 child)
in 20 years the new revised road signs will no longer read "Atlanta 20 miles"
These signs are obsolete. What could you possibly need them for? Your GPS system will tell you exactly how far it is to your exact destination; signs telling you the distance to some arbitrary point inside a city that you aren't going to anyway isn't useful, and is just a waste of taxpayer dollars.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @01:59PM
Get back with us when Gay Positioning System navigation become mandatory in both new and old cars and other vehicles. Then perhaps you will have a point.
"Turn left in to river". *Splash*.
Some of us like to know where we REALLY are and not rely on some overcomplicated corporate dreck.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @02:06PM (2 children)
Even better is the manual sometimes doesn't even have the right symbols in them because they make the same manual for several different models that have minor differences. Then sometimes the way they label the symbols is ambiguous. Even better is how bad some of the English in some manuals.
And this will go wrong for people who accidentally activate it while having a conversation while driving. Or when it accidentally activates because it thinks it hears something and ends up being a distraction
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday April 12 2018, @04:37PM
Or the kids and "friends" having heated arguments from the back seat on the choice and volume of the music, temperature and fan speed, and turning on the wipers because they don't like water drops.
Enough people get into arguments with the front passenger, I'm pretty sure we don't want to give access to the primary controls to everyone in the car.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:08PM
Me: drives my old non-voice trollmobile up next to a voicecarfag and rolls down window:
"Excuse me sir, do you have any GreyHEY, CAR, DRIVE OFF OF CLIFF!"
Zooooom... BOOM!
Lols.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @07:07AM
The person might be of another nationality who has just stolen the car and can't read or write.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday April 12 2018, @01:33PM
I mentioned this on SN before.
Last June (2017) we rented a nice, powerful car to drive to Colorado and be able to climb the mountains. The car had plenty of power and was great for driving in the mountains.
I was astonished how bad the in car navigation and infotainment system was. A weird mixture of controls. On screen controls were useless while driving. But to make things much more worser, the feel by touch buttons were useless! Of course, whichever adult was not driving at the moment could (attempt to) operate the system.
Along the edges of the screen were four buttons on the left and four on the right. Problem: Those buttons functions, at this moment, were defined by what is on the screen. So being able to feel for the button is useless unless you have very detailed knowledge of the system.
So RTFM! We tried that. The manual was virtually useless. Despite having plenty of time on the long road, and both adults being very tech savvy.
Overall I was astounded at how bad this system was. The design decisions. There seemed to be no clear reason why some controls were physical and others on screen.
The maps and navigation were impressive. It definitely knew the speed limit for everywhere we went. But when we needed directions, we resorted to Google maps on our phones.
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