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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: 4, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Thursday April 12 2018, @11:21AM (6 children)
I've seen some newer cars where everything on the dash is lit up blue like some shit from the movie TRON. Blue LEDs, blue plastic, screens that operate more in the blueish/ultra-white spectrum, and the readouts themselves are all colored blue.
I can't even imagine driving one of these at night. They would be blinding even during the day.
Older cars used mostly red/orange. Even ages ago they could have used different colors but they didn't because it would have been fucking retarded.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday April 12 2018, @12:13PM (2 children)
They have to be bright to compete with the headlights of oncoming vehicles.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by DavePolaschek on Thursday April 12 2018, @01:15PM
Except for that one guy in a pavement-colored car driving around with his headlights off in order to see if you're paying attention.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Thursday April 12 2018, @01:45PM
I assume you mean those new blueish blinding extra-bright headlights that consumertards seem to love so much. I have never had a problem seeing a normal orange/red dashboard over normal headlights.
Way back when, I had been told that there were laws against extra bright (regular, not high-beam) headlights. But that seems to not be the case any more.
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Thursday April 12 2018, @03:48PM
I actually swapped all of the dash lights out of my car shortly after buying it. The dash plates were silver and the lights and needles were orange so right at sunset the glare from the sun made the dashboard completely invisible. I swapped them to green because regardless of the time of day or lighting conditions it stuck out from the background. It also made the red and orange notification lights on the dash far more noticeable.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:04PM
A few years ago my mother bought a Subaru Impreza, possibly the last model from them without a touch screen. It has very sensible control locations and the instrument lighting is red, minimum interference with night vision.
My only quibble with the UI is the center info panel display (clock, miles to empty...), the white letters/digits go very dim when the headlights are turned on. Around here we have a rule that if wipers are on (raining), lights have to be on too. So that info panel is invisible when it's raining in daylight.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Friday April 13 2018, @01:01AM
Another problem that's common is for reason a lot of cars have bits of chrome (actually, cheap nasty plastic that looks like chrome) splattered all over the dash. Which of course means on a bright sunny day, you've got reflections of the sun blinding you too.
Besides, the dashboards on a lot of newer cars is just plain tacky. Most of them look like a jukebox crossed with a gaming PC from 10 years ago and one of the Aiwa stereos from about 2000.