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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: 3, Insightful) by toddestan on Friday April 13 2018, @12:55AM
Having the switches there also means they don't have to do anything different for RHD and LHD drive cars, whereas with the switches in the door, they need different door panels, rerouting the wiring, etc. Though sometimes they didn't bother for low volume markets - for example I know some cars sold in Austrailia, the passenger ended up with all the window switches because it was the same door as the US version.