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Touchscreens Are Out, and Tactile Controls Are Back (spectrum.ieee.org)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Volume control is also accessible from the steering wheel on pretty much any car produced within the last 15 years, and certainly any with a touch screen. I'm not comparing to steering wheel controls.

I'm comparing it to fiddling with AC settings on a centre console like everyone seems to me mentioning in this post.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

One, the volume knob is far quicker to respond than the usual 'up/down' slow volume adjustment on the wheel. The turn down the overly loud sound from the last driver immediately is nicer with a volume knob.

But with my car with hard A/C controls, I just reach down to the little 'up/down' toggle and tug it down a bit if I feel a little warm or bump it up a little if I feel too cold, or hit the big old button if I need to toggle it off to talk on speaker.

There are a fairly well known set of very common controls that will never be better and need an update. Coarse A/C adjustments, vent direction volume, and next-track are all no-brainers (unless you are Tesla...)

For example, here's a layout that obviously has room and depends on touch for a lot of features, but preserves a reasonably sane set of audio and climate controls (and four miscellaneous functions)

With that you don't look, you know pretty much immediately for the functions you would use.

There's still plenty of room for touch/voice controls for those more nuanced/complicated things that don't fit into button land well. Entering a navigation destination, managing any software updates, setting parameters like "should the car adjust cruise control based on speed limit signs, and if so, what adjustment to the limit should be applied?'