Auto Touchscreen Insanity Update

Over the weekend, I coincidentally had to drive my wife's car a lot -- and ran into another plea for sanity on automotive touchscreens by a kindred spirit.

It did not hurt my appreciation of Igor Ljubuncic's post that -- on top of the mostly useless and annoying touchscreen on the dash -- that I accidentally changed some setting that caused the car to enter some kind of safety ninny mode: It started beeping and flashing about all kinds of things any halfway sentient or competent driver would have already noticed.

It so well captures the myopic modern Zeitgeist of automobile design to be nagged about the obvious by the same people who all but insist that you drive while attending to a poorly-designed smart phone.

With that off my chest, a glimmer of hope and a recommendation:

Looks good to me... (Image by Brock Wegner, via Unsplash, license.)

It's not all gloomy. Various car companies are slowly realizing the error of their ways. After going all the way in on the touch craze (that's called marketing and buzzwords for you), they encountered something that apparently market studies couldn't have predicted. User dissatisfaction.

And so, they are now dialing back on the touch stupidity and going back to a reasonable balance between touch and physical. Essential, often-used things are done via dials and buttons, non-essential and less often-used stuff goes into the touch screen. Frankly, that's how it should be.

If you want to set a navigation destination, a virtual touch keyboard sure makes more sense than doing so by voice or slow alphabet scroll. Or if you want to check your tire pressure. No problem. But radio, climate control, anything you may want to use WHILE driving, those must never be touch. [It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who thinks that some interfaces are good for some things and other interfaces are good for others... --ed]

And that shall be my financing strategy forever on. Here, I have to call out Hyundai, as they never deviated from sanity, and committed to normal interfaces (a combo of essential real buttons and non-essential touch) for as long as we use human-driven cars. I've never pondered a Hyundai as a personal purchase, but here, we might have a first. [bold added]

Good. Ljubuncic never mentioned Mazda, but unless they've lost their minds during the past few years, they might also represent a sane choice.

-- CAV