In the last three years, there have been two times when we traveled, rented a car, and were given a Volkswagon.
Both times, the touchscreen-only controls were such a pain in the butt that we vowed we would never purchase such a car. It was a timesaver, because in that period our family has gotten two new (to us) cars, and our experiences with the rental Volkswagons allowed us to exclude an entire manufacturer from consideration.
If they haven't re-broken their interiors by the next time we look for a new car, I guess we'll have to consider them again.
One of the problems with fixing problems is that by fixing them, you're demonstrating to customers that problems can be fixed, and you risk setting the expectation that problems will be fixed. This puts pressure on management to fix more problems, and management generally finds this problematic.
I'd love to know what the justification for replacing them in the first place was. I can't think of any device, appliance, etc. I own whose UX is _better_ for not having physical, dedicated buttons or switches and instead having a touch interface or buttons which require a complex series of presses or chords. It's almost like there was _no_ UX research to back any of these "features" up and people just went ahead and made these changes because they could, it was fun and they look cool.
To give a very concrete and potentially hazardous example: I have an induction range which has no physical controls but has a touch interface which requires various combinations of tapping, holding and sliding fingers. To say nothing of the fact that this is useless for people who have significant visual impairments, how am I supposed to turn it off if there's an electrical fire because a pot boils over or something? Is the expectation that I reach into boiling water that potentially has current running through it and hope to tap my fingers in the right place? Am I supposed to try to yank the power? Or is the expectation that I just walk outside and call the fire department?
I think in context, Tesla was having quite the success story in the 2017-2022 time period, and their big screen and frequent software updates was getting a lot of attention. A lot of the stories around then were:
* Tesla infotainment is fast, responsive, good software
* Other OEMs struggle to compete in this space
* Other OEMs have software updates that require dealer visits
So the OEMs tried to emulate having a big screen UI and shoving more functionality into software, so they can update it.
Not to say Tesla gets all the credit, or that OEMs didn't start leaning on screens more and more before then. As screens got cheaper, customers demanded bigger screens, and OEMs felt like getting rid of buttons and shoving the functionality in the screen UI was the best way to appease their customers.
> I'd love to know what the justification for replacing them in the first place was.
There were two converging factors: number one is that there was a time where it was considered a sign of sophistication / progress. Definitely a case of form over function, but remember this was the era when everything Tesla did was cool and everyone was chasing them.
The second factor is cost. Physical buttons are expensive to design, certify and manufacture (most people don't have a notion of how high the durability bar is for everything that goes into a car interior). Once you have to have a touchscreen anyway you can (theoretically) remove almost all physical controls.
It's cost savings. I'm a UX designer, a friend of mine works at an electric vehicle startup. I asked and it was unambiguous. The kinds of buttons that go into a vehicle aren't like the raw components we buy on amazon for hobby projects. They go through much more rigorous testing to be resilient to hours of use, extreme temperatures, etc, and are commensurately more expensive. Those mediocre touchscreens are cheaper than the BOM for all those fancy buttons and dials, which might each have their own control board or group bus, etc.
I'm not sure whether this is also true for your induction range. Certainly on generic table lamps and such, the touch-activated buttons are the hobby slop we'd buy from amazon.
Anyway, I've never really heard anyone offer performance, likeability, or usability as a reason for touchscreens in cars. Glad to see the industry get rid of them, at the decadeslong speed you'd expect from a dinosaur industry with a regulatory forcefield.
Pretty much all (American?) cars have gotten rid of most physical buttons, it's not just VW. I assume it's cost.
Like what the sibling comment said: money. It's cheaper to produce one type of screen module and deploying that one type across car models that different kinds of switches. Also it was some kind of USP; to public perception of touch screens equal luxury during iPhone boom. Even though the software implementations were left to be desired ie. nothing was buttery smooth
I must assume the justification was "it is cool". especially considering they also placed capacitive touch "buttons" on the steering wheel. Those are the worst of both worlds in every case imaginable.
Money
Ultimately, yeah. But specifically I think it's a combination of saving money directly on the bill of materials and assembly, and saving money on design flexibility (heck, you can probably do the entire infotainment design process at the last minute and flash it onto the cars after the entire assembly).
That's almost always the answer for big corporations run by MBAs.
FWIW: induction ranges have sealed tops. There are no paths to get a high voltage from the AC input to the range top, no matter what boils over, and if you break things such that there is a short the relevant GFCI failsafes will shut it off long before you work up the courage to try to touch the controls.
Safety is in fact the big selling point of the device. The surface doesn't get above food temperature. If you boil a pot over, move the pot and just wipe it up with a rag, just like you would spilled tea or whatever.
That's not to say there aren't human interface issues with relying on capacitive sensors[1], but safety surely isn't one of them.
[1] Actually "boiling over" is in fact the shortcoming: what happens is that your sauce spills over the controls and causes the sensors to glitch, which the device detects as a failure and shuts down before you can wipe it. Then you have to reset all the temperatures.
GFCI for a 220 / 50 amp stove didn't enter the code until like 2020. My county hasn't even adopted that.
The car has to be scrapped when the UI hardware fails.
You can live a LONG time without a working ... radio tuning knob, if the other 99.9% of the controls work. Or if the right passenger door lock button fails, really who cares. But when the central control of the entire car fails, its scrap.
Very profitable for the manufacturer.
I’m not sure if the GUI in that image is real or a placeholder, but I really like what I see.
Reminds me a lot of the skeuomorphism from classic iOS and WebOS, but cleaned up with elements of modern “flat” designs.
From what I’ve read it will be real and is supposed to evoke the early VW Polos. I believe you will be able to switch between that and a more „modern“ look
This is not a production system yet. Also, as someone who suffered VW/Cariad developed UI since 2021, it's going to suck balls.