As the designated "touch screens aren't that bad" guy i felt i had to respond. First i want to state my position that i don't want a tesla screen only style. Much of my arguments are challenging people's perceptions and to point out inaccuracies in thinking or logic. with that being said lets get in to it:
Honestly why? if you are changing the temperature and you grab the dial how many people can honestly say that they turn the dial and never take their eyes of the road. I guarantee that nearly everyone will glance at the knob, look back a the road, grab the knob, give it a turn then look back at the knob to make sure it is where you wanted it to be...or if it changes to a temperature number you will look at that number to make sure it was the number you wanted. This is no different than in my tesla, I look at the screen, move my hand and hook my fingers under the spot and press a few times, then i look back to make sure i pressed it the right amount of times.
Except when it is a button with an LED indicator of status....many physical buttons don't have any positional status at all, you just press it and it changes something on the dash. the vast majority of buttons / levers etc do not indicate their status and are instead just membrane buttons like on a keyboard that get pressed, indicate something to the computer, and return to their neutral status.
to my point earlier, how many people ACTUALLY never take their eyes off the road for a second when pressing buttons? Additionally very few functions need to be changed Immediately and urgently in the middle of driving.(things like windshield wipers or headlights)....if there is a tense moment of driving i don't think changing the AC is a critical function at that moment in time. I would argue that while making a turn through traffic most people are not adjusting their AC or changing radio stations or doing anything other than paying attention to the road.
I would agree that if something needs to have a lever to physically set the position then sure it shouldn't be controlled by the computer or by the touch screen, but what are some examples of things that should be like this? the first thing to consider is the scout will be all electric. so even things that ordinarily would be physical changes to the vehicle such as 4wd would all be done electronically. So why does a physical lever need to be done. Additionally in a traditional truck you might have a lever to indicate if you are in 4WD-H 4WD-L or 2WD. but aside from that being a physical lever that does something physical, why does that need to be in a position to indicate it. Is someone driving along glued to the road and needing to feel around the cabin to find out if their vehicle is in 4wd or not? additionally many traditional ICE vehicles have a button that either turns on or off 4wd because it will phsycially engage the transfer case with an electric motor. and those buttons may or may not even have an LED indicator on them. Most of what i've seen are a dial that does nothing but puts a yellow picture of 4 wheels on the dashboard.
I want to re-iterate my position. I am not suggesting all controls should be on a touch screen, I'm mainly here to challenge some of these perceptions that physical controls are always used without looking. In a different post on this thread i shared a story about my father who was 100% insistent that he never takes his eyes off the road to adjust anything and my stupid tesla screen was ruining cars. The next time i drove with him i pointed out each time he took his eyes off the road to adjust the AC, to shift into gear, to change the settings of the windshield wipers, to turn up the radio.
I just want everybody to be open and honest in their analysis of what is "NEEDED" and not. Everybody takes their eyes off the road.
My other point is that given that the new scout will be all electric everything will be done electronically and everything needs to go through the central computer. Given that everything costs money (designing, resourcing, logistics, manufacturing) why should we design a special button to change the radio from AM to FM keeping in mind that it will need to be integrated into the dash or center console just to have a small controller set behind it, just to have a wire to then feed back into the central computer. It is much faster and cost effective to just keep it on the screen.
My final point (sorry, lots to say); If there was one word that would describe a original scout's dashboard i would say "minimalistic" or "simple" would come to most people's minds. What is also the term that everybody used to describe the tesla model 3's dashboard?...."minimalistic" and "simplistic".....so keeping in that mind set and combining all of my previous points. I think we should encourage scout to design a simplistic and minimalistic dashboard and create good feeling tactile buttons for functions that either A) are critical when driving (lights, wipers, etc) B) are used every time you drive(AC, volume) C) Have no logical reason for being on a screen (dome lights, glove box) or finally D) Have a legal reason to be there (hazards)
I can honestly say I often adjust temperature, fan speed and vent source without taking my eyes off the road. However, I’m not arguing that everything should be operated blindly only that it
could be operated blindly. It is better when there is
multi-sensory feedback, touch, sight and sound. If climate controls were on the touchscreen I’d likely have to navigate through screens just to get to the controls. I would need to look in the center of the dash for a while and I would be relying heavily on sight. Ideally, for climate control there would be physical controls and the display directly in front of the driver would show the set climate temperature change as the driver turns the physical control, preferably also with haptics and sound.
Even if the actual systems are electrical and are switched by a relay somewhere else the tactile physical controls provide an optimum user interface with multiple sensory feedback through an analogous action. So turning a knob to raise volume might not be literally turning a potentiometer to raise the voltage on the gain stage of an amplifier but it conveys the appropriate idea. Likewise, flicking a toggle switch might not literally complete a control circuit that tiggers a relay, it might rather send a signal to a computer, but it is the right physical analogy for something that has two states - on /off. As a user you feel and hear a satisfying snap as you flick the switch and you know the switches that are down and have a light illuminated are on and those that are up with light off are off. That’s multi-sensory. And it is much, much better than a touch screen. You also know that the third switch from the left does some particular thing so you
could operate it blindly if you needed to (or discover its state through touch).
The main point the experts in user interface have discovered is that
multi-sensory feedback is superior, including the communication of current state through sight and touch.
Many of the people I have heard make the argument I am making are app developers in the tech industry. For example, the hosts of the APT Podcast are iOS and Mac developers (one of which makes a CarPlay app). These guys are also car enthusiasts and spent a couple of hours on a deep dive discussion of physical controls vs touchscreen. These are people that make apps for touchscreens. You might think they would love touch screens in cars and yet they argue forcefully for real tactile buttons. This is because their professional expertise means they fully understand the limitations of touchscreens.
Around 2008 cell phones got touch screens and that turned out to be extremely successful for phones. Designers in many industries then tried to replicate this by putting touchscreens on everything. This trend eventually moved to the auto industry. Consumers for a time liked to chose whatever had a touch screen. But it turns out not everything is better with touchscreens and studying where they work and where they don’t provides key insights. So for example, you can buy a toaster with a touchscreen but toasters have not been revolutionized by this - they have not all adopted touch screens (like phones did). probably you would prefer a toaster without a touchscreen, I know I would.
Some key reasons touchscreens were successful on phones are because.
1) they imitated physical controls by providing a) direct manipulation of the display and b) physics based behaviors (such as rubber-banding). c) multi-sensory feedback through sound and later with haptic feedback.
2) they need to transform from one thing to another, a web browser, a camera, a word processor etc, so the entire interface must change for each app. This ability was existential for phones. Blackberry failed because it bet against it.
The simple fact is that a car does not need to change from one thing to another. It is always a car. A car doesn’t need to imitate physical controls because it can have physical controls. It the perfect example of a technology that doesn’t need to rely on a touchscreen for the controls that always need to be present.
Navigation apps need the display and they naturally benefit from panning and zooming gestures on it - that’s the kind of direct physical manipulation that touchscreens excel at. The climate controls are some of those that always need to be present, so they need physical multi-sensory controls and must not be buried in a menu on a touchscreen.
on my Chevy vs wife's Nissan is the cruise control options on the left instead of the right side of the steering wheel. Reason being I find myself driving with my left arm resting on the door and it is nice to click that resume speed button with same hand. (Side note: also like on Chevy that you don't have to turn on cruise control each time you restart your vehicle)
