
There are too many screens, time to go back to gauges - t23
https://jalopnik.com/there-are-too-many-screens-time-to-go-back-to-gauges-1840810588
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Mountain_Skies
Physical gauges? Meh, don't really care that much. Just as long as the data on
the screen is clear and where it is expected to be. Physical buttons with
physical feedback so they can be adjusted by feel while keeping eyes on the
road? Those are important. Maybe they can be replaced with a voice interface
at some point but I'd like to see a few more sigmas of reliability before
relying on voice recognition to turn on the windshield wipers.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Precisely. Touch screens are not ideal for drivers only passengers. Let the
driver use buttons and let the passenger use the touch screen without
restriction. I cant even pull up GPS coords on a 2020 car without having my
wife pull over. Meanwhile I can pull out my phone and search anything. The
benefit of the maps being on there is that she can see the map clearer. Except
its useless once you drive. Sometimes driving plans change whilst driving.

~~~
mszcz
Yeah, the decision to go with touchscreens in an environment where you cannot
turn your eyes away and focus on something is boneheaded IMO. The AC in my car
is controlled by dials which also have a button in the middle. I can control
this while driving in the middle of the night and will never have to turn my
eyes away. The reason for that is that I can use touch to find the right dialm
align my fingers by touch alone and just turn it. Now try doing something "by
touch" or "from memory" on a touch screen. Suddenly, your glove compartment
opens :P

Anyhow, IMO, the orgy of the screens in the car is probably a stupid,
misguided way to try and sell more cars, and will go the same way of the 3D TV
and curved TV.

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allovernow
Tangent: I can't help but feel like we're automating away the driving
experience - although most people probably never appreciated it.

There's a magical zenlike state of flow that feels like a seamless merging of
man and machine, and personally I think it's much easier to cultivate with
analog features which force you to think carefully about control, and it is
important that a driver is occasionally allowed to exceed the limits of
control. That means standard transmission, no traction control, and arguably
even ABS could be done away with. This goes for information display as well -
it's hard to describe the qualia that comes from glancing at a purpose built,
mechanical indicator, that you know will always be in the same place. These
things together combine to give a car a soul. I'm no Luddite but I have no
desire to drive what amounts to a high tech robot.

Where's the joy in pressing the gas and having a car simply drive itself?
Sure, for the vast majority, a car is a tool for transport from A to B. But I
think many of these people are missing out on a unique experience.

~~~
mojuba
I can't agree more and very strange your comment is downvoted.

Right now the EV market I think is open to electric cars for people like us:
physical gauges, just the bare minimum for driving (I'd include ABS for safety
and cruise control for some minimal comfort), slick interior with a subtle
vintage touch maybe. No autopilot, no Netflix for you. Oh and physical keys.

I'm constatnly thinking about this, but unfortunately starting a car company
seems to be almost as difficult as going to Mars. But who knows, maybe some
day.

~~~
allovernow
I agree with what you're saying, but on a purely personal note, I just
couldn't see myself enjoying an electric car - even knowing that a Tesla
absolutely destroys anything I've ever driven performance wise (until the
motors overheat or the batteries die).

Few things in life compare to manually inserting a key, commanding the
starter, hearing and feeling the (preferably V>=8) roar to life, and listening
to the purrs and growls and roars of the steel steed that becomes an extension
of yourself as you glide across pavement or dirt at inhuman speeds.

Not everyone appreciates it - and that's totally OK! But a part of me will die
the day they inevitably ban manually driven cars and/or internal combustion
engines. ICE vehicles really do have characteristics that subjectively make
them feel like living, fire breathing pets. Robots are cool and technically
marvelous, but there will always be something irreplaceably special about a
2000-4000 pound device that has a soul.

~~~
mojuba
Look, ICEs will eventually die unless a new type of fuel is found for them
(none on the horizon so far). Which means the vibration of the car that's not
even moving will go away for good, and we'll all probably forget about it.

However, the manual part. Nobody said you should control the light bulbs in
your house with your mobile phone, there are still physical switches which are
alive and thriving. They are simple, they don't need a WiFi connection and
don't require your email address and other personal data to control the
lights. They just work. I don't believe much in the "software-ization" and
IoT-zation of things around us, apart from some obviously useful cases like
your home stereo that plays music from your phone.

So on cars. I believe the industry or some part of it will take a step back
from "software-ization" and simplify the vehicles a bit. There will be cars
with (optional) physical keys, gauges and controls. There will be software
that will help to make driving safer, which is undeniably important, but at
the same time it will let you control the car the same way as the light switch
on the wall. I see the demand for it and I just can't stop obsessively
thinking about it. I wonder if there's anyone here reading this thinking along
the same lines?

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ajsharp
Related: Mazda is removing screen from future vehicles due to the clear safety
issues. [https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-
pur...](https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-purging-
touchscreens-from-its-vehicles)

~~~
brandonmenc
The Mazda puck control is awesome. Hands-down the best car UI.

I drive a Mazda and didn't even realize the screen was touchable because there
is absolutely no reason to not use the puck.

(If you've never seen it, the puck is an all-in-one scroll wheel, button, and
directional joystick - on the center console exactly where your arm naturally
rests, no reaching necessary.)

~~~
montjoy
100% agree. This is one of the main reasons why I chose a Mazda over the
Honda/Toyota equivalents.

------
jdsully
I'm a big fan of an uncluttered instrument cluster, preferably with analogue
gauges but I've seen some digital versions that are fine. The real problem
seems to be the screens suffer the same fate as all software, adding gimmicks
and superfluous information just because it's easy.

With a physical instrument cluster each gauge costs real money which enforces
discipline on the design.

------
rhacker
My RAM truck does have a tiny digital display that has a ton of functionality
and I can read the tire pressure on all 6 tires. A lot of the standard stuff
also has a secondary mechanical analog display too, because I purchased this
truck in 2016. Of course, forget about tire pressure on those analog displays,
that would be crazy complicated to have. The other thing, is the RAM display
is not connected to the internet, so I don't have to worry about the menu
changing locations or button order changing. What I got when I purchased will
stay the same. That's comfortable.

How do I feel about EVERYTHING moving to a large LCD panel that could play
Netflix if I really wanted? I think as long as manufacturers guarantee the
interface won't change in very substantial ways since the purchase of the car,
I would be OK with it. I would imagine that if the speed limit and engine
temperature sudden swapped position, people would get into deadly car
accidents very quickly. I know it's not that simple, but you have to realize
we're talking about not just you, but 5-7 billion people that may have digital
displays to worry about when they are driving. When you scale those UX
mistakes, people will die.

So if updates and digital screens are on the way for all cars, I would
recommend some basic rules for manufacturers to follow. (Of which I don't know
what would be good but it should exist)

~~~
asaph
> How do I feel about EVERYTHING moving to a large LCD panel that could play
> Netflix if I really wanted?

The Tesla Model 3 is already like this, including the Netflix part.

> So if updates and digital screens are on the way for all cars

Tesla has been doing over the air software updates and had digital screens for
years.

~~~
rhacker
These are definitely the more rhetorical parts of my post...?

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lqet
> Screens are also less likely to break than mechanically moving gauges

What? If you buy a 30 year old car, the gauges are most likely still intact,
and original. If you have an older house, things like the water gauges (or
even regular clock gauges) are also decades old. I want to see the screen that
will work for > 20 years in a constantly moving and vibrating environment,
under massive temperature changes, without any additional care or repairs or
replacement.

Take passenger information displays in public transit. Not until a few years
ago, it was still common that the head signs in trains, buses or subways where
mechanical. It was often just a paper roll [0] that was adjusted to display
the correct destination, or even just a plate that was changed by the
conductor [1]. Things like car numbers or seat reservations were displayed by
simple paper signs. Fast-forward to the 90ies, where at least in Europe, they
began to replace these things by LCDs. After a few years, it was normal to see
trains with broken head signs, broken car numbers, and broken reservation
systems [2]. Fast-forward to today, where it is now en vogue to use full-
fledged displays everywhere. The result (at least in the towns I use public
transportation) are regularly broken displays [3] [4] [5] that even when they
work, often offer no advantage over LCD or LED or even mechanical display from
a passenger perspective. They just look more modern. Add to this that the
display software is mostly some variant of Windows with a poorly built and
designed web application running on it.

Think of all the people, all the knowledge, all the hours, all the resources
and all the energy required to build and run a full-fledged high-resolution
display, an operating system, the web application and a central server in the
vehicle running those displays - all to replace a simple roll of paper _with a
less reliable solution_! As computer scientists and software developers, this
is what pays us - but as soon as the rest of the society realizes what is
going on, I fear that there will a massive backlash.

[0]
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/2009-08-...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/2009-08-19-obus-
eberswalde-by-RalfR-03.jpg)

[1]
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Wupper-E...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Wupper-
Expresszugschild.jpg)

[2] [https://soscheescho.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/wirre-
anze...](https://soscheescho.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/wirre-anzeige-am-
bahnhof.jpg)

[3]
[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/06/33/aa/0633aa8ad996cfeb7936...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/06/33/aa/0633aa8ad996cfeb793672266cc99f44.jpg)

[4]
[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/33/a0/b7/33a0b7ac6e5563f48f66...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/33/a0/b7/33a0b7ac6e5563f48f668aaa10cb2c8e.jpg)

[5]
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DkI_ZEbXsAEcknf.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DkI_ZEbXsAEcknf.jpg:large)

~~~
sandworm101
At our cafeteria they have installed a big screen to display the meal choices
of the day. There is the little popup saying that windows needs updates,
another saying that the antivirus software cannot connect to the internet, and
some other blinking junk in the corner. That is, when it isn;t kicking into
screensaver mode or is just BSOD. So under that 1000$+ LCD arrangement is now
a whiteboard with a marker on a string.

~~~
closeparen
I get what you're saying, but incompetent execution can ruin any approach.

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mmphosis
I'm a minimalist. Speed, distance, fuel, 6 volt plug-in.

[http://www.oldbug.com/lightfoot41.jpg](http://www.oldbug.com/lightfoot41.jpg)

~~~
Smoosh
If we're being serious about the UX, this loses marks as the knobs are not
clearly labelled.

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hinkley
In a similar vein, I was always a little bummed that Ambient Devices or some
competitor never got more traction in the market, and never got much cheaper.

I thought they’d gone out of business but they are still alive and kicking.
Unfortunately most of their devices no longer look much like gauges. Most look
like clocks.

------
smokey_the_bear
I’d never driven a car where the gauges bothered me, so I didn’t worry about
it when buying a 2019 minivan to replace my 2006 Prius. I hate the screen. The
clock isn’t always displayed! And it displays in multiple places! I just don’t
use the radio because it’s too many taps to be safe while driving.

~~~
war1025
Slightly related, I just finally was forced to upgrade from a 2010-era brick
phone to a smart phone (they were turning the 2g towers off).

With my old phone, I could pretty safely check an incoming call or text
without taking my eyes off the road for more than a second or so.

With me new phone, I can't even manage to unlock my phone without feeling like
I'm going to kill someone.

I guess it makes sense that the rise of all the anti-cellphone laws coincided
with the rise of smartphones. They are absolutely hostile to anything but
undivided attention.

~~~
PyroLagus
You shouldn't check calls or texts while driving regardless of the type of
phone, and on a smartphone you can at least have it announce who is calling or
who sent the text (and even read the text for you.) You can also tell the
phone to accept the call and put it on speaker (although that's technically
also unsafe, but so is having a conversation with another person in the car
while driving.)

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lokedhs
I saw some video of the inside of the crew console for the SpaceX capsule.
It's all touch screens as far as I can tell.

That seems to me to be incredibly stupid. I'm sure it'll be very easy to
access those controls when it's shaking violently and (heavens forbid) the
entire capsule gets smoke-filled in an emergency.

I'm sure they've thought about these things, so I'm curious as to what I've
missed.

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Mountain_Skies
Going in the other direction, there's a pretty good YouTube channel called
amstudio that shows how to hook up physical gauges to your computer for use in
racing simulators. IIRC, they've even taken out entire instrument panels from
cars and interfaced them to the simulator.

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axiom92
There's an entire book making essentially the same point:
[https://www.amazon.com/Best-Interface-No-brilliant-
technolog...](https://www.amazon.com/Best-Interface-No-brilliant-
technology/dp/0133890333)

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gumby
Indeed, gauges are so much better than digit-based displays, just as dial
watch faces can be usefully read at a glance. When your attention is supposed
to be on the road, knowing your speed is close to the posted limit is more
useful than parsing your precise speed.

~~~
Gibbon1
Comment I read decades ago was analog gauges impart meaning that digital ones
don't. The context was analog fuel gauges for aircraft. 120 gals of fuel in a
P51 means you have around two hours for flight time left. 120 gallons in B17
means you have half an hour.

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artemonster
On the note: does anyone know about some actual studies that measured
information registering speed on gauges VS written numbers? I'm still kind of
puzzled about it and cannot reliably say, when reading a number is faster than
evaluating a gauge.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
Not sure about screens versus gauges since a screen can mock the appearance of
a physical gauge but I do recall a lecture during a UI/UX class I took long
ago that about analog gauges being easier and quicker to understand than seven
segment displays. Something about the brain needing to interpret the actual
number for the seven segment display versus quickly understanding the
approximate speed from the needle on the gauge.

~~~
wkearney99
Gauges give you a nominal position. A point where the needle rests during
normal activity. You can quickly scan the needles and only have to care if
their position is out of place. Likewise scale, you don't have to calculate if
it's beyond the reasonably expected level, you can simply see where it falls
on the dial. With digits you have to examine each of them with specific
knowledge of what those numbers mean. That takes valuable attention away from
the more immediate tasks at hand.

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xwowsersx
There really are too many screens. I was driving a BMW SUV recently and
switching the multimedia input to my phone and then connecting Bluetooth etc
required going through so my screens. It'd be one thing if the navigation
mechanism were easy/intuitive, but it's not. At the same time, there's so much
functionality that cars now have and it's only increasing so I'm not sure how
gauges can really help. It feels like what's needed is a built in iPad almost
which at least has simple touch navigation.

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blakesterz
My boss showed me the screen on his new 2019 vehicle. He had been complaining
about it for weeks, and all I could think was "OK boomer, how bad could it
be". Well it was beyond terrible. The number of clicks (I guess touches is the
proper term) was crazy. To do ANYTHING it was like 5 menus deep. All I could
think is the people that designed this thing HATE their users. I still drive a
2010 that's mostly gauges. Not looking forward to the upgrade.

~~~
thrower123
Yeah, it's just not safe. My wife has a 2019 Ford, and turning the defrost on
is 3-5 touches, depending on where the UI is when you start from. On my 2010,
I punch one big physical button.

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GhettoMaestro
I don’t mind the displays being screens as long as certain things have
mechanical buttons. Eg: The AC/Max AC. Don’t make people go through
touchscreen menus that take a minute just to boot. When it’s 100F outside and
you need max ac, that minute is a LONG minute.

