A New Car UI: How touch screen controls in cars should really work
The designer gave a lot of thought to the problems with current touchscreen UI in cars, and kudos to him for doing so.<p>However, it's not the solution yet, in my opinion.<p>First, all the methods of interaction are invisible. There are no cues to tell the user what two fingers vs. four fingers will do, or what the difference is between a close-fingered gesture and a wide gesture. At best, you'd have to standardize the meanings across all cars (something that rarely happens in autos, even today there's no standard for where the wiper controls go, for instance), and even then, people would have to memorize those invisible gestures before they could use their car.<p>Secondly, accidental inputs would happen with some frequency. People have a wide range of hand sizes, motor control skills, even number of fingers. Suppose I've got two of my fingers in a cast? I can use an existing car's dashboard just fine with that temporary impairment, but not this.<p>Finally, it's addressing a problem that already has a solution—physical, dedicated input devices. Humans have spatial memory, we learn where things are, and learn to reach for them without looking or even thinking. Your muscle memory tells you how to reach the wiper stalk or the gear shift, which is why it's sometimes disconcerting to get into a car with the gears on the steering column if you normally shift in the center console. We need in-car systems that let the physical feedback, affordances, and reliable location of buttons, knobs, and switches interact with display systems that are designed for the attention a driver requires. You should be able to keep your eyes on the road and still adjust the air conditioning—something the designer in this video recognizes—but that shouldn't require learning invisible gestures that are prone to user error.