A UX designer walks into a Tesla Bar
jenson.org
jenson.org
Not only does it hide commonly-used safety-relevant functions behind extra taps in sub-menus (as detailed), it was apparently done to free up space to offer a 'dock' of app buttons - three permanant and three 'recently used'. I struggled to choose three apps I needed enough to fill the permanant spaces - and certainly don't need quick access (when I'm driving!) to Netflix, or games, or whatever is popping up in 'recently used' today. I would like the driver profile menu to be quickly available, but alas that's been hidden too.
It's a total cluster-f*ck that makes no logical sense when considering the need of drivers, and I hope they listen and revert at least this aspect of the UI.
Now imagine this happening to your car. I would sell the car as soon as possible. Cars, like ipods, are tools that should not require extra attention at random moments.
What mechanisms are at play that allow professional UX design teams to fuck up a car display?
like literally i dont want to think when i need to defrost my window going 70mph and yet here we are
Products evolving more gradually doesn't entirely solve the issue you're concerned by, but users don't have to take on the full brunt of massive product changes all at once.
My Samsung S21 just updated to Android 12 yesterday, and with it a new One UI is on my phone. There's no striking difference here, but the size of items in the curtain have been made smaller, and the brightness slider is different. I have no clue why those things changed. The curtain seem to change every two generations at most, usually just changing spacing and size of the items. It's annoying at best, and the only positive thing is that feeling of "something new", which wanes fast.
Why would companies spend budget on this kind of pseudo improvement is beyond me.
I agree with everything you said apart from the "Spotify is great" part.
It's a bit disturbing they're able to make such drastic level of changes without heads up.
Can you imagine, taking your Honda Accord in for an oil change, and you find out that dealer completely re-arranged your center console?
I wish more features tied to safety should be available via physical switches. Even Model 3 has a physical hazard light switch.
Which can make their results absolute garbage.
Like data driven can tell you a button is "not used often" it can't tell you that a button is "essential to be fast available in some safety critical situations". (Or for other examples, that a feature is not unused because people don't want it but because it's hidden or bad designed.)
But somehow I still meat people which believe that poorly data driven approaches will yield the best results, which as far as I can tell is complete unrealistic. (Which doesn't mean in any way you shouldn't also use data for decisions, just be aware that data just shows a part of an picture and can often be very misleading.)
App/icon X may be the most COMMONLY used one.
But it doesn't necessarily make it the most IMPORTANT one, the one I need to reach in a hurry / most easily.
I don't know how to capture, via automated telemetry, "this occasional button I REALLY REALLY need"... so it's just hubris then.
I'm an outsider, I've only entered Tesla's as opposed to driven them, but the UX is such a massive deal-breaker for this old grouch, it's unbelievable. I wish it weren't so but c'est la vie.
Touchscreens for any functions related to operating the vehicle should be regulated out of existence IMO. It’s a car not a phone.
The optimisation function should be how much you can do without needing to look away from the road.
You're assuming Tesla's end goal is to make the car more usable, and not to maximize revenue.
Their goal is to be transportation smart TV. Sell apps, media, advertising, etc. That's why so much money is being poured into self-driving cars. Americans in particular spend a massive amount of time staring at pavement, and that represents a huge untapped market.
Self-driving cars aren't about the betterment of humanity; the deaths and injuries are certainly horrific in scale, but self-driving cars don't solve the primary problem: our heavy use of low occupancy vehicle trips is not sustainable environmentally, energy-wise, land-use wise (roads or parking), logistically, economically (6+ year car loans, crumbling infrastructure because we can't afford to keep it all in good repair, etc)
That's because a physical hazard light switch is required by law.
I'm a big Model 3 fan but I hate the new UI. At least let us use the new docking areas for every possible function.
Up till now the windshield wiper control was the biggest model 3 UX issue. When I took delivery of my model 3 it started raining and I almost had an accident trying to figure out how to get the wipers working. The auto-wiper function sucks big time. But now there's more fairly important functions that are really hard to get to, from annoying (driver profiles) to safety (defog).
This is really hard to understand and concerning.
That got me laughing. :) I would be _convinced_ it's a joke and my friends are behind this and want to give me a treat in already sucking Covid-times..
This is also how we ended up with the ribbon interface in Microsoft Office 2007 and beyond, then later other places within Windows (Explorer, Paint, etc). Microsoft essentially collected click statistics across various UIs and used those for decision making to choose which buttons would be big and which would be buried under small icons or sub-menus.
I'm used to it now, but it was jarring and took a while.
If ever there was a case of “you break it, you bought it”.
It's a CAR, ffs! Tesla, please stop acting like it's a cell phone
What's next, Microsoft Excel?
I knew Tesla UX was, um, interesting, but this takes it to a whole another level.
Sadly we see such things more and more. For example a 3 year old TV looses apps such as Netflix or Skype which where specifically advertised on the box.
There ought to be an option to 'stay' at any 'version' you want. Only permit bug fixes. You know, LTS....
That being said, the new interface is terrible. So many things now take 3 taps as opposed to one.
I wonder if Tesla made the mistake of using A/B testing instead of vision-driven design like Apple. (Side note, just finished reading "Creative Selection" by Ken Kocienda of Apple, an interesting read on Apple's approach to design and why it is so successful as opposed to Google's).
In a car you want muscle memory, not "good for the brain"
Tesla are trying to recreate that new car smell and feeling by refreshing the digital dash board and software features. And deploying an old Microsoft trick of rearanging buttons to produce a new experience out of nothing. Instead of fighting the falling attention spans, Tesla hopes to remove the need for them altogether. So you can continue tapping and scrolling while driving.
[0] Warning: even Carrot Top may offend some viewers today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byhzsQ0AzYI
Tesla UI has always seemed pretty terrible to me though. Their use of space, and insistence that you need to see a photo realistic picture of the car you are driving that takes up a massive amount of real estate is crazy to me.
On the other hand, I find a lot of car companies struggle with UI once screens come into play.
This annoys me because our Model 3 can never decide who is getting in for a drive. Without fail it trys to adjust the seat to accommodate my 5 foot partner when my 6 foot frame is in the seat.
The removal of the profile icon makes undoing this even more of a chore.
Lots of hate on this TMC thread on v11 [1]
[1] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/v11-software-update-...
From all the other stories on TMC, TeslaLounge etc., I think the more notable detail is that you got a loaner at all.
Stories abound of "Sorry. No loaner. You get Uber credits." "Uhh, there's not really any Uber near me." "Sucks to be you, I guess."
Maybe Tesla's UI team thinks they design the UI for self driving car
/end rant
Slightly off-topic, but out of curiosity: what is your typical defense here? I've seen a lot of people complain about it (and their arguments make sense to me), but I haven't seen anyone defending it. Yet.
Nothing on earth would convince me there is any necessity whatsoever to having a screen in your car, much less a touchscreen. But then again I'm also against power steering, ABS, and generally any and all electronics that obstruct feeling from the steering column. Don't even get me started on automatics. Cars for me ended in the 80's, everything after that has been gravy. I see Tesla as nothing but gravy.
I'd be curious to hear why/how you defend it? I cannot think of a single benefit.
Regarding the other examples of driving aids, yes, those are abstractions with some drawbacks, and a top-of-the-curve driver could do a better job without it. But still they could be a net positive because of the benefit they bring to not-that-good drivers.
Screens though, those I agree 100% shouldn't be on a car.
As in: "I made all my money back in the first week, everything since has been gravy."
For example, this may not be common, but I find I can glance at the speed/car status section of the screen more quickly than I can glance down at a set of dials in the traditional position, and weirdly the sidways/down glance seems to retain more peripheral vision of the windscreen/road than the downwards glance to the traditional location.
So it's a Tesla.
Even after reading that, I had to look at the pictures again, and read the paragraph again to find where you are supposed to tap. When they simplified the UI, they also removed the degrees symbol and the fan.
Seeing as how 60-70 are both reasonable temperatures in Fahrenheit and speeds in miles per hour, it is not at all clear at a glance what that number means.
(Disclosure, I work for GM)
This, I believe, is the real point of failure. The value of reorganizing the icons into sub-menus can be debated, but some of the details that were removed in the course of this change appear to have been critical.
There is a concept in UX design called "information scent" – the combination of spatial, contextual, and cultural cues that clue a user in to where they can find what they're looking for. Simply keeping the fan icon next to the temperature display/button might have been enough to make the mental connection for the OP (and likely countless others).
Of course, this is the kind of thing that tends to shake out in user testing, and I'm very surprised that this appears not to have shown up in the testing I would assume Tesla must do with any change to the dashboard, certainly one this fundamental.
I would have no trouble adapting one I knew, but I doubt that I would find it for myself. And relying upon users discovering where functions are located by randomly pressing buttons is a bad UX/interface for a vehicle IMO.
EDIT: Or how about this one as in my 2000 model S4: http://www.2040-parts.com/_content/items/images/50/340150/00...
I don’t think I would have EVER tapped on the temperature without reading about it somewhere.
It doesn’t look tappable, as the article says. It’s not a common thing to tap on in other systems I’m aware of.
I think the writer’s guess of the car icon is excellent. That probably would have been my first guess too.
(I’ve also never used a Tesla)
I had foggy windows and had to watch a youtube video to figure it out before I could drive the car.
I would not even consider the speed being on the center console so I’d have assumed it would be the temperature either way.
However in all the cars I’ve used that would either be completely inanimate (as affordance as it would be easy to hit when trying to increase or decrease the temperature), or it would lead to extended climate control configuration (e.g. vent speed, multi-zone temps, …).
I’d never think of looking for the defroster there though: while defrosting uses the same hardware as climate control (heating and vents), it’s not actually the same function.
https://cdn.carbuzz.com/gallery-images/original/270000/800/2...
When I saw it in the article, I actually initially assumed that it was the speed set for cruise control, as it lacked a degree symbol and had up/down symbols suggesting that it can be adjusted in increments. The up/down symbols suggests to me that it cannot be tapped to access other functionality, but that I should tap the arrow to adjust the number.
The UX sucks, but if you did know where climate control features are hidden, why would you not assume the demister function is elsewhere?
UX is interesting because what is seemingly common sense to me (demister = climate control) is totally not to others.
Maybe some brainiac at Tesla thought that you can just accelerate/brake to figure that out. :D
In my view, the actual cabin temp reading is not of such importance to be on the main view panel as such. Maybe just some +/- warm/cold controls. I'm not into measurements, just immediate comfort.
If needed, then, sure, detailed info/climate subscreen.
But defroster/defogger button must be visible, just for the sake of "least surprise" principle!
I think many of us have been incensed by UI changes in software we use for our daily work, and that's already bad enough; but IMHO this really crosses a line.
There were jokes when Apple changed the scroll direction, comparing it to the steering wheel of a car suddenly working opposite to what everyone is used to; I'm not sure if it's possible to do that with a Tesla or other modern car, but it's disturbing that we seem to be headed down that path. What an absurd reality.
The icons-only UI is also a huge regression; would it really take much extra effort to add a text label? I know people often mention localisation when it's brought up, but much of the world knows English, this is an American car sold in English-speaking regions, and changing the text in software is much easier than a separate part with different printing.
(I drive a 50-year-old land yacht that's received many upgrades, but all under my control; so my perspective may be slightly biased...)
I cannot agree more. A lot of safety in driving comes from muscle memory and doing without needing to look so that focus is on the road.
No wonder Tesla fans are fan of self driving and afraid of human driving, the effing Teslas seem like a usability nightmare.
This might be a "feature": make cars so confusing to manually drive that humans become worse at driving, so that Tesla doesn't need to improve its driving software.
I don't actually believe this, of course, but it seems we're headed in that trajectory.
Well, just like a smartphone, sometimes the latest OS update makes changes that people don’t like. For good or ill, I think the Tesla way is probably the future for most cars and my not-so-smart vehicle UX will be increasingly rare.
paycheck, see my other comment [0] for an example
How so? If they design something that doesn't fit the screen, etc. in another language - it's just a bad design. Localizations have been a standard process for decades already. They can be quite challenging when it comes to bidi, yet most left to right languages are no issue to even bring the topic.
Then I think the new ui is worse than the older one - but my wife prefers the new one.
Why? Just don't buy a Tesla or other cars that do this.
You don't have to outlaw everything you don't like, you can just choose not to patronize the people who do this. Vote with your wallet!
How does that help when a Tesla wrecks my car because they were looking for the defogging button instead of looking at the road?
For instance, I'd bet getting stick shift in a new car in 15 years would cost the price of a Ferrari. That's what it would mean to "vote with your wallet".
Mandatory user feature flags would be a good solution for that. After installation if you don't opt-in for the new features you get the same behavior as before.
US Tesla owners, if your Tesla is affected by this issue, and you believe that removing the one-tap defroster button is a safety risk to your driving, please report that ASAP: https://www.nhtsa.gov/report-a-safety-problem
For those of you that file a complaint, please maintain your focus on the safety issues the update has created in your driving, rather than verging into specific demands of outcome. “I can’t find my front defroster while I’m driving since XYZ software update” is really great and specific, “so therefore Tesla and NHTSA should do ABC” is unhelpful and does not strengthen your case. No need to backseat-drive the NHTSA, just please do get the safety report filed.
I hope the folks at Tesla paid attention. He’s one of the top UX people in the world.
His book, The Simplicity Shift[0], was one of the seminal UX books in my career. I still use many of the insights that I gleaned from it.
It’s a real short read (and a free download, now). It was written when everyone was still using flip phones, and was very useful in doing a brutal UX triage.
It becomes an internal battle of who finds a more clever way to present a design in a meeting to a product manager. I’m sure all of OP’s complaints sounded like very clever solutions in meetings. But that’s not where your users are.
Please. Keep your design team to a minimum. Design is not like engineering. More designers working on a single piece of software is counter productive.
It would be awesome if tesla let us truly customize the UI with some CSS, or at least accept a few themes that they bless. I want to have my energy usage always visible somewhere on screen, for example, without completely blocking the map…
In many cases it should?
I've seen initial versions of UIs having been created in a certain way because of multiple valid reasons (people that worked on it really put some thoughts into it), those reasons (priorities of fields, differentiation of informations, speed of entering data, overview of the data, ...) were never written anywhere => the next people that worked on it changed that because of any reason and the result was often worse - maybe by having guidelines/explanations associated to the UI (similar to what is done for the app's code) would avoid that.
At least in a restaurant, there's not a line of people who've just finished your food who are about to tell you how you should actually cook it.
Having driven the VW ID3 a few times, it‘s truly horrible in this regard.
The climate settings (yes, including fast defrost!) are „not available“ until the systems have booted up which takes forever.
Auto-Hold as a critical driving feature which had a hardware button before took me (as an engineer) a whopping 10 minutes to find in the third page of a random submenu.
The voice control is located as a touch-not-press button at the outer edge of a steering wheel so when (not if) you accidentally touch it in narrow turns, the confused useless voice blasts full volume at you while you‘re in the most complex driving situation.
It‘s as nobody had driven or user tested their cars before.
And here I am, an early technology adopter of two decades, feeling like an old man yelling I want my hardware buttons back.
Touchscreens (or touch surfaces) should not be used for any kind of vehicle function. period.
If you need to take your eyes away from the road, it is a shit ui.
If you can't feel but have to look to see the result of your interaction, it is a shit design.
If you need to look at the center console and down, it is even worse.
There is only one reason to get rid of all the buttons and switches, and that is design. because "ape goes ohhhh!".
And that should not be a consideration that is prioritized over safety.
I'd add one more point specific to vehicle (or other safety-related) applications: if it keeps changing, it's shit. I shouldn't have to hunt around for where that control went today any more than I should have to hunt around for where it went the first time. That is why I think touchscreens with tactile feedback don't solve this problem, even though they're cool in general. That customizability is worthless because the controls shouldn't be changing anyway. Just put in real buttons, knobs, and so on.
Honda put a volume knob back on its 2021+ Ridgeline. Might not have been consumer feedback, but people hated the touch volume control in pre-21 models.
I loathe having to navigate menus and screen to find basic functions. My Honda had touch radio, with access to some set-up options, but daily functions are physical buttons. I like it this way. I’ll likely never buy a Tesla.
UI is like fashion. Practical matters seem to be ignored, but it's desirable on novelty alone. I fully expect the trend to reverse once it becomes "old and boring".
And, "airlifted"? I've not heard that expression before.
Want to add a button only available on the 4WD model? Then you have to have a blank dummy button on all other models, or two designs. Want to add/remove buttons on the next model year? Adds a grand to the cost of the car and the physical layout must be done 6 months before production starts.
Touch solves all of these problems. It’s super quick to install. Easy to adapt to different models and between years. Few things that can break.
The downside? Useless when driving. Tesla easily accepts this tradeoff, and will likely continue to do so.
Not sure how “a bit surprised” got mangled and interpreted as “airlifted”.
I guess it is clever in some regards but like others, the touchscreen on my Skoda (thankfully mainly for media) is impossible to use without taking your eyes off the road, which is truly dangerous if you need it for basics.
Back when Skeuomorphism was in vogue, it was far easier to train users to use computing devices. These days you "just have to know."
And, no, it isn't just Tesla. All the major tech companies have given up on usability (e.g. remember when Microsoft had a usability research lab and improved the products using lessons learned?).
"A skeuomorph is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original. Skeuomorphs are typically used to make something new feel familiar in an effort to speed understanding and acclimation."
What if the sun is really, really bright today well now it's harder to see the contents of the display and we're back to conversation mode.
Close your eyes and navigate through the settings menu on your phone down a few menus to toggle a setting. I doubt you could do that first time beyond only opening the settings app itself. Why do we allow this to be implemented in cars where your attention on the road defines whether or not (in a non-trivial amount of cases) you or someone else lives or dies.
Relevant statute: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.103
Even if they don't explicitly say it has to be an obvious button on the dash, it's a huge liability changing how basic safety equipment is operated.
Users want to spend as little time engaging with the UI but that’s hard to measure. The best way to minimize engagement time would be to just remove everything. But then there’s no data. So the thing that can be measured is chosen.
When people learn the UI the engagement metric trends downward and a new UI is designed which “fixes” the “problem”.
I didn't use defrost button for almost a year. Yesterday I had a snow storm and I wasn't able to find defrost function. It's appears you have to swipe up in climate settings of the app to see extra options. Why? Make it at least contextual. If I enable HI heat mode, suggest me these options if you think such option in hot countries is redundant, don't blame data.
Now just imagine an owner is not millennial on Gen Z, they will never find this option.
So with one simple update you turn them from proud tesla owners who heat up the car from snow from a warm sofa to a frustrated blocked by snow user. Even though the hardware is amazing.
::sigh::
Edit: This comment is tiresome. My dad owns a lot of the latest stuff and has no problem with it.
Between age and tech-savviness there is most definitely a correlation, strong enough that I wonder about causation (with exceptions of course, though those usually have an interest and extensive exposure or practice). One exception doesn't make every >50yo a tech wizard who'll know how to explore new design patterns with confidence. I would assume that's why someone downvoted your comment (though it'd be nice if the people that do can give feedback by themselves...)
I'm so glad there are an increasingly larger range of EVs to choose from. In Australia the choices are comparatively limited still, but more and more are becoming available. When we got our Tesla the choices were really Tesla or cars with really limited range.
I used to think I'd get used to the touch screen and muscle memory would allow me to do things while driving easily. Hasn't happened - I use the steering wheel buttons for changing the temperature, but everything else requires taking my eyes off the road for too long.
Test drove the new car and was surprised by how better physical buttons were. The cognitive load to drive it was so much less. After years of Tesla touch screen land, I think I'd forgotten how much easier and usable traditional interfaces are.
Things are in different places in different cars. Switching keyboard layouts would be significantly more complex.
I get that Tesla wants to save money, both in assembly costs and "lower cost = more potential buyers", but there has to be a large market of people who are willing to pay more for a more usable car.
I particularly liked that the Escape had hard play/back/next (and a screen off!) buttons, and good use of screen-space. The CR-V wastes precious screen-space to always-present app shortcuts, as well as precious dashboard vertical space for just the volume/power button. The RAV4 has a bunch of function shortcut physical buttons around the screen which I think are also a waste of space: once you're in Android Auto/Apple Carplay, there's little reason to go back to the car's apps.
I think we're still in a pit of bad car dashboard design, after a precipitous fall into touchscreen madness. Tesla's the worst offender, but I'm pretty impressed by Ford's design.
(for comparison of RAV4 vs CR-V, see dash photos in this article: https://www.garberhonda.com/blog/2020-vehicles/2020-honda-cr... )
≥If you have two buttons, there is a third ‘object’ created, the decision a user must make on which button to tap. This cognitive load is invisible and rarely discussed but it can be a real source of confusion.
And it is becoming fashionable now to drop the main menu altogether. Why, to save 10 pixels? Darktable and rawtherapee both have a lot of awesome features, but no menu bar. So they each have there own ideas on how best to reimagine the UI, and then you have to search the internet to learn how to do the equivalent of File ≥ Save As.
It's cool to be sleek, stylish and unique. But not in dangerous machine interfaces. FFS. I even heard that Musk got rid of the yellow/black striped safety tape from his factories, because they didn't fit his aesthetic aspirations. And I honestly don't know if that is a myth or not. Given this latest evidence, it is believable.
What is interesting is the fact that so much research, and expensive lessons in engineering and design are now ignored so easily. I wonder if it stems from a deeper societal phenomenon of denigrating the past? The younger generations, caricatured in the media as angry Greta Thumbergs, seem to have declared their undying enmity towards an generation they blame for their apocalyptic fate. So they also reject, instinctively, symbols of those people, the visible signs of the past, and the lessons handed down.
This may be a meandering rant, but I do feel that there is a real problem in UX and UI that is hurting us all. And fixing that requires some questioning of the root causes. Why did we collectively forget good UI paradigms and accessibility best practices?
Today, I'd even gladly take the ribbon UI over burger menus every time.
Whether it's worth it depends on the program and how often you touch the menu. For my web browser I go hours between menu uses so I prefer the space.
- this hasn’t caused serious accidents (edit: which I’ve heard about)
- for all of Tesla’s (and other automakers’) focus on automating driving, they haven’t picked the much lower hanging—incredibly valuable—fruit of automating more non-driving tasks drivers must/likely will perform
- availability of basic safety-related controls isn’t regulated in a way that would have blocked this UI change
- the touchscreen-ification of car controls hasn’t attracted the same level of revolt and vitriol as has flat design on those same screens (guess what looks and feels like a button?)
We aren't going to hear about it unless someone files a lawsuit or otherwise makes a big attempt at publicizing it. It's something that we might hear about a few years after it shipped after a dozen or so people die in situations where literally everything else but the UI are eliminated as causes for the crashes.
I wasn't blown away. I rented it for a medium-length road trip, and was looking forward to autopilot on the highway. I found the features really lack-luster and difficult to use. You had to enable separate autopilot features individually, and they constantly disengaged for various reasons. My newish Honda honestly provides more of an ~~autonomous~~ driving experience with just adaptive cruise control + lane-keep assist. The control center was surprisingly complex and obtuse, and I missed carplay.
The experience made me really excited about buying something electric in the future, but I doubt it will be a Tesla.
You can make the physical button/key show any icon you want, and it can change so you can have menu-style systems without losing the physical pushbuttons.
0: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/nkk-switches/ISC1...
I don't think it solves the problem of touch screens in cars though. The benefit of dedicated physical buttons in a car isn't just that they are physical. It's that you can use them without having to look at them. If you don't know what the button does (because it's changeable) then you can no longer simply use it without looking.
It's probably still better than a pure touch screen though.
In contrast, this would offer tiny screens, presumably in locations even more distant (considering the range of locations buttons appear in typical cars) from the windscreen than the Tesla screen is, and by switching their purpose, you create the neceessity to examine them before pressing?
If so, then Tesla would need to dedicate one such button to the front defroster regardless of menu state.
The Range Rover evoque for example has a pushable wheel that sits on top of a screen (with a cutout in the center), so the part within the wheel will change based on the context.
I think that's a really good middle ground.
This is the first car, in my 42 years of driving (I'm 59) that I had to read the manual and "study" the UI before I could use it. And I still have trouble adjusting the temperature, etc, while I'm driving. It's way too confusing. I suppose I'll get used to it, but it's too much time with my eyes away from the road.
If I say anything about this to Tesla "true believers" (or even the folks on Hacker News!) it's always my fault.
They seem to genuinely think that mocking anyone who dare criticize the almighty Elon is a justifiable action. Instead, it makes them, and by extension all Tesla owners, look like children.
I've had my Model X for a year, and so far it's been in service for a total of 14 days. Of the 18 (!) issues my car has, they've only managed to fix 8. (!!)
And it's not because they're mysterious, complex problems. They just don't give a shit. They pretend that obvious issues are normal, or blame software for hardware problems, anything they can do to get rid of me.
I would never recommend a Tesla to anyone, now. I've never hated a car more.
Insular groups and cults do not handle criticism well. Those who go against their dogma will be expelled, often not by the leaders, but by the members themselves. They serve as an immune system that keeps the leaders immune from being seen through a critical lens.
"For several years, Autopilot incorporated radar, and for a time Tesla worked on developing its own radar technology. But three people who worked on the project said Mr. Musk had repeatedly told members of the Autopilot team that humans could drive with only two eyes and that this meant cars should be able to drive with cameras alone.
They said he saw this as “returning to first principles” — a term Mr. Musk and others in the technology industry have long used to refer to sweeping aside standard practices and rethinking problems from scratch. In May of this year, Mr. Musk said on Twitter that Tesla was no longer putting radar on new cars. He said the company had tested the safety implications of not using radar but provided no details."
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/technology/tesla-autopilo...
It's now a significant brand issue for me (ignoring any of the obvious actual issues). I don't want to be associated with that company.
I used to be a fan, but there are actual alternatives available now which I'll be pursuing in 2022.
This isn't like temperature, where somebody has a preference to see. Is my windshield clear of fog or ice? No? Turn on defroster.
Tesla has to do everything differently, including replacing rain sensors that every manufacturer uses with a camera based AI that works less well than any car I’ve ever driven.
Teslas should be illegal on US roads until Autopilot is removed, renamed, and retooled, and significant oversight is put into place in Tesla's production and software release processes.
Ten years after I bought it Toyota warned me about the possibility some third party service people might've installed an improper part which could cause a problem. Tesla sometimes ships their cars from the factory with pieces of wood in them they got at Home Depot.
"Move fast and break things" is an absolutely intolerable attitude for a car manufacturer.
Then Tesla proceeded to demonstrate time and time again that no one that purchased their vehicles actually owns them. In fact, Tesla can upgrade and modify the car without permission, and they have repeatedly done so in ways that would terrify me. Either love that modus operandi, or don’t buy their vehicles.
I don’t want my vehicle’s controls to change — ever - without my explicit consent. I thus never expect to own a modern car, because it seems that every manufacturer is now guilty of these kinds of shenanigans. They have all lost my business. It’s the aftermarket for me.
I think the most egregious example of this is that paid upgrades like FSD don't transfer with the sale of the car. Those features are pinned to accounts, and you can't sell them. That way, Tesla gets to double dip by forcing both owners to buy the same upgrade.
Saw the last update hasn’t addressed any of the foundational issues and now it seems it’s created a few more.
I think the UI needs a complete overhaul. Mood board for the new UI should be a fisher price toy. (https://www.mattel.com/products/rock-a-stack-gkw58)
Also, the rear left door was misaligned from the factory.
Musk may deserve praise for dragging the auto industry into the electric era, but I'm not buying that thing.
Edit: thinking further, I think we can call it the "designed by nerds in California" disease.
Tesla is designed for the tech commuter on a freeway. Also in an area with a relatively mild climate and flat. They have no idea that the weather can change in 10 minutes as you go around the next hill. Even the turn signals are so smart they can't cover some situations more complex than a 90 degree crossroads.
Smartphones and laptops (especially Apple's) are mostly designed for a tech dude spending most of their time in a climate controlled office.
Iphones shut down when they're too hot/too cold. What if you have no choice because that's how the area you're in is?
The Apple laptops with the emoji keyboard were never tested outdoors, or they wouldn't get killed by the tiniest speck of dust.
https://images.hgmsites.net/lrg/2018-audi-tt-coupe-2-0-tfsi-...
Big knobs for varying things. Push them to toggle things. Important shortcuts — the aforementioned defogger being one of them — on the real buttons inbetween.
Physically rotate the whole unit to control direction and a physical flow control switch for every vent to allow per-passenger comfort.
Industrial design bliss.
https://www.mazda3revolution.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,o...
But as a design guy, I think it's a beautiful design, and the one that doesn't make too much compromise with UX. I'd be happy to take either.
which is a lot like my 2012 S4.
I think I will hold out for a more traditional design. My Bolt's touchscreen isn't terribly obnoxious, and it still has physical controls for a lot of things, including the defroster.
If only it could charge faster on road trips, max is 50 kW. Typical is 40.
In any case, go test drive one of those to see how you like EVs.
- Tesla: 1 crash per 4.31 million miles
- Ind/average: 1 crash per 0.48 million miles
> It’s the context and the severe consequences that make it far more impactful than a poorly designed phone app.
Tesla is making their "two ton death machines" (to quote Elon himself) even more dangerous by making the controls unintuitive.
The "yoke" is what turned me off ever buying a Tesla motor vehicle. The designers have been allowed to run rampant, with nobody keeping their "experimental interfaces" in check.
I'll wait until Toyota makes an all-electric car. It'll be simpler, cheaper, and "just work" in the sense that I won't have to hunt around for basic controls just because some dingbat in California thought it made the dash look "cleaner" or whatever.
In check? I'd be willing to wager some money that the yoke was Elon's idea, or heavily encouraged by him based on his questionable sense of what is 'cool'. The Cybertruck is to me the next step behind The Homer (https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer).
What I want to see are very “tall” buttons WITH BORDERS ON THEM that are large enough to still hit when my finger slips down a bit, as it often does on such a display.
Is auto-defrost such a hard problem for a company that pretends to make self driving cars? Maybe it is, but if that's the case, don't make life harder on the driver by hiding the controls.
These days I'm lucky if there are keyboard short cuts for half of the functionality an application has. I'm now forced to stare at icons that don't give me a visual hint for what the keyboard shortcut might be. My iPhone expects me to know about brand new unguessable gestures just because I was forced to upgrade from a perfectly fine iPhone SE to a 12 because the screen died. An iOS update last night made my streaming music app stop working when the screen is locked and I had to infer what settings to change because all the help entries on the topic were for when settings were in different places.
I wish discoverability of user interfaces was still a thing, but clearly I am deemed to be in the unworthy of consideration minority. It's sad that things have gone so far backwards over the past 20 years that younger people don't even know what they're missing.
I hate to say it, but I think auto safety regulations will now have to incorporate basic interior functions as accepted e criteria. Corporations are too greedy and will compromise safety for money at any time (presumably app buttons could be a revenue stream, and that's why they want to promote it)
https://www.nhtsa.gov/interpretations/23055-2drn
And pass the FMVSS 103 Windshield Defrosting And Defogging safety test:
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/documents/tp-103...
Which specifically requires: photos of the instrument cluster to be filed. Has Tesla violated their certification by altering the instrument cluster without going through the appropriate 103 certification process?
The document also inherits from SAE J902A, which I can’t view as it costs money, even though it’s US law. Does J902A require a button to always be present, such that use of submenus for said digital button would be illegal under federal law?
But I seriously wonder if any of the legacy auto makers would do this. I feel like they’re all way too conservative to do something this radical.
I kept worrying that I was going to crash because I couldn't figure out how to do anything. Or if I did know how to do it, it took concentration and significant cognitive load to do it. Changing climate control settings, any audio setting more advanced than volume up or down, etc.
Even shifting into forward or reverse was difficult because you have to swipe forward to go forward and backward to go in reverse. While this may be intuitive on a purely touchscreen interaction only level, it is 100% backward from the standard shifter layout of literally every other car on the planet.
On a different note, the driving experience was also a bit unexpected. Normal driving was actually kind of tough because I didn't get used to the single pedal regenerative braking in the short time I drove it. It was hard to keep the car at a steady speed.
But it's still very fun to drive overall, mostly because of the insane acceleration and torque.
One thing I really don't get some companies put in electric cars(, even sometimes without option to turn it off!) is creep. It's an abomination that has no place in an electric car.
How does a radically new interior design help Tesla and their long term growth targets? Is it much cheaper to manufacture? Does it give drivers that learn the new paradigm a phenomenally better experience (no, it does not)?
If my opinion has any relevance, they should stick to improving performance, range and efficiency, price and vehicle reliability. Just leave the damn dashboard be already, a UX revolution is a turnoff for an bitter old fart like me, not a selling point.
What on earth do those 4 icons in the middle of the new UI even mean? My best guess of their meanings is "Phone, Audio, Radar, More" but that doesn't seem right. Also how am I supposed to know that "random number" refers to temperature?
Has anyone used an API or something to build physical buttons and knobs?
I'm still mad at the lack of physical keyboards on smart phones. Sometimes it feels like every innovation of the last 15 years has been a step backwards.
A step backwards, for which party in the exchange?
The past 15 years have seen vastly huge improvements in the ability of user interfaces and such to collect widespread behavioral data that can be mined for prediction products! That you're upset with thus and such change, as noted by your interaction with the device and accelerometer data, is really important for better predicting what will sell to you!
But, yes, the past 15 years have seen a turn of consumer tech against the consumer. Now, the question isn't (shouldn't be?) "What can this thing do for me?" - it's, "What am I giving up by using this thing?"
That's because most of our recent consumer tech "innovations" don't first serve to make users' lives better, but to make shareholders wealthier. Users are an afterthought or acceptable collateral damage.
It is ironic to me that carmakers are so enamored with the smartphone experience that they want it to take over the dashboard, when we are explicitly disallowed from using them while driving for safety reasons.
Though it is unclear is they were at fault or just fallguy.
- yoke "wheel"
- no turn stalk
- gearbox on touch screen
- centered display with no HUD or smaller driver panel
- this update
- increasing amount of complaints about car quality
cough cough vim users...
In 99% of text editors I don't need to RTFM to open, save, find/replace a string, or exit the damn editor. There are lots of things I might need the manual for but not the basics.
There's nothing different about the modality of operation of a Tesla. You could switch the touchscreen to a physical console and not lose anything, but modality is central to how vim operates, and becomes more valuable as you get used to it and need it more.
- When holding the steering wheel in the 10 and 2 position, my right hand covers the HUD and lane change camera
- Rear cam now has significant lag and stutters, so you never know if you are actually about to hit something (no, I don’t think it’s caused by the cable issue in the recall, came with v11)
- The infamous temperature control pop up covers the cam and HUD as well
I used to be able to fire off SMS messages on my phone while driving, without looking at the screen, because I knew my contact list and keyboards had that little dimple for feeling where 5 is (like your numpad does, if you're not too hipster to go without).
Sure, sometimes I got it wrong and texted something weird or to the wrong person, but by far, it was successful. Maybe it's just me, but I've still not been successful in learning how to write on a touchscreen keyboard, sure, I can type a message or using that swipey kinda thing, but I still have to look where I'm touching, no tactility, it's terrible.
1 tap is too many. These need to be physical knobs or buttons that stay in the same place so you can develop muscle memory.
Cars will not be self-driving for a number of years, so trying to evolve the UX/UI before that happens is setting up for disasters.
I guess it will take what all safety laws do, people have accidents and getting injured or dying because of the flaws. And inevitable lawsuits and more intense regulation than would have applied in the first place.
P.S. I am of course aware that heating the windows will also get rid of the fog, it just seems like an unusual solution to me.
Confirmed in the ‘98 Camry manual: “Turning the air flow control knob to wind- shield position turns on the defroster− linked air conditioning. At this time, the ”A/C” button indicator comes on regard- less of whether or not the ”A/C” button is pressed in. This is to clean up the front view more quickly.”
Like the manual, I have always just called that functionality ‘defrost’, never defog.
https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads...
Edit: I'm also not exclusively blaming the author, I think when controls change Tesla should have a responsibility for retraining the vehicle operator. Obviously a painful user experience, but at least it would be a disincentive to move buttons around for no reason.
As noted elsewhere even in this conversation, the ability to locate a control via touch alone allows drivers to keep their eyes on the road (I realize that "where your eyes are pointed" != "where your attention is focused", I'll leave the research to others whether there is sufficient scientific evidence for this reason for tactile controls).
Additionally, physical controls might still be operable even in circumstances where the touch screen is rendered inoperable, and arguably can be made more durable than a big piece of glass.
It's commonly believed that the reason that Tesla cars only have a physical emergency hazard light button is because of US regulations (SAE J910 from Jan 1966[2]); the design minimalists at Tesla have moved it to the center of the ceiling console on the Model 3, to the point where there are many forum discussions of owners asking where the button is. IMO this pretty much proves the "minimalism gone too far" theory, if a critical safety control cannot be located by a nontrivial number of drivers. Similarly, the emergency brake in early Model S and X is a gesture on the shifter (direction control stalk), which is completely non-discoverable without RTFM.
I love Tesla. I've owned a 2015 Model S and a 2018 Model X. I sold the latter yesterday in anticipation of my new Model X that will be delivered in two weeks. My point is, I'm a fan.
That said, I'm concerned about my new Model X because of reports that they've removed even more physical controls (this time, they've removed the shifter) and are depending either on heuristics or touch screen interactions to set the direction that the car will go. The steering wheel has become a yoke (my uninformed guess is that this is more of designers trying to minimize the fact and appearance of driving controls and trying to visually convey the idea of a self driving car).
One weird note: For wanting to get rid of so much clutter, why haven't Tesla designers incorporated a HUD?
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=minimalist+design+of+tesla&... [2] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2011-19595/p-73
I get that he really wants a button as a guest in a car. But as an owner of a car, I would loathe 10 buttons I never want to push.
I'm not saying this just as an counterpoint-for-the-sake-of-arguing, I don't use voice control on anything - phone, TV, home automation, car, etc.
I know many people like it, and that's great, but I do not think at this point it has eclipsed hard buttons in things like vehicles where it should be considered the primary interaction method.
I need to go places, not dork with a new UI.
This guy should too.
Once they've done that (and it works, well) they can hide the button to do it manually in whatever submenu they wish.
Cars using a driver touchscreen need to fail their annual roadworthiness test. Take these cars off the road.
Had this come with automatic triggers for defrosting it may be have been okay
physical switches are best when on the go. a good example of this is the original ipod clickwheels (and even their touch sensitive replacements) which were way easier to operate in the car than competing audio players that hid everything behind menus.
Inefficient, but I can operate it without having to come to a complete stop
I'm sure there's a legitimate way to interpret this statement, but it still made me scratch my head a bit. :-)
I see what you did there :)
New UI is not good compared to the old one. But I'd take a Tesla UI any day of a maze of buttons
Oh man, my hair will go white soon if I have to tell people who keep making these kind of statements : either show this is causing accidents or lives with numbers or you’re talking out of your intuitive ass.
I agree with the rest - the new interface isn’t as intuitive and multiple interactions is required for various things that needed one tap before. It’s definitely worse and I hope it gets better.
What’s not intuitive to non-Tesla owners is that Tesla owners use the voice command extensively to get things done. Here’s a few of my day to day usage:
- Turn on recirculate
- Lower the temperature
- Play song X by Y
- Navigate to supermarket
- Fold the mirrors (for when parking in tight spots)
- Turn wiper high (no longer use this as the auto setting is almost perfect as of late)
You initiate the voice command by pressing a physical button on the steering wheel under your thumb. For majority of what I’ve listed above, you’d have to take your eyes off the road to either operate a physical button or tap on awfully unresponsive touchscreens in other cars. So as far as I’m concerned, I’m more road alert in Tesla than I’ve been in any other car. Add autopilot in the mix and nothing else comes close.
Two images. One from a vehicle systems display on a Tesla, the other an Audi RS.
Tell me in an objective sense how one is "tasteful" and the other "disgusting".
You can certainly have a preference for one over the other, and there are nice aspects to both. But yeah, I'm not seeing it.