QOTD: To Screen, or Not to Screen?
Last week Matt P. brought you a report showing the chief of design at Mercedes-Benz grumbling about the proliferation of screens in modern automobiles.
It's a good read and it got me thinking -- do you, the consumer, really hate (or like) the increase in screens across the industry?
As someone who sits his rear end behind the wheel of a different new car each week, I've found myself torn on the issue. Sometimes I find large screens easy to read, and if they're well-integrated into the dashboard, that's a plus. But I also know that they can be a pain to clean and I shudder at the repair costs involved should a screen need repair after the new-car warranty expires.
Not to mention the frustration we all feel when an automaker integrates too many controls into a touchscreen (especially if we wear gloves in the winter). And the exasperation that we have when we need to dive through menus too much. Or watching the screen go blank as a software update takes over.
Personally, I am optimistic that someday an automaker will get the balance right -- it will produce vehicles with big, easy to read screens with an user interface that uses old-fashioned buttons and knobs for the most important controls. These screens will be seamlessly integrated into the dash or center stack, and the design will make it simple to access functions without endless dives through trees of options.
We've already seen progress in this area -- volume and tuning knobs are returning and OEMs are working on better UXs, both in terms of physical control and how well the screen-only functions work. So I think it is possible.
What say you -- do you like a vehicle that's screen city? Or do you want to return to the cars of yore? Or something else?
For the purposes of this question of the day, let's focus on the screens used for instrumentation and/or infotainment, not rear-seat screens meant to entertain passengers. Let's also place the passenger-side-only screens Jeep offers into a gray area.
With that said, sound off below.
[Image: Mercedes-Benz]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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Like with everything else, it’s a matter of balance and the right balance will differ depending on the car and its focus. For driver focused cars, I feel the modern Mazda has the best balance. Touch centric large screen works (mostly) well for Tesla but it assumes you are letting the car do half of the driving. To each their own.
Too many of those touch centric controls are missing (A) good UI designers (B) SoC fast enough and software optimized enough for smooth operation and (C) sufficiently reliable secondary controls for basic functions, however.
Not. The only thing in a car that should be a screen is the navigation system, and that doesn't have to be touchscreen, but probably works better if it is.
I'll give a nod to the backup camera because modern vehicles are so poorly designed that the windows are useless. (You had one job, windows! One job!!)