nothing that we haven’t talked about, but more validation:
guess I’m going to be busy soon
A little ray of light for us physical UI fans: 2024 Skoda Superb review
In a quest to bring back physical controls, Skoda has fitted the new Superb with a set of three active rotating controls that govern the heating and ventilation, as well as a few additional functions such as the driver modes and volume.
I heard on a podcast today that the CEO of Skoda had to beg VW HQ to allow them to use knobs again. He said that it’s what customers were demanding. Hmmm…
“Clean” design is a stylistic choice only, no more logical than that of any religion, and has been misused as often. Most companies embrace it for the same reason cities did with “clean” modern architecture: it’s cheap to make and easy to cut corners, all the while getting praise for being forward looking.
Designers, whether UI or ID need to stop imposing the form dictates function experience and get back to the fact that most products, cars especially need to function first. This is literally matter of safety. While laughably non-friendly Mac products have eschewed design for the user for at least a decade, if that’s what people choose for their boutique status products, that’s one thing. Having absurd octo-dongles hanging off their MacBook or iMac may cause desk clutter (oops, there goes the “clean” look) no one is going to lose a life over it.
Not so with interior automobile designs, where many studies are confirming that “distracted driving” is now less about phone usage as it is the car’s UI itself.
The macbook pro
Under Jony Ive, it became almost unusable without a dock or a box of adaptors. Finally apple did a U-turn and added all the ports back.
The car industry will do the same, it just takes a little time to undo the mistake.
While the pendulum seemed to be swinging back to more tactile controls, Rivian is betting on voice.
https://insideevs.com/news/739537/rivian-software-physical-buttons-anomaly/
I don’t know… while I hate touch controls in cars, voice would be 100 times worse. WHYYYY. WHAAAT IS WRONG WITH BUTTONS PLEAASSE?! Strangest thing - everyone agrees. Are people working in auto industry not part of the human race?