The "crapification" you describe is the creep away from the scientific principles that once underpinned this field. Before UX we had HCI (Human Computer Interaction) which was in turn a development of CE (Cognitive Ergonomics) and other "human factors" sciences.
These sciences were rooted in very rigorous but time consuming tests, observation, psychology and physiology.
from TFA: "Designers want a "clean" interior with minimal switchgear"
This is where the wheels fall off the wagon. Should "what designers want" be high amongst the priorities for safety critical products?
Speaking as someone with an Interaction Design (IxD) degree: no we fucking don't. Tactile buttons being superior has been known for ages. For example, Bret Victor wrote "A Brief Rant On The Future Of Interaction Design" in 2011, so over a decade ago[0]. Not that anyone with the power to change things listened, because these decisions aren't made by the designers.
This is mostly a consequence of people higher up trying to save costs by using touchscreens, which is cheaper to buy and cheaper to develop for. HCI and IxD have always had this issue that we're asked to fix things up after everything else has already been decided. Basically, we're mistaken for graphic designers who decide on what the final product will look like. So we're given a touchscreen to develop an interface for, not a blank-slate car interior (or whatever) for which we get to decide the button layout.
At the risk of pulling a "no true Scotsman", this is a consequence of cost-cutting first and foremost. Don't blame the people who actually have a background HCI or Interaction Design. We all knew this was coming, and we hated it. If we're told to make do with the touchscreens we are given, with the alternatives of actual physical buttons being ignored before we even get to make decisions, then don't blame us for the lack of those buttons.
[0] http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...
Some remarks stood out for me:
> talk about technology. That's the easy part, in a sense, because we control it. (my emphasis)
Yes, I agree with him strongly. But - there's been a dreadful anti-intellectual tide this past decade - a descent into "technological determinism", or the idea that technology is its own process to which humans must bend. It's the idea that we don't control it. It comes along with the overuse of words like "inevitable", "ubiquitous", "unavoidable" and endless talk of cats escaping from bags and genies refusing to go back into bottles. It's a defeatist and lazy creed that seeks to excuse a race to the bottom of cheapness, as you describe, with a narrative about how we "have no choice".
> if a tool isn't designed to be used by a person, it can't be a very good tool, right?
Increasingly, tools are designed to be used by other tools. Humans are being sidelined amidst the interplay between machines. For example; the demise of the Web is largely due to bots and the arms race to create other gatekeeping bots to defeat them.
> Hands
Bravo! Not "a finger" or "your thumbs". That's why I use a keyboard, interact through text-based technology, and cannot fathom thumb-twitching smartphone users. I totally get what he's saying, having worked in sonic interaction design with musical instruments (NIME) stuff like the ROLI seaboard (or whatever they changed the name to)... hands and touch, with mechanical haptic feedback is the way to go.
I wish more people payed attention to this understanding of our relation to technology as embodied beings, instead of chasing a "clean" disembodied dream - which I think hides within sublimated Orthodox Dualism in the tech community - but that's another story.
I don't think we're going to get physical interfaces back until car manufacturers (or whatever) are forced to because of said cost-cutting.
Note that "customer" can be a manager or similar higher up in the hierarchy.
For example, we're not talking about one button, we're talking about a lot of buttons, usually custom-made for the car in question. The whole dashboard physically has to be designed around them. Meanwhile Tesla just slaps a screen on a mount in the middle of the car and calls it a day. It's basically "we have to get everything right the first time" vs "fuck it, we can always fix things in a later software update". Which is a way to save costs by cutting corners.
The buttons all have their own complicated logic too, although I suppose that even with physical buttons one can handle almost all of that purely through software these days, so that's not really as much of an issue any more as it used to be (it does make me terrified that cars can be hacked and bricked, but I digress).
Speaking of a lot of buttons, that's the other thing: if all your buttons are virtual, you can have infinite buttons! The only thing we have to do is introduce a ton of mode switches! Which is absolutely terrible when you're driving, but nobody seems to care! So we can cram a ton of features into a screen that would otherwise require a million buttons, and use that in marketing. Even though we'd probably be better off if some time was spent to whittle things down to the essentials and design the interface around those cleanly.
A touchscreen is largely just a single fused physical unit with ~two cables: a data ribbon and power. Utterly trivial to install and wire up in comparison.
The total assembly cost adds up very quickly.
> tests, observation, psychology and physiology
Is that not their job?
Apart from the remit being just too broad, designers in any case are part of a complex team that deal with a multitude of functional, non-functional, regulatory and financial requirements.
Now, we have many different definitions of "designer", which I am very aware of, but I believe that, in some circles "designer" has become romanticised and extended to include a set of perceived "magical" powers to "deliver what a boss wants". That is a distortion of the role to something grotesque.
Speaking from a domain in which I have expertise; in sound design a great battle ensued between designers, users (audiences) and the 'bosses' (studios and publishers) as to how music and films should sound. You probably know this as the "Loudness Wars". I think it remains a textbook example of misalignment between technical, artistic and financial factors. It also remains an example of why I think "Markets are a myth" [2].
Despite listeners saying over and over that they "Don't want it", the producers, through a mess of internal motives (mainly financial), repeatedly foisted their values onto them, being obsessed with what they think users want in preference to flat-out contradiction that would be evident in even the most cursory market research.
The job of a designer is to balance factors, and in a sense act as an advocate (stand-in) for the user by mentalising their actual needs. It's a very demanding and complex skill. Doing "what your boss says" is absolutely not it and reduces a designer to a tool.
On the other hand, a job of the designer is also to listen to expert technical advice outside of their skill-set, and so must not get carried away with any grand "aesthetic vision", wanting to be Steve Jobs.
A hard line to tread, and one requiring strong will and ethics as well as judgement.
https://www.slashfilm.com/673162/heres-why-movie-dialogue-ha...
I've only tried it in a VM for a few minutes so far, but was unnerved by the general feeling of 'pretty, but impractical', mainly thanks to the taskbar and the right-click 'hide everything by default' context menu.
Evidently not if the work they're producing is reportedly outperformed by old school physical controls from more than a decade ago and in most of the vehicles tested it wasn't even close.
Designers can do all those things, but often they're not given the space to.
The best products are typically produced in an environment where the people running the company care about the design. This is a rare environment.
Buttons and actual things that let you use the device/vehicle for 8+ hours a day, not so selected for.
UX usually focuses on the critical path for the top-5 tasks. So turning on the car radio makes sense, but changing the radio station didn’t make the cut, so some rando engineer guy stuffed it in a menu.
When it’s done well with a great team and time it’s magic. It’s easiest to see when Apple gets software right, like Keynote - the functions of making a presentation are immediately obvious to an elementary school student. But even then, once you leave the happy path, woe to you - modifying a template is a dark art to most people.
I'm convinced most people really don't like iCloud, but since the alternative is iTunes, they basically have no choice...
iTunes is the equivalent of legacy VB apps in enterprises. As far as I can tell, there was essentially no design for many years.
Eventually the usb port just stopped working so I use VLC on the phone and stream to the car via bluetooth.
I just want it to recognize that I sort my music into folders and show the folder hierarchy. Instead, in my last car, it would flatten the entire structure and then sort by filename. To top off the shitshow, it would also only show up to 99 files, and scrolling through the list was painful. Each tap on the scroll button would only move one line, not one page, so if I wanted to play the 80th song, I'd have to tap to scroll 80 times.
seriously though, the USB audio player is a dumpster fire. They completely redid it with the last update -- and it got worse, not better.
some random examples off the top of my head: - switch to another input source and you lose your audiobook position - sorting is completely utterly broken - audiobook has no skip-back-a-little function - soooo many bugs
The only nice things I could say is that it mounts linux filesystems plus it plays FLAC and Apple lossless directly.
Now, you control your car, though with increasing friction.
Other than that - it worked and somehow had all the needed papers to be street-legal.
Alternatively, what do you mean, quit?
The soft top folded down pretty nicely. The rear seat could also fold down, as did the windshield. The half doors were still removable, and there were still only 2 of them.
It was a manual transmission but had A/C. The heater had two settings: "lava" and "off" :D
Very unrelated.
I think Apple's design choices provide a better analogy but the point is still taken and I tend to agree. They want cars to be disposable technology that consumers are continuously upgrading (like their phone)
I remember once driving, I think a Renault Megane, which had all the controls (stereo, climate, etc) replicated as buttons on (behind) the steering wheel. A slight learning curve, but completely seamless driver-car integration once learned. Someone had obviously thought carefully about how this should work, instead of just slapping in a touchscreen and a bunch of menus.