Why are user interfaces so hard?

"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa) 05/17/2016 at 08:43 • Filed to: None

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Blue-to-black gradients? Weird glossy buttons? Holy shit is it 2007? Did Windows Vista just come one? At least Vista had a coherent (and goddamn beautiful, fuck you if you think Windows 7 was more attractive) look to it, but this is just a hot mess. Web 2.0 as hell in here. You have designers that can make fairly attractive websites, why can’t you shuffle those guys over to your in-car infotainment UI team? Seriously? And that white text on a light blue button is fucking illegible, you complete thunderfucks. If you took away 99% of the graphics, reduced the icons to 1-bit representations you’d have a minimal UI that would be timeless and FAR EASIER TO USE ON A CAR.

This crap makes Ford Sync look like a work of goddamn art.

sm70- why not Duesenberg? > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 08:47

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Buick?

BvdV - The Dutch Engineer > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 08:49

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Because Opel. Since the Buick is based on the previous Opel Astra, this GUI probably dates back to 2008-ish, since it was introduced in 2009, and therefore it looks like it belongs in that time.

Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 05/17/2016 at 08:49

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Yup. Buick uses this godawful light blue color scheme, Chevy uses dark blue, GMC uses red, and Cadillac does their own shit and it actually looks really nice.

Daily Drives a Dragon - One Last Lap > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 08:50

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Ewwwww. I hated Vista.

sm70- why not Duesenberg? > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 08:51

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I thought I was alone in liking Caddy’s interface, or at least finding it tolerable.

But yeah, you’d think Buick would want to make their interfaces as easy as possible for the oldsters to see/use. Or maybe they were trying yet again to scare them off.

Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To > BvdV - The Dutch Engineer 05/17/2016 at 08:58

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Chevy and GMC use identical UIs with just recolors, though.

Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To > Daily Drives a Dragon - One Last Lap 05/17/2016 at 08:59

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Vista was gorgeous. Pity Microsoft wasn’t more aggressive with the system requirements and require OEMs to do some sort of quality testing on their drivers.

Daily Drives a Dragon - One Last Lap > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 09:01

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I mean... Yeah it looked good but it never ran very well for me.

Vicente Esteve > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 09:01

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IMO Mylink in modern GM products look ridiculously childish.

FromCanadaWithLove > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 09:05

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I think Jaguar needs some work there, too. I was lucky to take a 2017 F Type for a test drive. The screen was great, everything was quick and responsive, but the graphics were so cheesy. For the phone menu, it had this stereotypical British phonebox sitting on some remote landscape. The same goes for the climate settings, etc. The images were too cheesy and detailed. A simple vector image would have worked better.

Ash78, voting early and often > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 09:08

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Because everyone is just in a holding pattern of retardation until everything becomes modular interfaces based on Google or Apple tablets that snap into the dash and perform a universal series of actions. It will be the greatest leap in auto standardization since the brake/gas pedal arrangement. I’d say 2020-2022. It’s positively ridiculous — iPads have been approved for use in AIRCRAFT for several years. Our local police department helicopters have ipads front and center. You would think cars would have been the early adopters because of the ubiquity of these products...but nope.

FromCanadaWithLove > FromCanadaWithLove 05/17/2016 at 09:08

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Kinja gonna kinja, but here’s what it looks like (only in an XF):

Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To > Vicente Esteve 05/17/2016 at 09:12

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“iPhones are popular, let’s have that then.”

Eberle-Hills-Cop > Vicente Esteve 05/17/2016 at 09:18

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As a professional user experience designer, the vast majority of automobile touch screen interfaces drive me bananas with their bad color contrasts and inconsistent touch targets.

jvirgs drives a Subaru > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 09:19

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Honda’s looks like old MS DOS. I think Chrysler’s Uconnect is one of the best

Logansteno: Bought a VW? > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 09:23

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What the hell Buick have you been in about post-2012 that still uses that system? This is what the Regal, LaCrosse, and Envision have now. The others might use that old system since they date to old Opels.

Vicente Esteve > Eberle-Hills-Cop 05/17/2016 at 09:25

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I have only extensively used VW’s last interface. It looks elegant and works like a charm, but somehow car mags have called it antiquated and crappy.

Honeybunchesofgoats > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 09:31

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It’s that sort of lack of control over hardware that led to me switching to Macs completely.

Luckily for Microsoft, Apple is really doing their damnedest to break their OS.

Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To > Honeybunchesofgoats 05/17/2016 at 09:42

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Really? Damn, the features I’ve been reading about in newer OSX releases have sounded promising. Personally I just took a 3-year-old high-end HP workstation and upgraded it with about $200 in parts and ended up with the equivalent of a modern $1000 desktop. Yay depreciation.

Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To > Logansteno: Bought a VW? 05/17/2016 at 09:43

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That’s one of the official pictures from the page for the Cascada

TheHondaBro > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 09:48

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At least Vista had a coherent (and goddamn beautiful, fuck you if you think Windows 7 was more attractive)

The Dummy Gummy > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 09:54

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Vista sucked hard. Might have been pretty but the functionality behind it was garbage.

The Powershift in Steve's '12 Ford Focus killed it's TCM (under warranty!) > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 10:08

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...and I’m over here still bitching about buttons that are smooth, featureless, and have nearly no gap between them, making them all completely indistinguishable unless you take your eyes off the road and stare at the center stack.

How hard would it be to fillet the edges of the buttons where they meet so it’s easy to tell where they end? Or better yet, making the center of the buttons concave so when you press the button, your finger naturally centers on it? This isn’t hard - Honda and Toyota had it all figured out in the 90s.

GTRZILLAR32-Now saving for Godzilla and a condo > Vicente Esteve 05/17/2016 at 10:31

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Because it makes it so much easier to see on the fly. You will recognize the color much quicker and thus spend less time looking for the touch point while driving. It's a safety and ease of use design as opposed to something that is visually attractive.

Probenja > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 10:43

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The Opel Cascada was launched in 2013 so it likely uses the old Opel “Intelilink” system.

Chariotoflove > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 11:19

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I’m not surprised if the Cascada is using an older UI version. Buick updated their dash layouts a couple years back to reduce the number of buttons, but the Cascada console looks like the old version with a million buttons. It seems like they brought the 2013 Opel/Vauxhall Cascada over untouched and the UI came with it. Another symptom of Buick apathy.

Hermann > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 11:26

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I work with developers and interface designers.

The biggest issue I see is that most of the time they keep focusing on features and adding stuff and making sure they do what they’re supposed to do that they forget to take steps back and see the whole picture.

It looks pretty and useful to their eyes on their environment. But they’re unable to see the whole thing and think like a user.

Bad design is kinda like bad parenting. You can compare these developers to parents of a spoiled and fat kid. They can only see the pretty baby they conceived and raised. They just make sure the clothes are clean and there’s no ice cream around their little mouth. But they’re blind to the actual issues their kids have. They don’t see that their baby is overweight, rude and misbehaved. They just shove the critics away, saying “You know nothing about my baby. You have no right to judge.”

And they obviously criticize other people’s sons for the same issues their own have.

It’s not their own fault. It’s normal response to your creation. People around this are responsible to point out what’s wrong and try to convince them that their kid is not alright. The developers just need to keep their minds open that their projects aren’t perfect and benefit a lot from external input.

Vicente Esteve > GTRZILLAR32-Now saving for Godzilla and a condo 05/17/2016 at 14:49

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It’s a good point, but I think even with the bright colors and shapes they could’ve done something better.

GTRZILLAR32-Now saving for Godzilla and a condo > Vicente Esteve 05/17/2016 at 16:29

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Just use iDrive and the Mercedes system and I think you will appreciate Mylink.

Vicente Esteve > GTRZILLAR32-Now saving for Godzilla and a condo 05/17/2016 at 20:08

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I have used the Mercedes system, and yes of course it is more complicated. The thing is, I find UConnect much more attractive whilst still being user friendly.

C62030 > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 20:16

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Other major car companies need to start poaching Tesla’s UI people. One of which I desperately hope to be someday.

The Compromiser > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 05/17/2016 at 21:15

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I feel for you. I have Uconnect so I’m good, but I do feel for you.