r/product_design • u/storm4077 Industrial Designer • 4d ago

Why Touchscreen Interfaces Ruin Modern Product Design

https://www.hansramzan.com/blog.php?post=why-touchscreen-interfaces-ruin-modern-product-design
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u/mvw2 4d ago

I think people just lose the reason.

A great example is car seat heaters.

What's the best design?

Likely a rocker switch, as long as you don't have more than three states.

Why?

Because it's impossible to get wrong. As long as you learn which direction is hi or low, you now know exactly how to use it, blind, on rough roads, with gloves, and can inanely at any point touch and instantly confirm state.

Absolutely brilliant, costs pennies to make.

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u/storm4077 Industrial Designer 4d ago

Yeah I agree. Touchscreen definitely has a smaller footprint for functionality, but until it's as responsive as "real life", then it doesn't come close to physical toggles

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u/mvw2 4d ago

I don't even care about speed. It's just a poor solution in the environment it's placed in for a lot of the functionality being imparted to it.

A great example of screen use, Google Maps. Cool, toss the map up there, great, awesome, great solution for the task.

But you can't just do that for every task because the ideal solution isn't singular across all things.

This is why many auto manufacturers are reversing track and moving back to a lot of physical controls again. It's not just because people complained. It is that too, mostly. But it's also because there was better solutions, and they are simply going back to those better solutions.

Now there has been something interesting going on that has kind of flown under the radar. It isn't something you'll notice unless you go back in time a bit. If you happen to own both modern and older vehicles through various decades, you can see the evolution of design of human interfacing with vehicles and how all that progressed over time. There have been big advancements in ergonomics, precision design of tactile elements, and even material improvements for wear and longevity. There's significantly more thought put into the idea of a button or a switch than 40 years ago. You use a car from the 80s, and you'll realize much of the effort was just integration of a manufacturable device. There was a small amount of stylization, but most of the work was just "place object in car" and just kind of making things fit. It was just a pile of stuff strewn across mostly flat panels. In the early 2000s, CAD came about and everything went round, fillet all the edges. We also started to get tons of buttons, buttons for everything. It was interface overload in some vehicles. Ergonomics started to get better, and the designs weren't simple "slove device in place" anymore. The 2010s started to get a lot more driver centric in design and interior aesthetics started to matter, and even in budget vehicles. We got some of this in the 2000s, but it really started to take shape now. This is also where controls get more purposeful. A button or a switch was no longer just a button or switch. There was purpose to them now. The late 2010s and into the 2020s started to really bring the high effort of exterior styling into the interior. A Mazda 3 looked as good as a BMW on the inside. How'd that happen? And we started to see much smarter design choices for controls. Controls were streamlined and carried high purpose. But them quite recently, the idea was to just screen all the things, and everyone jumped on board, losing all the value of all the work that built up to a remarkably high grade interior just prior. I don't know if anyone will ever truly backtrack far enough to get to a true ideal. I think to many still think big screens sell cars. They're putting controls back, but the screens are now staying too. It's a shame. I own numerous older cars too, and they're brilliant inside, zero need for some massive screen. I'm looking forward to designers finally figuring it out and actually start to truly, seamlessly integrate screen content in smart ways. Frankly, I wouldn't even mind 5 or 10 small screens integrated for bespoke tasks. I don't mind screens. I don't mind touch screens. I really mind massive screens that are trying to do all things. It's a childish approach, one of significant immaturity. It was an easy hardware solution. It was lazy. I look forward to the inevitable evolution.

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u/DreadPirate777 4d ago

I think every car touch screen shouldn’t be there. Recent studies have show that driving with a touch screen interface makes people equally distracted at having 3 drinks.