I have been thinking about this recently in relation to the complex and unwieldy nature of modern car UI (especially in electric cars).
It's so bad that it is keeping me from buying a car that I need.
The conclusion that I have come to is:
Sophisticated consumers are very different than aspirational consumers - and there are always many, many more aspirational consumers.
Therefore, catering to aspirational consumers at the expense of sophisticated ones is a rational economic choice.
An aspirational consumer will put up with all manner of deficiencies and gimmickry because they perceive them as being emblematic of their consumer achievement.
In cruder terms:
They are so happy to be driving a "luxury" car that they don't notice the garbage that came with it. Meanwhile, after decades of luxury car purchases, I just want the shifter to be intelligible ...
The older tesla cars had better controls. The software updates made things worse. The targets became SO small, for no reason. I think the developers must have written and tested the UI on a display firmly mounted on a desk or non-moving car. In a moving car, everything goes to hell.
The newer cars with no stalks (shifter, turn signals, wipers, lights) are just a mess. The display has nowhere to rest your hand, you must stab and hit the correct small target from your seat. They all make you a worse driver, through indirection, confusion, inaccuracy or distraction.
> complex and unwieldy nature of modern car UI (especially in electric cars)
Honestly, I love the UX and UI of a Tesla.
It automates so many things that I find tedious in other cars: lock/unlock, close windows, pre-heat/cool, auto-set navigation to office in the morning and home in the evening, set seating and other adjustments for the driver based on which phone key was used. Navigation works thanks to the free connectivity (all other in-car gpses I've had to use were useless). Nice screen to select and play music. Voice command works reasonably well for selecting music.
It's not perfect, but I prefer the UX & UI over all ICE cars I've driven before.
As an example: my user journey when starting my drive to the office in the morning is a 2 step process: (1) open door and (2) put in drive.
Especially in the winter that used to be 10+ steps for an ICE car: (1) find key (2) unlock car (3) open car (4) adjust seat because my wife drove before (5) press button to start engine (6) front-window defrost (7) rear window defrost (8) manually scrape the ice off the front window (9) select office in gps (10) release parking brake (11) clutch (12) put in gear.
Coming back to this I just wanna make an accurate comparison here
As an example: my user journey when starting my drive to the office in the morning is a 2 step process: (1) find phone, or hope it hasn't run out of battery while you were wherever (2) open door (3) sit down (4) close door and (5) put in drive and (6) drive because it's not actually self-driving despite the name.
Especially in the winter that used to be 10+ steps for an ICE car: don't find key because it's on the keyring I used to lock the house; unlock car while you're walking to it so it doesn't make any difference; (1) open door; (2) sit down; don't adjust seat because plenty of ICE cars have had automatic seat adjustment for decades, this isn't even remotely close to an innovation, I used to have a 1996 with this feature, and it could even be linked to the keypad code you used or the keyfob you used; (3) close door; (4) press button to start engine; automatic defrosters also exist; remote start also exists; (5) put in drive and (6) drive
It's almost like either way the process is literally "get key, get in, and drive away" because a car is a car... The key being your phone doesn't actually change anything.
While I agree with the sentiment that Tesla has wonderful UI/UX, your 10+ step EV-to-ICE comparison is disingenuous. Tesla does not scrape the ice by itself.
It’s kinda funny reading this as an owner of a Tesla. People who don’t have them like yourself keep lamenting touchscreens online, whereas Tesla owners explicitly stay with the brand because of how excellent it is compared to other vehicles, touchscreen or not.
Technology Connections just posted a video where he explains how he had to hold his car’s ugly 90s era stalk for 4 seconds to change his wipers. Had to read a manual to discover that. This kind of crap is very standard in cars with disjoint components cobbled together.
Meanwhile I get my live video sentry alerts on my phone, my car drives me to work, my gear selection is typically putting on a seatbelt and pressing the brake pedal as the car knows the right direction, everything important is contextually accessible via the wheels on the steering wheel instead of having 50 buttons for everything, and so on.
It is simple and powerful. The problem with those luxury vehicles you mention is just awful execution.
Humans are good at adapting to the common operations of even the worst user interfaces and then they will stop thinking about how awkward they are.
The iPhone is lauded as having a good UX. I think (even confining yourself to Apple's own apps) it's actually pretty inconsistent and a lot of things you "just have to know" because there are no cues that would lead you to discovery. But millions of people use them mindlessly because they have adapted to them.
This. As an android user, I find iphones basically unusable because none of the common operations are presented in an obvious way. Granted android is pretty bad about this too since each manufacturer and carrier customizes things in a way that iphone users don't need to worry about, but a new user without experience in either would almost certainly have an easier time with an android device.
> my gear selection is typically putting on a seatbelt and pressing the brake pedal as the car knows the right direction
What a hugely efficient time and energy saving innovation and only at the cost of lots of your money, personal safety, and basic human agency.
Soon you can probably just hop in and without facing difficult decisions about where to go, get instantly taken to the biggest corporate partner or affiliate advertisers. Maybe robots there can invert you and shake you down so you don’t even need to pull out the money
> Technology Connections just posted a video where he explains how he had to hold his car’s ugly 90s era stalk for 4 seconds to change his wipers. Had to read a manual to discover that. This kind of crap is very standard in cars with disjoint components cobbled together.
Yeah, he had to take a minute to pull the manual out of the glovebox, flip to the index, look under W, and then flip to another page. I guess he could have had to hunt through a bunch of different menus on a touchscreen instead?
(BTW the fact that you're worried about a stalk being ugly - and the fact that you think they're from the 90s? - shows which type of consumer you are :))
> my car drives me to work
Oh, so your Full Self Driving is actually fully self driving? Weird, I didn't think that existed.
I have been thinking about this recently in relation to the complex and unwieldy nature of modern car UI (especially in electric cars).
It's so bad that it is keeping me from buying a car that I need.
The conclusion that I have come to is:
Sophisticated consumers are very different than aspirational consumers - and there are always many, many more aspirational consumers.
Therefore, catering to aspirational consumers at the expense of sophisticated ones is a rational economic choice.
An aspirational consumer will put up with all manner of deficiencies and gimmickry because they perceive them as being emblematic of their consumer achievement.
In cruder terms:
They are so happy to be driving a "luxury" car that they don't notice the garbage that came with it. Meanwhile, after decades of luxury car purchases, I just want the shifter to be intelligible ...