If your device needs printed instructions for basic should-be-obvious operations, your user interface design is defective. (This is a Tesla showroom.)
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@Flittermouse I know Kubrick and his team were playing a very good point for laughs, but there's no way in hell you can convince me that the zero g toilet instructions in "2001: A Space Odyssey" aren't a massive user interface failure. (What about blind/dyslexic users? Children? Non-anglophones? And that horrible typeface. Just for starters!)
@cstross i'm no tesla fan, but i think the purpose of this is different and deliberate -- make the owners feel good for knowing how to open the door, unlike the dumb n00bs who can't even open the door … doesn't that fit what you'd expect from elon's tesla?
@cstross What baffles me is that Hyundai makes a much better and comparably priced electric sedan, the Ioniq6, but the Tesla Model 3 outsells it in the U .S. by about 10 to 1. Madness.
@cstross do they also provide instructions for the "3 shells" ? 😅
@cstross
Oh, Teslas are fucking death traps.
@cstross while this is bad, my favorite of these was the BMW i8. There was a video of a a training session for sales people at a BMW sales room. If someone asked to see the engine bay, only a factory trained technician was allowed to open it.
1. You needed a special tool 2. Open driver side door 3. Put tool in hole in door jam, grab hook and slightly pull 4. Repeat on passenger door 5. With two people lift hood 1.5 inches vertically. 6. Tilt hood from towards the front upto 45 degrees.
@cstross I've been half-arsedly looking at 2nd hand cars as my car needs replacing this year. Every lot I've been to, the Teslas are the ones with misted windows in the cold. Not that I'd buy one.
![Frans Super 🇺🇦🇵🇸🍋[FCKPVV]](https://media.mstdn.social/accounts/avatars/109/262/368/122/349/251/original/2fabef487ac5ca1d.jpg "Frans Super 🇺🇦🇵🇸🍋[FCKPVV]")
@cstross The chance of me being found in a Tesla showroom is as likely as penguins in the wild in the arctic near polar bears. The car obstructing my user basic instincts is unforgivable.
@cstross Yes... THere are many things on Teslas that are really non intuitive, or simply worse than what they replace. Change for the sake of it. The customer must bend to adapt to the "design" rather than designing for utility... What do you expect from a ketamine addled nazi?
@cstross tja, design is like a joke: if you have to explain it, it wasn't good.
@cstross I read a book titled “The Design of Everyday Things” in college that greatly influenced my design philosophy as an engineer. The author’s main point was “doors should not need owners manuals.” This example clearly fails that test.
@cstross I wouldn't care if they were only affecting their own awful customers, but by glamorizing these shit UI elements, they've got all the other car manufacturers copying them and endangering everyone. NTM kids who didn't consent to die in a fire.
You've sort of put your finger on a missed opportunity in motor vehicle #marketing.
Instead of all vehicle manufacturers having the current lot of samey weird advertisements where unicorns chase them down the streets in camera drone shots whilst children shout 'Play Peppa Pig at max volume!' at the computer from the rear seats and it suddenly does, there's a niche for a manufacturer to be disruptive …
… and run an #advertising campaign where they simply show that *their* cars have proper door handles, physical control knobs that don't need one to keep reading a screen away from looking at the road, and where a 5 year old cannot cause a motorway pile-up with 'Hey Google! Emergency stop!'.
It's a product differentiator. The marketers could use it.
@cstross
#MotorVehicles #Google #GoogleGemini #SafeAtAnySpeed
@JdeBP @dalias @cstross I'm kinda excited about the potential of this thing. I think my favorite part is that there is no infotainment system. If you get speakers at all (they're optional) the vehicle just shows up to your phone as a bluetooth speaker, and you dock your phone on the dash where the stereo would be.
https://www.slate.auto/en
@cstross That was written by a tech author. Why didn't the tech author not say "I'm not writing that, if those instructions are needed your product is crap"?
@TimWardCam@c.im @cstross@wandering.shop
Probably because those people are only involved when it's way too late and they want to keep the job.
@TimWardCam @mort NO LOVE for modern electronics where the paper manual is a 10cm square glossy white pamphlet printed in pale grey 4-point type that's so tiny and illegible I need to photograph and enlarge it before I realize it's not the manual, it's just the warranty declaration.
@TimWardCam @cstross @mort
My 2013 five-gear manual Corolla has 470k on the odometer. I'll be soon looking to, reluctantly, replace it. Any suggestions on the lowest-tech car available?
@quoidian @TimWardCam @mort I no longer drive, but I'd recommend avoiding anything recent enough to have Google or Apple car integration—and definitely avoid anything with a touchscreen, they're actively dangerous (requiring the driver to look away from the road to operate controls is a BAD THING).
@cstross @TimWardCam @mort
I had the misfortune to argue with a deer in 2020 and so needed a 'courtesy vehicle' for a week.
I have a clear list from that SUV what I don't want in a vehicle and the distracting display screen is on top.
@quoidian @TimWardCam @mort I would make a qualified exception for a reversing camera display that delivers satellite navigation stuff when not in reverse gear.
But it needs to be a *display*, not an input touchscreen.
@cstross @TimWardCam @mort
My youngest has a cracked neck vertibra and, when I visited, I was happy to see he had a backup camera in his SUV. But if the price of having it is having nobs replaced by a touchscreen, then no.
@cstross