Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

I’m quite suspicious that they do that not because they understood or learned something, but because China requires physical buttons starting next year. And they simply don’t want to lose one of their biggest markets.

But do you have to look at the display to tell what the buttons and knobs are doing.

If you have, say, a HVAC fan speed knob with mechanical stops at the low and high end, and a detent, you never have to look at it. If you have an increase/decrease switch, you may need to look at the display to find out what you're doing. In a car, this means head-down time, eyes off the road.

I have a Black and Decker branded humidifier, which comes from "W Appliance Ltd", a licensee of the Black and Decker name. It's an ultrasonic humidifier with a 1.45 gallon tank and a big filter to remove dissolved solids, so it runs well on tap water. It's an effective humidifier.

This device is an example of how to botch the user interface for a very simple device. There's a big round display, about 12cm across. This has various dedicated icons and a central number display. Around it is a ring which displays a moving bar pattern when the device is running.

From left to right, we have five buttons. They're just touchable areas on the case, not actual pushable controls. The first button is On/Off, and, inevitably today, the same button does both functions. The display lights up when on.

The second button turns on a negative ion generator. This isn't an advertised feature, and it may not actually do anything. If this feature is on, a tiny icon illuminates on the display. This thing is down on the floor and you can't see the smaller icons without getting down on your knees. If you hold this button down for two seconds, the decorative bar pattern on the display is toned down, but not fully turned off.

The third button is fan speed. Available values are 1 to 3. Default is 2. 1 is useless, and 2 is mostly useless, because the water condenses on top of the unit rather than humidifying the room.

The fourth button sets the humidity. Values from 45% to 90% can be cycled through. There's one two-digit display, and it shows the humidity being set when the button has been pushed recently. Otherwise it shows the humidity being measured.

The fifth button sets a timer to turn the thing off after some number of hours.

When the water tank is empty, a tiny icon illuminates. The main display does not change or go dark. The one actionable piece of info the device can give the user is barely visible.

Removing the water tank or turning the device off resets all settings to the defaults. So after each refill, the user must go through setup again.

There's an optional remote available, with the same five buttons.

All this thing needed was one big knob for setting the humidity, with an off position. Plus a nice big indicator light to indicate an empty tank. Instead, they designed a complex user interface that makes it worse.

This kind of mistake appears when UI people design button systems.

I think they should distinguish between controls and settings.

Settings are great on a touchscreen. A wide variety of options, easily navigated to and explained. They suck on physical buttons, it ends up being like setting the time on a VCR.

Controls on the other hand deserve physical buttons. Or levers. or dials/knobs/spinners. It should depend on muscle memory, and the type of control.

I also thing driving status should be on a dashboard in front of you, not on the central display. (looking at you tesla)

And some should be multiple places. It might be nice to set your volume with a physical knob, but also on the steering wheel.

And for those commands that do not deserve a physical button and are only accessible via touch, please adhere to a few simple rules.

1. Put them always in the same place. Especially the "back" or "exit" button!

2. Each button should do one thing, not switch between 3 or more modes that you should look to understand which one you've just activated. Negative example: one button to cycle from cuise control, to drive assist, to speed limit, and back to off.

3. The area where a tap is interpreted as a button press should not also be where a swipe is recognized. In moving vehicles it is too easy for your finger to swing just an inch before touching the screen.

4. The active area of a virtual button must be large, larger than the icon it displays, so large that you shouldn't be distracted from driving just to aim at it!

Last time it was VW bringing it back, then Mazda bringing it back, and so on. Also luxury cars will not use touch controls, thats only for cheap cars.

It appears wishful thinking that physical buttons are coming back. This would be an idea whose time has gone. It does not even matter companies that physical buttons are better, or they can offer as choice (at higher price) if someone wanted.

Like remote working, office cubicles, fast and lightweight websites, ad-free content, one time purchase software incentives of all parties are aligned against people who bear cost of these decisions. So I do not expect this to change.

'He also explained that "I'm a big believer in screens, because I really believe if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen." '

I am a big believer in keeping "product people" away from UI design for dangerous machinery.

The eyes and the attention of the driver should be on the road. All the audio visual noise from the car is just plain dangerous. I don't want my car to draw my attention to itself for anything less than a critical engine/tyre pressure failures. I do not want beeps on anything else distracting me while I am driving.

My Volvo will, for instance, flash the same type of visual alert when fuel level is low (permanent "do you want to navigate to a fuel station" modal window obscuring navigation, speedometer and so on) -- as when it encounters a serious engine malfunction. It will steal a bit of my attention when it pops up. One of those days, someone will have an accident because of this moronic design, its statistically certain.

Same with wipers fluid level low. I need to click on the button to hide the message.

It will on occasion beep very loud when it thinks I am not braking hard enough. The map in the google android car navi rotates when i am just trying to pan. When I want to select an alternative route I need to very precisely touch a very small area on the screen, and more often than not instead of selecting the alternative route it will actually rotate the map.

It is clear to me that either the people designing car UIs are staying away from those cars, or are just incompetent. (Or, I guess, both).

Is is Mercedes-Benz deciding to bring back buttons, or is it that the EU's NCAP safety rating mandated that they bring back buttons, and they are spinning it as a voluntary decision?

The China regulation angle is the elephant in the room. Mercedes claims they listened to customers, but the timing is suspicious right when China mandates physical buttons. Either way, the result is good. Touchscreens for everything were a dangerous fad. I shouldn't have to take my eyes off the road to adjust the temperature. Buttons you can find by touch save lives.

If they have custromer feedback and focus groups like they mention how did it happen in the first place? Some overoptimistic head-of-something? Really curious. I own previous -2021 mb and had to drive the upgrade (touch buttons) once as a replacement car. UX is terrible. Period. I even checked then in the dealership what they did to S-class and mybachs - and yes, same crappy wheel, etc. Anyways, I was mostly surprised that they didn’t know this before. Something is wrong with their research / decision making.

functional programming taught us this decades ago. State is the root of all evil.

If the outcome of my interaction with the interface (e.g. tap a place on the screen) is a function of not just where i tap but the last 2-6 places i recently tapped (menus etc) suddenly you've added massive complexity and mental overhead.

can't wait to get back to a button that does the same thing every time every time i press it [1]

tesla screens, carplay, mercedes screens, its been getting worse for a while

1) I know in reality most are sliders or an on/off toggle but the point stands

I really like what Jony Ive did with Ferrari. It’s the perfect blend of digital and analog instruments. High quality material and finishing.

Many of these German car companies are following what sells well in Chinese markets, more and more screens. IMO, nothing beats the feeling and assurance of tactile buttons/toggles/knobs.

I saw the new Ferrari dash and infotainment controls. They struck such a nice mix of digital and analog. Reminded my of the iPhone Dynamic Island and coincidentally designed by Jony Ive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wv1btxCjVE

I'm looking at buying a used Porsche Macan. Through 2021 they were absolute button-fests, with a console absolutely littered with physical buttons.

In 2022, they moved to a piano black console with haptic "buttons". It also seems like there are somehow fewer of them; I'm not sure if more functions moved into the touchscreen or what.

Anyway, needless to say, I have no interest in the 2022+ with the haptics.

Unmentioned is touchscreens frequently don't work. I often have to make repeated presses on my iphone until it registers. The same with swipes. Since there is no audible or tactile feedback, this cannot work well while keeping your eyes on the road.

Whenever you add a touchscreen to something it makes the UI/UX a software issue instead of a hardware issue. You can ship updates. You can cheap out on UI/UX designing because you can ship it later. So you find commonly used features buried 4 menus deep. You also find that the positions of things in menus will randomly change by OTA updates.

Touch screens are (IMHO) terrible for cars because there's no tactile feedback that allows you to use them without looking at the screen. Dials, buttons and switches can be felt and used. It goes beyond being lazy. It's unsafe.

The only reason we got trouch screens in cars at all is cost-cutting.

What I'm surprised by is that cars are chock-full of ornate, unique parts (cupholders are a good example).

I would have imagined that car infotainment controls would be a small fraction of the BOM, so I've been wondering if it's not really a cost thing. Sort of like small phones or 3D TVs from the early 2000's.

Please bring back physical gauges, too. I don't want to stare at a lcd while I'm driving.

I’m seeing some brands say they have physical buttons but they aren’t the same. They’re more like touch based buttons that are not in a screen. And I feel they’re just as bad. I want to be able to use the button without looking. Like one car had a touch based slider for operating the air vents. Ridiculous

Previous legacy car manufacturer to say so, that I remember, was Mazda in 2019.

They now resell a Chinese EV with a very Tesla model 3 inspired interior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_6e#/media/File%3AMazda6e...

I didn’t find the original press release but you can find a lot of copies like the following article.

https://www.motoringresearch.com/car-news/mazda-getting-rid-...

This is sensible. My Mercedes has 3 different methods of using the touch screen, each one is fiddly. It's like the juice isn't worth the squeeze, just give me a nice tactile button like the good old days.

This is sort of like Microsoft saying they're making Windows better. It's just undoing a change that should never have been made in the first place, because it made things worse.

This was one of the reasons why, when looking for an EV, I went with the Kia EV6.

All of the buttons on the steering wheel are physical buttons, the heated seats, steering wheel heater etc. all physical buttons.

The only blip is the capacitive buttons that are dual use for climate control or media control (you press a button to switch between the two modes) but even that's preferable to having to hunt in a touchscreen interface to set the AC when trying to keep your eyes on the road - especially with dials to change the temperature/change the volume.

The questions are not "are touchscreens performant" or "are touchscreens dangerous" ... we already knew the answers to those questions and there was no reason to run this multiple model generations experiment.

The question is: who was in charge of these design decisions and what kind of respect and esteem did these people command as leaders at these large companies ?

A followup question: what professional consequences accompany terrible design decisions in an arena where such decisions are life threatening ?

VW has commited already. Here a preview from the newest model: https://ibb.co/dYYMFWG

I personally find Chevy's recent infotainment control center great (Equinox/Blazer, maybe others too). Physical buttons with lots of travel (almost feel like an old IBM keyboard) for HVAC essentials, knobs for temperature and volume, and a big screen.

They have struck a really good balance between traditional interfaces and the benefits of screens.

Laudable. But I'd rather read about how they plan to fight Chinese EVs.

Though I don’t own one, I’m fortunate enough to occasionally be able to drive around a “Benz”. It’s my dad’s. Over here we prefer saying “Benz” rather than “Mercedes”.

It’s a W212 E-Class, bought new just a few months before the all new generation hit the market.

It has no touchscreen. But the UI/UX is terrible anyway. My dad still has no idea how to bring up the tire pressure monitoring screen, for example. Using the buttons to navigate a myriad of menus is not exactly straightforward.

The physical user manual book that came with the car has limited information and recommends viewing the user manual through the screen. The screen is not a touchscreen. There’s a knob in between the seats to navigate the system. Very terrible experience.

On the other hand, a Honda economy car that I used to have had the most straightforward physical controls imaginable.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, eliminating touchscreen by itself will not necessarily make anything easier, especially if the car itself is complex.

Never understood any appeal of a screen inside a car:

1. Reflections make you tilt, just to make some pesky highlights go away. Even if they are angled properly, there's always something (like a sun reflected by a watche's face) what causes nuissance at any angle

2. Car can go from a tunnel to a sunny valley in few seconds. That's 5 to 8 stops of dynamic range difference, that a human eye is easily designed to handle. Auto adjusting screen brigtness is never as bright as necessary in sunny conditions. Even if it were, it would be a significant battery drain and an element, that heats the cars interior already unnecessarily.

3. You don't have pure blacks in many of them, so that annoying halo at the corner of the eye is often present. You can solve it with an OLED, but those are even worse in bright daylight

4. All of the usually mentioned tactile feedback facts - you can reach with your hand to a AC knob, feel it's current set by finding the bulge with a finger and gently turn exactly how you want them. Zero lag, no eye contact necessary at all (keep that on the road!), instant feedback. Nothing that any screen can ever give.

5. Biggest gripe of all - modality. I think that there were some high ranking studies done early in design exactly against this type of input for high risk applications. Modality is the biggest enemy of discoverability and throws extra delays into otherwise instant input.

6. If you use a LCD variant, they interact with sunglasses polarity filter and, at some orientations, can be blocked altogeter. As you often use sunglasses exactly, because you want to see the road the best, it's contrary to the main objective of the control again.

7. Refocusing. If you can use a tactile control, with a good feedback, you're freeing your eyes from the need to adjust it's lens to focus from far to near to far again. Not many people are aware, that this is even happening, and can lead to overestimating your ability to keep engaged attention on the road.

I'd pay extra for a zero screen variant in a jiffy. Had I ever need to use a screen, I would've put my phone in a holder instead.

> "If you want to connect to the customer, you’ve got to find a way to translate this digital experience from your phone to the customer."

Absolute brain rot. The customer already has a phone. They don't need your screen, they already have one.

There is a happy medium somewhere. I've seen cars with a hundred buttons, and that is just as big a disaster as a touchscreen. A good solution would be hybrid -- the things you use regularly while driving should be tactile buttons and knobs that you can hopefully recognize without having to look at them. There should be a very limited number of these controls; radio & climate being the obvious ones. The rest of the customizable features and such can be in a touchscreen and then only accessible when parked.

touch screens in cars are mainly a cost saving measure, just like plastic that is supposed to look like wood (cheaper than real wood), or economy class tires instead of higher end tires, or steel rather than aluminum.

I must say this, and the absence of piano black, were some key determining factors for me to buy the new Hyundai Kona (of course, maybe not the most important ones, but decisive nonetheless).

I was in the market for a new car, and was looking at an M4.

The iPad taped to the dash was horrible. Too many presses to do anything climate related, which is something you do mess with a little more when driving a convertible with the top down.

But the worst part was when you start the car and it starts to heat / cool. While it is working to reaching your desired temperature, it shows an indeterminate progress bar in the button to adjust the temperature.

REALLY distracting.

Ended up getting an M8, the pinnacle of BMW before hybridization and full touch screens. If only it had an analogue cluster...

5 years ago I didn’t want to buy a new car, because of the lack of buttons (general lack of reasonable interfaces); today I can’t afford to buy a new car with the luxury of plastic buttons

Hope this change comes sooner. My 2025 BMW X5 got AC control as secondary touchscreen menu while giving prev/next song a dedicated button. Every time I turn on/off AC, I would wonder what the industry designer was thinking about when working on this? That made me use voice control to toggle the A/C, which I have to say their voice recognition is pretty decent, got it right 90% of time except when my toddlers are in the back seat mimicking me.

maybe i'm old school but i hate the ipad like interfaces in cars... especially if i'm trying to change settings while driving. i suppose we're very close to all of that just being voice activated but still this is a win in my book...

also while i'm ranting can we teach people about regenerative braking? every uber or lyft driver that has an EV actually uses the brakes and i'm getting whiplash every time we have to stop.

EVERY designer should read the `Design of everyday things`. It teaches the basics of good interface design.

I had to choose a smaller entertainment system so I can have knobs..

Great, but what they haven't told you is that they'll probably create a subscription for the buttons. Gotta recoup those R & D costs!

More prevalent in luxury cars, although Japanese had their share of bad experiments as well. My 10yo Honda has all climate control buttons, but no volume knob, which is mitigated a bit by having volume button on the steering wheel.

IMO luxury manufacturers like MB and BMW tried to squeeze larger screens, more of them and there was not enough space to put those screens, buttins and vents. Some luxuty brands make vents supper slim.

Next they should bring back round steering wheels.