The Potentially Fatal Role of Design

January 11, 2012

In The Sad Death Of The Knob, Switch And Button, Jalopnik writer, Jason Torchinsky takes a look at a topic of some importance to car designers: the vehicle interior. He makes the case that designers have been distracted by the shiny, and argues that this could have potentially fatal effect. Torchinsky is reporting from the North American International Auto Show, taking place in Detroit through January 22nd, and it seems that the big trend this year is for car designers to try and integrate touchscreen technology into car dashboards, making them more like large iPad screens. Fits in with what’s going on elsewhere in tech-land, yes, but the move also removes both the haptic and tactile feedback of more old-fashioned knobs and dials. This, as he writes, is a problem:

Some cars, like the Chevy Volt, the Cadillac ATS and everything from Lincoln are replacing standard buttons with sleek capacitive touch plates with big clusters of identically-shaped buttons. Capacitive technology refers to using electrodes to sense the conductive properties of objects, such as a finger. So, basically, rather than physically depressing a button you’ve fumbled for while your eyes remained on the road, you’ll turn on and off four different things before finally looking down to find what function you want to change. Then you crash and die.

Now, of course, not everyone is going to crash and die because they start using a touchscreen in their car. But when you think about it, don’t you shudder just a little? Shown above, Tom Dunn of Panasonic introduces the UConnect entertainment system, where “everything you need is only a tap away.” Eek.

9:30pm | URL: https://tmblr.co/ZLv7dxEdyTHn
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