The forgotten benefits of “low tech” user interfaces
medium.comAnother place I dislike touchscreen interfaces is in vehicles, where you want to be able to build muscle memory to operate the most-used controls without having to take your eyes off the road.
I have an early 2000s car, and my next car will be a used car from the same era.
A co-worker let me drive his (now) older Audi, and it was from a somewhat transitional era. It had a large screen in the dash for maps and music info etc, but it was strictly a screen, no input.
There were still buttons for all the usual suspects like climate control, and to interact with the screen there was an iPod scroll wheel style nub/direction pad down on the center console, next to the shifter. It was simply a dream to use.
Naturally, they ditched it in favor of pure touchscreen.
Honestly the hybrid physical controls to control a screen is probably the best option. You don't have to visually process what's on teh screen, where to touch, etc. each time.
Eventually I'd imagine you'd get the navigation down to muscle memory like typing on a keyboard - knowing exactly where each option is and where to click or turn the nav button thingy.
Have fun trying to blind-touch a screen when you're on a bumpy road trying to turn the windshield wipers on! :P
Who knows, maybe we're the old ones and the younger generation have all this figured out in their heads already!