Similar to kiba's comment below, but perhaps a step in between, it would make sense for car designers to look at other similarly complex machines that require the operator's constant attention to the outside world before innovating blindly.

HOTAS (Hands on Throttle and Stick) as a concept has been adopted almost exclusively in fighter aircraft - and extended into Formula 1 and Indy cars as well - for this exact purpose.

The modern car dashboard design is beyond stupid, almost criminally so when you start to see 12 inch video screens placed underneath the windscreen in such a way that the driver has to take his attention off the road to use pretty much anything in the car.

Tactile feedback isn't going to help much if you are fumbling with controls floating an arms length away between you and the passenger.

There is plenty of room on the steering wheel for all of the car's functional controls, especially if you make use of a HUD/windscreen visual menu and multifunction controls. I almost exclusively use my 5 button steering wheel control to manage my entire audio experience while driving right now.

I'm not sure how many people will need to be killed before something like that becomes the norm. Of course, seatbelts and airbags both required their fair share of human sacrifice before the car gods decided lowly operators warranted them, so maybe kiba is onto something. :-)

I very much agree that dashboard design is generally awful. As controls have become more digital and less mechanical, they seem to have come to require more attention. For instance, one general pattern used to be if you wanted warm air you slid a horizontal lever more or less to the right or left. Once you got used to it, you could set it without looking, and with gloves on.

Nowadays it's much more likely that you spin a knob or repeatedly press a button to set the temperature, and instead of the setting being indicated by a combination of position and color/text, you likely have only a numeric value, an exclusively visual indicator.

Not only does the digital, numeric value (usually in degrees F or C) provide a (possibly) unneeded level of precision, it's a visual-attention sink.

The "glass cockpit" of the Tesla I have to believe is even worse in this context. However, given its extreme versatility, I doubt the touchscreen will be going away. If a screen interface can be designed to require less attention, and I believe it can be, it's possible that we can gain all the promised flexibility of glass without it becoming a safety hazard.

Thanks for the HOTAS reference, btw. Hadn't heard of that.

The indicator controls are a good example of this. They used to mechanically click into one of 3 positions, indicate left, off and indicate right. This made it very easy to switch them off. Now when you want to manually switch off the indicator it's very easy to to go too far and start indicating in the opposite direction. The only way to know what position they're in is then to look down at the lights on the dashboard. It's seems a huge step backwards in usability.

Unless they're in a dogfight, airplanes do not require constant attention to the outside world. That's why autopilots and drones are technologies that have been available in the aerospace industry for years, but are just now getting good enough to consider in cars.

Also consider the amount of training that goes into becoming a fighter pilot, vs. learning to drive a car. Powerful interfaces are complex and require a lot of training to manage properly under stress--which is when it is most important to do it right.

That said, modern cars do have a lot of controls on the steering wheel: all the typical blinkers, brights, horn, etc. and now often radio controls, cruise control, telephone Bluetooth controls, even gear shifting paddles.

HUD has been tried in cars before, but never caught on. Drivers tended to find it more distracting than helpful. Most of the information for driving does not need to be so..."contextual", the way that, say, a missile targeting system does. Anything that intercedes itself directly between the driver's eyes and the outside world could be dangerous.

I do agree with you that the touchscreens in the dash are frickin awful UI design. I think they are like the "store" setting on LCD TVs--their main job is to look cool in the showroom.

> Unless they're in a dogfight, airplanes do not require constant attention to the outside world.

This sounds like you're not a pilot. Pretty much the first thing flight school teaches you is situational awareness. Constantly visually scanning for nearby traffic is a very, very important skill.

What about IFR? What is the automotive equivalent of IFR?

IFR is essentially the painted lines on the road - it's just a directional radio signal that you can follow to see if you're following the glideslope.

An autopilot can follow it, but even in IFR you're supposed to be visually scanning, as you can be in IFR weather while still having a mile or two of visibility around your plane.

Wait, are you a pilot? IFR (instrument flight rules) means you must be able to fly looking solely at your instruments, not out the window. There's no equivalent in driving.

I think you might be thinking of ILS.

Disclaimer: I'm not a pilot, although I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night.

My dad's a private pilot.

IFR doesn't mean no visibility, it means visibility below minimums. If you're driving in fog, you still look out the window. Same for aircraft. You may be in instrument flight rules while being able to see the runway.

You're right, though, on ILS. Part of being able to do IFR, but not IFR itself.

Dogfighting/takeoff/landing is a lot closer to driving in traffic than it is to general flying. The point being that a complete awareness of your surroundings is essential in all of these situations.

Also consider the amount of training that goes into becoming a fighter pilot, vs. learning to drive a car. Powerful interfaces are complex and require a lot of training to manage properly under stress--which is when it is most important to do it right.

This strengthens my point. If something as complex as a fighter jet can have its core functions displayed in an easy to use display in that keeps the pilot's "head up", then certainly we can do it for cars.

HUD has been tried in cars before, but never caught on. Drivers tended to find it more distracting than helpful.

That's because that "HUD" consisted of a an annoying little speedometer that was pretty much out of the line of sight. Today, we have much more information delivered to the driver in general - the most distracting being GPS/Map data and cell phone operation. These are perfect for HUD use.

I'm talking about something like this: http://www.carpages.co.uk/bmw/bmw-7-series-part-1-19-11-08.a...

That graphic is hilarious. WTF do all those cryptic numbers and arrows mean?? Even if I knew, I would have to stare at them for a second or two to collect and parse the data.

You might start by asking yourself why, in 2012, almost every car still comes with an analog (dial-style) speedometer. The answer is that they are unambiguous and easily scanned. You do not need to actually read the numbers, and can collect the speed data in a quick eye flick (well under 1 second). Again: everyone already tried digital speed readouts in the 1980s. They sucked.

Engineering and innovation create continuous pressure on good user interfaces. The Google homepage is a well-known example from the web of a UI that successfully resisted this pressure to very good effect. (Although even the Google homepage is slowly succumbing.)

Consider something like GPS. The greatest visual interface for GPS directions is none at all. The driver in need of directions should be able to ask for them verbally and receive instructions verbally--that way they can maintain their visual scan. In the age of paper maps, everyone knew it was silly to try to drive and unfold and read a map at the same time...somehow this common wisdom has been forgotten just because we can use pixels now.

> This strengthens my point. If something as complex as a fighter jet can have its core functions displayed in an easy to use display in that keeps the pilot's "head up", then certainly we can do it for cars.

Not really. Fighter jets require extensive education and training to be able to fly at all, let alone competently. They can afford to teach the pilot "click the thumb button twice for this, three times for this other thing". Car manufacturers can't.

Well, self driving cars will make the safety application moot.

I'm a big fan of the nascent self driving technology, but vehicles in the first several waves of that revolution will still need a proper human interface.

And realistically, I think "dual interface" cars will own the general market (non-taxi, etc) for a long time to come. Anyone who enjoys driving once in a while on a nice piece of road (E.G. the 280 between Daly City and Cupertino) is going to want a car that also features a manual mode.

Eventually we'll have cars where a hidden steering wheel unfolds from the dashboard and pedals rise from the floor. And parental controls to prohibit your teen from accessing them ;)

I dug this up from the uspto website.

http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/patog/week20/OG/html/1378-3...

Go to the full text and then the images area and you get to see more detailed diagrams.