natecox , 5 months ago

This layout makes sense if you have used an old school mp3 player or similar.

Volume is left and right because it’s an analog of the volume bar on the screen.

Up and down is previous and next because play was controlled by a list UI so you were moving a cursor up and down between songs.

It’s not how I personally would prefer it, but it’s not as outlandish as it seems.

Ghostalmedia OP , 5 months ago

That makes a lot of sense. I still hate it, but i understand the justification for it now.

kautau , 5 months ago

Probably also matches to a visible screen with track visibility, so up and down is literally moving between tracks

chuckleslord , 5 months ago

The up and down, in this case, also correspond with how the menus work on the HUD or Center control panel. Source, MINI owner since 2009.

AnarchistArtificer , 5 months ago

Thank you for making this make more sense.

Lucidlethargy , 5 months ago

I still feel like this is sillt... I've owned a lot of mp3 players and none of them worked this way. Was this a zune thing or something?

natecox , 5 months ago

Every mp3 player I owned in the 2000’s worked this way. Screen above, controls below, list UI for tracks, usually volume rocker or dial on top.

Sometimes the UI would be more complicated and would include a left/right button for navigating horizontal menus (like my all time favorite Zen Vision:M) but the basic playlist was still a vertical scrolling list UI.

uranibaba , 5 months ago

The designer of this layout look at the display, saw that the volume slider was going left/right and placed the buttons accordingly (probably what happened).

hownowbrowncow , 5 months ago

This and radio channels/tracks are presented in a list on modern displays. "Down" is the next item.

uranibaba , 5 months ago

That is what I imagined as well. Some QA or tester or whatnot probably found it annoying to click left/right when navigating the radio. It does make some sense.

niktemadur , 5 months ago

Yet one more item in an endless exhibit of how mankind is unable to standardize anything at all. Get TWO engineers together to agree on ONE standard plug and the assholes will come out with THREE separate plugs, completely non-compatible with each other, of course.

It's almost like a miracle that we got the world to agree on certain things like time and timezones, a system of coordinates, the metric system.
All of them received initial pushback, and some to this day. Noisy, noisy fucking humans.

Did you know that for a few decades, every town in the UK kept two different times on adjacent clocks? Back when their railway grid was expanding everywhere. Local time and London time.

DokPsy , 5 months ago

Funny enough, it's not the engineers that are doing it. Left to their own devices without ridiculous constraints like "someone else is doing it this way so we need you to do something that sets us apart" or "you can't look at what everyone else is doing", engineers will do it the laziest way they can..... By copying what others are doing and essentially making it standard.

zalgotext , 5 months ago

Yeah usually when engineers take extra effort to do something non-standard, it's at a specific request from a client or management

niktemadur , 5 months ago

Have you ever been to an oil and air filter warehouse?
Some are more common than others, but there are hundreds of different types, and some of them vary by a millimeter in diameter from the more common ones.

They couldn't design the inlet to fit a pre-existing filter already in circulation, no sir, instead of any sort of compatibility they felt compelled to make up their own fucking specification and parameters that varied by a tenth of a percentage point.

That can only be the work of engineers, and from the looks of that oil filter warehouse, or from the different types of electrical sockets, the contrary bastards are everywhere, they REFUSE to meaningfully communicate with each other, and will NOT listen to reason.

More recently, look at crypto. For every well-meaning and thoughtful endeavor like Bitcoin or Ethereum, there are ten thousand shitcoins. Many are just greedy con jobs, but many are also due to stubborn and petty, noisy squabbles over minutiae. Suddenly the whole damn space was a hive of useless noise and confusion.

DokPsy , 5 months ago

This tells me that you know very little about how in control of designs engineering teams are. 99/100 times it's not up to the engineers on what the specifications or limitations are for any given design.

Typically, sales says they'll have something that fits whatever crazy need no matter if a perfectly suitable design already exists if they consulted the engineers or shop, typically to get the sale. Engineering is then forced to adjust the design because nothing existing will fit.

Chekhovs_Gun , 5 months ago

timezones

I beg to differ on that one
https://youtu.be/J1kOkoma_hM?si=f7bpphN7fGRk587B

kamen , 5 months ago

Rotate the controls the whole car 90 degrees CCW.

ovec , 5 months ago

It's on the steering wheel. He can just steer and that solves the problem.

kamen , 5 months ago

Yep, steer perpetually to the left. Maybe play Beyonce in the background.

lipilee , 5 months ago

Hey, at least it's not a touch screen :)

andrew_bidlaw , 5 months ago

Nailed it. Even the worst interface with buttons is miles away from the best touchscreen interface. You are like driving, you aren't supposed to look at the screen and tap things on it to switch a song or whatever. You navigate a missile that weights at least two tones and can undo a crowd of pedestrians or break a wall in a building. You are in no position to focus on this tiny LED that some insane idiot mounted there. Yet, it's there.

kameecoding , 5 months ago

I have done some research into cars, some Skoda Octavias now have the issue of the infotainment just freezing on you, now thats where you control all climate and stuff imagine getting into the car you set the AC to strong and then that shit freezes and you are stuck with your AC on max freezing you up, well actually you don't have to imagine that's exactly what happened, lol

andrew_bidlaw , 5 months ago

Of all brends, in Skoda? I thought they are promoted as a reliable budget carmaker. That's idiotic.

cue in the end shot from The Shining, of a guy frozen to death, but behind the wheel

kameecoding , 5 months ago

They are part of VAG so kind of a meh brand imo, it's only good if you are in a country with lots of Skodas so you have access to cheap parts. I prefer Hyundai/Kia though I know they have a terrible reputation in the USA, they often top reliability in Europe.

betterdeadthanreddit , 5 months ago

A member in VAG is great and all but if your quality control isn't effective and you start slipping, pretty soon you'll really be in the shit.

realitista , 5 months ago

Fellow Mini owner. This is only one of the many questionable UI decisions made in my car. I literally had to get help to get it started the first time.

Ghostalmedia OP , 5 months ago

What model do you have? My 2015 Cooper S is just a foot on the break, and tap start. Like most newer cars.

realitista , 5 months ago

I've got a 2018 mini cooper SE hybrid. It has a little switch to turn on. The switch has its light on when the car is turned off and it's light off when the car is turned on. It also has a third state after you get out of the car where it's not really on or off but you can't charge it or drive it until you turn it completely on or off. And you can't turn it on if you don't have it in neutral. And it doesn't really tell you if the parking break is on except a little light on the center console which you never see, so the car may be on but you won't be able to drive it because the parking brake is on. Sometimes it wont let you unplug it until you lock it and unlock it again for some reason.

And don't even get me started on the CarPlay or the driver profiles or the park assist menu that overstays its welcome by about 3 minutes.

Ghostalmedia OP , 5 months ago

Yeah, that’s a little different than mine. Although it does do that double-tap to completely turn off the car. That’s pretty annoying. Other manufacturers just put a sensor on the driver’s door. If the ignition if off and the door is opened, the accessories turn off automatically.

FlyingSquid , 5 months ago

I rent a lot of cars 'cause I go on the road. When I drive a rental car, I don't know what's going on with it. A lot of times I drive for ten miles with the emergency brake on. That doesn't say a lot for me, but it really doesn't say a lot for the "emergency brake". It's really not an emergency brake, it's an emergency "make the car smell funny lever".

-- Mitch Hedberg

AA5B , 5 months ago

I recently had this conversation with my teens. Going through drivers Ed, they want you to use the emergency brake when parking, but odds are against them ever driving a manual where you’d need it. It’s unfortunate that such a potentially useful thing like the “make the car smell funny” lever is just a way to keep spending money on brakes over and over

brygphilomena , 5 months ago

Well, it is a parking brake and not an emergency brake. And while in an automatic you can use park and mostly rely on the parking pawl to keep the car from moving, on inclines it's not good for the transmissions.

cashews_best_nut , 5 months ago

This is so intensely annoying I would hack the shit out of the steering wheel to DIY a fix to this monstrosity. Or I'd just sell the damn car.

uis , 5 months ago

Did you read manual as result?

realitista , 5 months ago

Fuck no. I handled it like a man and trial and errored it for weeks. I am ashamed to say that I had to ask the dealer for assistance to drive it off the lot because I was blocking people and they were getting pissed.

chiliedogg , 5 months ago

I want to know why do many cars don't have a play/pause button on the wheel, but do have a source button.

I change my source from my phone exactly never. I want to pause the audio all the time.

FurtiveFugitive , 5 months ago

I've been wishing for play pause since audio books and podcasts came into the world. It's ridiculous that nobody has this button in 2024

Guntrigger , 5 months ago

My Jeep has it and it's from 2018.

do_not_pm_me , 5 months ago

My Hundyai has a programmable star button on the steering wheel that can be tied to media on/off.

fritobugger2017 , 5 months ago

Kia also.

Guntrigger , 5 months ago

Fully remappable steering wheel buttons is a great idea.

AA5B , 5 months ago

My Tesla has one, but I haven’t yet figured out what best to do with it. The current leading contender is wipers - auto wipers are not sufficient. Also I hesitate to rely on and get used to primary co trol in custom places

Hadriscus , 5 months ago

bro I swear whoever designs the interfaces in cars must be the CEO's nephew

FlyingSquid , 5 months ago

I change the source regularly between my phone and the radio, but I don't use any of the wheel buttons, so I'm not even sure if my car has a source button on it.

AA5B , 5 months ago

At least you have those ridges dividing the directions. My car has similar but oriented correctly and no ridges. All too often I skip to next when trying to increase volume. It’s really annoying

tigeruppercut , 5 months ago

My folks had a Volvo where the radio had 2 knobs and two buttons with arrows. One knob was volume, makes sense. The other knob and arrow buttons controlled the radio tuner and the thing to switch inputs from radio to cd to usb or whatever.

So on one hand you've got radio channels with about a hundred different options (90.1, 90.3, 90.5, etc), and on the other hand you've got maybe 5 different inputs. Guess which thing the knob controlled.

Nastybutler , 5 months ago

So you tell us what the knobs do, then ask us what the knobs do? Is that because you lied to us, or just want to make sure we're capable of remembering what we just read?

Gordon , 5 months ago

The knob and buttons are separate controls. One controlled the frequency on the radio, one controlled the inputs.

The question was: which one do you think the knob controlled, frequency or inputs?

Nastybutler , 5 months ago

Ah, gotcha. Naturally, the knob controlled the inputs, and the buttons were for the radio frequency. Sounds about right.

weiln12 , 5 months ago

My VW is this way and it’s infuriating. It drives me nuts that Down is Next, it’s so backwards.

Volume should be up/down, and track left/right.

I’m curious if the left/right would be language dependent? English is left to right, so Right would be Next. Would Hebrew and Arabic be the opposite since they’re right to left languages?

zipzoopaboop , 5 months ago

I have my now old VW because their design was so intuitive. Sad how much worse they've become in the past 10 years in design and quality

stoy , 5 months ago

I have only had one car, a 2021 Seat Leon, qnd the media controls are great, but spread out on the steering wheeel...

The volume control is located on the left side, it is a wheel, roll it up, volume goes up, roll it down, volume goes down, push the wheel, and the music is paused. Next/Previous buttons are located on the right side of the steering wheel, works great!

Now, if only it didn't have touch controls for everything outside the steering wheel...

youRFate , 5 months ago

Oof yes, my Kia ev6 too. Down is next. In my BMW up was next.

dan , 5 months ago

It drives me nuts that Down is Next, it’s so backwards.

How is that backwards? If you have music in a playlist in a media player app (or iPod or other MP3 player), the next song is underneath the one you're currently playing.

Gordon , 5 months ago

Which direction do you move your finger to access the next song on your phone when. Looking at a play list.

Your finger moves up then taps the one you want.

You could just as easily say that next should be up.

Both are wrong.

Next should be left, volume should be up / down.

1rre , 5 months ago

Down is next because it's a list of songs with the first song at the top and the last at the bottom.

Frankly it's the orientation that makes the most sense when you consider it given most people will be listening from a streaming service, but back when CDs were a thing the songs weren't considered a list but tracks numbered from 1 to n. The up button incremented the track number and so it made sense for up to be next.

Going even further to tapes, fast forward and rewind literally moved the tape left to right/right to left, and so it made sense for them to be right and left respectively, however now it makes less sense other than being what older people are used to

Gordon , 5 months ago

Having grown up in the tape era, the right button being next / fast forward just make sense.

I can see on a screen that you'd scroll down to get to the bottom of a playlist, but isn't your finger moving up?

This is the classic problem of inverted vertical controls or not?

Just avoid it altogether and make the back / skip button left / right respectively, and volume be up / down which just makes obvious sense.

1rre , 5 months ago

It's not scrolling though - using the arrow keys on a keyboard or d-pad on a controller you'd use up to go up and down to go down when navigating documents, menus etc. As far as I'm aware unlike when you're moving a viewport either by scrolling or in games there's no debate when it comes to moving a caret.

And as you said, "having grown up in the tape era". Just because it was logical for that application and so is logical to you doesn't mean it's still logical - people who grew up with record players could just as easily argue for two spinning knobs as you're moving a potentiometer to increase/decrease the volume, and spinning the record forward/back; having grown up in the CD era I had both of them being up/down or left/right as the buttons were either beneath or either side of the slot/hatch most of the time, same with tv remotes having both as up/down, and given there was no standard then I don't think either one "just makes sense"

Massahud , 5 months ago

Cars should come with ✖️⭕🟪🔺

Badeendje , 5 months ago

Made by people that use a volume slider and swipe for next... Such a horrible design in cars.

toiletobserver , 5 months ago

Wouldn't it be nice if an engineer had decision making power?

And009 , 5 months ago

You mean a designer right? Developers and engineers are the ones making these weird decisions

Cqrd , 5 months ago

Managers make weird decisions, engineers and developers just do what they're told when it comes to user facing experiences.

BiggestBulb , 5 months ago

As an engineer with a boss I really do not like and who makes moronic decisions ALL the time (that I then have to go along with), I agree

kautau , 5 months ago

Yeah engineer, developer, and designer all give their input. Designer proposal is likely the most user friendly, but, changes come with real tangible engineering / development costs. Manager says “ok stick with what we have, it’s cheaper.”

I’m a software engineer and UX designer.

Being in both those roles can sometimes be incredibly frustrating. Like “yes, this is the best solution for users. It helps dev by being more future proof, using more common patterns with more readily available open source software. It will take considerable dev time so we should do it now rather than later. If we don’t do this now it will just lead to more technical debt and a worse experience”

CTO: “sounds expensive, let’s not do it”

A year later, CTO: “why is this so convoluted? Shouldn’t we have worked on these changes earlier?”

suprised_pikachu.jpg

DemBoSain , 5 months ago

Engineer here. It's like that because that's the way it's always been. To change it would mean retooling silk-screen printing on the D-pad, and changing the wiring underneath. And they probably use this D-pad everywhere, so someone like me will have to talk to someone else like me, and right now I have phone shyness (can't just be an email, have to call a meeting). I'll also have to talk to a supplier and get them to change the wiring, and Procurement won't let me just change anything, because it gives suppliers a chance to requote a job, and they'll ask for more money. And then I'll have to talk to Production, because they'll have to retrain the workers, make sure someone doesn't stop the line because this new part doesn't look exactly like the old part. Oh, and Quality of course, need to make sure the inspectors don't start rejecting the new parts (just kidding, they never look at parts). Then there's Marketing. Since this is a customer-facing part, definitely need their input. Might have to change catalogs and brochures with new pictures.

No, they just got the good brand of gummy bears in the cafeteria, I'm going to go buy a bag of those, and then fill out these forms my new boss has been asking about. New boss, new forms, same old shit.

bobs_monkey , 5 months ago

Nothing personal, but that's bullshit on the company. Rotate the entire assembly 90° to the direction where the next track arrow points right, and counter rotate the ok gel button so that it's properly up and down. I can't imagine a silk screen template is that engrained. There might be some mounting screw difference, but adjust that in manufacturing from your parts suppliers. No reengineering of the harness necessary. This is just pure laziness.

DemBoSain , 5 months ago

that's the way it's always been!

stoy , 5 months ago

You have allready missed details, this would be worse than before.

For two reasons:

The customers who are used to this scheme will have to relearn the button placement, this will generate complaints, so the change will generate bad PR for the brand for years as people upgrade their car and have to relearn the controls.

If we went with your suggestion, the volume buttons would be 90 degrees off.

Fermion , 5 months ago

Remapping gpio pins doesn't require changing wiring, but it might require tracking a unique firmware revision.

Hamartiogonic , 5 months ago

Sounds like a proper project to me. No wonder companies keep the same stuff for way too long. If it’s not horribly broken and on fire, don’t fix it. Being slightly broken is apparently totally fine though.

lingh0e , 5 months ago

Same as my Toyota. It's a crazy indicator of how we expect things to be, but it's absolutely not a deal breaker.

empty04 , 5 months ago

My Tacoma, as well. Recently, I modded that to function correctly (up/down vol, R/L track). Easily the best $50 I've spent on the vehicle.

recapitated , 5 months ago

Does that screw up the controls for navigating the dashboard menu?

empty04 , 5 months ago

No, those controls are separate on the opposite side of the steering wheel

Ghostalmedia OP , 5 months ago

My wife just reminded me that she was asked to take a survey about this car after she bought it.

She complained about these buttons being oriented stupidly, and the survey taker mentioned that this has been a common complaint for years. Nevertheless, BMW / Mini has stayed the course. Users be damned.

JackiesFridge , 5 months ago

Begs the question - what exactly is the survey for, then?

iAvicenna , 5 months ago

probably crowd sourcing tests for more critical errors.

"did your car suddenly stop while going at 90 mph?"

JackiesFridge , 5 months ago

"When was the last time your car spontaneously combusted? Please rate the level of inconvenience."

root_beer , 5 months ago

“Mmmyes, quite, I was mildly peeved, rather. My Tom Ford blazer was singed on the lapel, it took the cleaners a week to remove the soot. A week! Also, I am just a tinge dead.”