rlasry1
Member
Exactly.
Not the end of the world - still a joy to drive our cars.
But a lot of re-work to do here.
Anyone else dislike the new UI?
- Thread starter mlkmade
- Start date
Not the end of the world - still a joy to drive our cars.
But a lot of re-work to do here.
And I would add that they should be able to use telematics to determine how many people select the new UI and how many keep the old UI to inform them as to whether the changes were being adopted.
IMO there was nothing broken about the old Instrument Cluster so it did not need to be whole sale changed in this way, it needed minor tweak at best. This was change for the sake of change, it could indicate a new manager or designer to the team who has to "stamp their mark". It could also indicate a lack of style guidance and controls over the interface design. And it just feels like Tesla playing with the design in a live environment rather than doing any customer acceptance testing. We know they can do that sort of thing as evidenced by the FSD Beta, so they could easily have an early access program and feedback processes to target these UI changes and determine what is going to make people happy or not.
Lots of complaints about the smaller map. But I don't use the map. Google Maps remains WAY better. And Google Maps turn-by-turn vocalizations interact nicely with podcasts or audiobooks or whatever I'm playing from my iPhone. I do like all the other things I can do with that side space like the energy display and options screens and such. If we had a much better map function, maybe I'd care that it's smaller.
That's a cool idea, heated seats icon only displays when temp goes below a certain threshold. You are right, don't need them in Summer, but super convenient in Winter.
I agree. The time, temperature, and remaining battery shown on the dash is almost un-readable. Some idiotic programmer with time on his hands trying to justify his existence. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
The new user interface is definitely a disaster.
One of the most used feature is “call” option( to call someone/phone directory “.
Voice interface often gets names wrong.
It would be really nice to have the call option available on the main screen .
One of the most used feature is “call” option( to call someone/phone directory “.
Voice interface often gets names wrong.
It would be really nice to have the call option available on the main screen .
I despise the term I"f it ain't broke, don't fix it!". Thats how innovation stays static. Tesla is not a I"f it ain't broke, don't fix it!" company.
That's a good point. Tesla knows exactly who has purchased FSD and who hasn't, it's linked to the car. So just design the UI for the FSD and without the FSD, seems pretty easy and obvious. Those without FSD get a UI that is designed for human driving and those with FSD get a UI designed for non-human driving.
In some ways Tesla is incredible, they have been well known for their easy to use UI, but in other ways they seem to be incredibly dumb and don't step outside the box to take advantage of all their ecosystem can provide.
As I see it the problem with UI is that it is serving multiple masters. Its designers have forgotten that its primary usage is an automobile interface. Its not a just a touchscreen laptop! Its primary function must be to communicate to the driver. The 3d rendering is a huge distraction from actually driving and forces you to take your eyes off the road ! Mirror mounted lane departure warning lights are far superior to the rendering for that purpose.
The rendering itself serves no practical purpose for the driver except when parking (distance to bumper is great) or to unlock the trunk or frunk! While driving it is a dangerous distraction, and very deceiving as to where other cars actually are because the forced perspective is off. Making this rendering even bigger and diminishing important information like a bigger map was a mistake. While we are talking about the map, how about a zoom in function where the street names get bigger (not staying so small that you can't read them while driving, and have street names always visible!
The new layout Speed display position is better in this corner as it is closer to your forward cone of vision, but the font is smaller deafiting this advantage. The fact is all the fonts and buttons are too small for when you are in motion, fine for a laptop, not good for an automobile driver interface where you should only be glancing at it. Take the clock as an example. Grey font on a moving background! If this was a physical clock it would be 3/4" wide by 3/16" tall, nobody sells clocks that small, a wrist watch is bigger! How about the battery range, grey font on a white background, yet the cars internal temp is shown at 5x that size ... which is more important?
Now for the designers whom I hope will read this. Imagine an older car and all the controls are laid out on a real dashboard. Imagine that 90% of those controls are moved into various boxes that must be opened while your driving at 70mph, the latches for the boxes are very finicky requiring an exact touch because you can't feel the latch, you must take your eyes of the road and look cause, all the other boxes are inside another box and you never really know where the box you need is located. Now consider this question; are the boxes a good idea or a really bad one from the start? Please start thinking of this screen as an automobile interface not a laptop. When designing for it don't use your dual monitor 28" screens, simply mount a 16" screen kitty corner from your desk, wear some dark sunglasses, open your curtains create some glare. Understand that peoples lives are dependent on your design, above all legibility is key, nothing should be small while that car is in motion.
The rendering itself serves no practical purpose for the driver except when parking (distance to bumper is great) or to unlock the trunk or frunk! While driving it is a dangerous distraction, and very deceiving as to where other cars actually are because the forced perspective is off. Making this rendering even bigger and diminishing important information like a bigger map was a mistake. While we are talking about the map, how about a zoom in function where the street names get bigger (not staying so small that you can't read them while driving, and have street names always visible!
The new layout Speed display position is better in this corner as it is closer to your forward cone of vision, but the font is smaller deafiting this advantage. The fact is all the fonts and buttons are too small for when you are in motion, fine for a laptop, not good for an automobile driver interface where you should only be glancing at it. Take the clock as an example. Grey font on a moving background! If this was a physical clock it would be 3/4" wide by 3/16" tall, nobody sells clocks that small, a wrist watch is bigger! How about the battery range, grey font on a white background, yet the cars internal temp is shown at 5x that size ... which is more important?
Now for the designers whom I hope will read this. Imagine an older car and all the controls are laid out on a real dashboard. Imagine that 90% of those controls are moved into various boxes that must be opened while your driving at 70mph, the latches for the boxes are very finicky requiring an exact touch because you can't feel the latch, you must take your eyes of the road and look cause, all the other boxes are inside another box and you never really know where the box you need is located. Now consider this question; are the boxes a good idea or a really bad one from the start? Please start thinking of this screen as an automobile interface not a laptop. When designing for it don't use your dual monitor 28" screens, simply mount a 16" screen kitty corner from your desk, wear some dark sunglasses, open your curtains create some glare. Understand that peoples lives are dependent on your design, above all legibility is key, nothing should be small while that car is in motion.
That's not true at all. Just looking at one element of the UI, the Instrument Cluster, tell me one thing on that part of the screen that was no good. Tell me the reason why the whole Instrument Cluster display needed to be redesigned and tell me why this new design is better than the old design. Now I'll tell you it wasn't broke, so it didn't need to be fixed. What I will also say is you could add the % battery remaining and the estimated range to the display (something like 50% = 175mi) and that is a change that adds value to a lot of people without detracting from what was already there. In fact, they took something that was not broke and they broke it. Chill label was at the top, 100% of the time easily visible to remind you that you are in chill mode, but now it is at the bottom, and gets hidden if you open the trip meter card. The hold icon was at the top, as were all the system symbols (headlights, high beams, etc), now that is broke as it is down the edge of the screen and blocked by the steering wheel and especially by my hands and arms in the 10-3 position.
Now I'll innovate for you. At the moment we have information across the top of the screen. In 1 weeks usage of the car there are a couple icons in that top row, for instance the Dash Cam icon, that I use. Maybe there are many ways to activate the dash cam, but I just press that icon. But it is really small and it is really close to the other icons, so 2 times out of 3 I press the wrong icon. Yet there is heaps of dead space along that icon line, so why not spread them out a bit more and instantly make them easier to use? That's something that is broke and could be fixed but they didn't change it at all.
Here's another one for you. There are icons along the bottom of the screen. People complain because some of the useful driver features are not easy to access, so in this new UI Tesla has placed some of those icons there. Most of those icons are driver focussed, but because the icons are along the bottom of the screen they get further away from the driver to reach (hopefully the most use are closer and the least used are further away). Now in the new UI they have taken all the indicator symbols and run them down the drivers side edge of the screen (moving them from along the top of the Instrument Cluster). So what they could have done instead is to move the driver focussed icons down the drivers side edge of the screen. Now all the driver control icons are easy to reach and right there. If the visualisation can be changed from 1/3 the screen to 1/2 the screen, then a very thin vertical column of icons would take up almost no space on this huge screen.
There you go, didn't fix what wasn't broke and innovated the UI to make it more useful to the majority of owners. Didn't have to redesign the whole screen, just tweaked a few areas where it didn't work quite as well as it could have. And to be really innovative they could have easily provided a menu option to switch UI's, then to really innovate they could use their telematics to see how many people change to the new UI and how many people stayed with the new UI. And to be incredibly innovative they could incorporate a survey to find out why people didn't stay with the new UI. So many ways to innovate without breaking something that was not broken.
linux-works
Active Member
what gets me is that it would be highly unusual for ONE person to have this kind of design control. I would expect it to have passed over the desks of multiple people. perhaps even needing a majority vote. people in this field love to argue for minutia - they live for that
to be fair, most of us have not seen the 'big picture' and what a fully populated set of screen regions is ultimately going to look like. its possible they have more clue than we give them credit for. but the intermediate steps we are seeing is not very inspiring. and again, we are ok being beta testers, but its not fair to treat us like alpha testers.
linux-works
Active Member
speaking of UI's and having them change out from under you, there's a reason that this bit of test gear (bought used a few years ago) is still one of my favorites, even if I have a choice of remote SCPI controlled units.
that power supply is, I think, older than I am. I'm nearly 60 and truth be told, that PSU is doing better for its years than I am, lol.
you know, the features of that unit have not changed a bit in all those years. and none of its users have needed any UI changes. the thing does what it was well-thought out to do. spend lots of time up front on what the UI is supposed to do, then try try try things - then settle and be done.
ui's dont really have to be unstable and changing. only those who never had the chance to use gorgeous gear like this Power Designs brand - those are the ones who need schooling on what good UIs are really about.
for well over 50 years, users of this device could rely on muscle memory and when a voltage or current needs to be changed, you could do it with confidence and not worry about 'changes' that you didn't authorize.
(and yes, that's metal concentric click rings with the feel that you'll never get from pressing greasy fingers on slippery glass.)
that power supply is, I think, older than I am. I'm nearly 60 and truth be told, that PSU is doing better for its years than I am, lol.
you know, the features of that unit have not changed a bit in all those years. and none of its users have needed any UI changes. the thing does what it was well-thought out to do. spend lots of time up front on what the UI is supposed to do, then try try try things - then settle and be done.
ui's dont really have to be unstable and changing. only those who never had the chance to use gorgeous gear like this Power Designs brand - those are the ones who need schooling on what good UIs are really about.
for well over 50 years, users of this device could rely on muscle memory and when a voltage or current needs to be changed, you could do it with confidence and not worry about 'changes' that you didn't authorize.
(and yes, that's metal concentric click rings with the feel that you'll never get from pressing greasy fingers on slippery glass.)
Yes, I think the white space will be filled up with additional information (e.g., crossing streets, driveways, etc.) even without FSD enabled. Maybe just not ready for the Christmas release. Elon seems to assume that everyone has perfect 20/20 vision at all distances. I would rather have some font size control than more games. Thanks.
Absolutely nothing will ever fill in the blank spaces
Can you imagine a complete row of "icons" from top to bottom ? How much time would your brain need to scan that ? Worse than that, it's actually TWO rows full of icons that you would have to scan (on a TM3) left and right "empty columns"
It's just the shittiest UI ever made, rushed in a xmas evening because the boss wanted his farting gadgets pushed "in prod" before taking his private jet to Larry Elison's island in Hawai (that's where he went while we "upgraded" our cars)
Can you imagine a complete row of "icons" from top to bottom ? How much time would your brain need to scan that ?
Worse than that, it's actually TWO rows full of icons that you would have to scan (on a TM3) left and right "empty columns"It's just the shittiest UI ever made, rushed in a xmas evening because the boss wanted his farting gadgets pushed "in prod" before taking his private jet to Larry Elison's island in Hawai (that's where he went while we "upgraded" our cars)
Last edited:
Very very true. The single most important function of a car is to go forward or backwards and for the driver to very clearly and unambiguously know which way the car is about to move. The importance of this is demonstrated by the fact that the gear lever is not a button on the screen. However, since the gear lever gives no tactile indication of which gear the car is in (ie by position) the screen is the only indication of whether the car will move forward or back. Therefore, the UI must provide clear feedback on which gear is selected. There must be “muscle memory” for this indication. In the new UI you cannot even see the small, greyed-out gear indicators without moving your head to look.
nbergma
Member
Absolutely! This is exactly what my wife says, too. She wants to know why so much room needs to be taken up displaying object on and along the roadway that we can already clearly see looking out the windshield, and yet useful information like the map and navigation information is now smaller and harder to see. We think this was a bad design.
And the gear selection, speedo, speed limit etc icons are jammed together in one row. No white space there!
To date, I've always looked forward to updates. It's like getting a new car every so often! That said...
I HATE this update. The UI is HORRIBLE!!! Some UI manager wanted to pee on his own hydrant, but really, it's horrible.
PLEASE allow an option to revert to the old format.
Clearly, I despise this update. Get it right.
I HATE this update. The UI is HORRIBLE!!! Some UI manager wanted to pee on his own hydrant, but really, it's horrible.
- The beautiful, large rearview camera is now smaller
- The beautiful, large map is now like a square (also smaller)
- The nice large speed indicator is now smaller and confusing
- The useless while driving car surroundings are now larger. So much wasted white space.
- if you're looking at the details of this while driving your eyes are not on the road
PLEASE allow an option to revert to the old format.
Clearly, I despise this update. Get it right.
MrWattson
Member
Only have a few miles on my update today but agree with nearly all the complaints written here. Hate the whitespace and want the larger map back, battery icon should be larger (and colors such as green, yellow, red). Could we get both percent and miles remaining displayed? Speed indicator display is harder to see due to location and changed font size. Etcetera, etcetera....
I am new to the Tesla experience but some of these things one would think would be vetted with simple usability testing.
