Display UI Issues

[sneakyright]

Hi everyone,

I am a Tesla newbie with UI experience and married to someone with 20+ yrs of UI engineer experience.
We just got our model 3 and have to say that I am a little surprised about the lack of driver usability in both the display and in the car overall.
I've only been driving this car for nearly 2 weeks and could barf out a few paragraphs already despite feeling pretty accustomed to the car.

Ii have a 2 quick questions to ask before potentially beating a dead horse beyond recognition...

#1 - is there a place to report feedback where it will actually get somewhere aside from trolling Elon's twitter which I'm not on and never will be?

#2 - is there a thread on here I missed where people are compiling this data constructively?

thanks much!

 

[puckpurnell]

Well Sneakyright, welcome aboard. We've all got one of the very best cars in the world. We've also all got myriad gripes and changes we'd like to see. The wipers are one of my horse beaters. One of them... Many people recommend sending a tweet to Elon. I don't have twitter so...I wait for everyone else to help me out. Do a search on the various gripes you've found and see what you come up with. Lastly, given the experience of you and your wife, I suggest you apply for engineering and/or design jobs at Tesla and make the changes from the inside. Good luck and, again, welcome aboard.

 

[glide]

Hi everyone,

I am a Tesla newbie with UI experience and married to someone with 20+ yrs of UI engineer experience.
We just got our model 3 and have to say that I am a little surprised about the lack of driver usability in both the display and in the car overall.
I've only been driving this car for nearly 2 weeks and could barf out a few paragraphs already despite feeling pretty accustomed to the car.

Ii have a 2 quick questions to ask before potentially beating a dead horse beyond recognition...

#1 - is there a place to report feedback where it will actually get somewhere aside from trolling Elon's twitter which I'm not on and never will be?

#2 - is there a thread on here I missed where people are compiling this data constructively?

thanks much!

#1 - nope.
#2 - there is no single thread. Certainly not a constructive one. You need to dig around.

 

[jjrandorin]

Hi everyone,

I am a Tesla newbie with UI experience and married to someone with 20+ yrs of UI engineer experience.
We just got our model 3 and have to say that I am a little surprised about the lack of driver usability in both the display and in the car overall.
I've only been driving this car for nearly 2 weeks and could barf out a few paragraphs already despite feeling pretty accustomed to the car.

Ii have a 2 quick questions to ask before potentially beating a dead horse beyond recognition...

#1 - is there a place to report feedback where it will actually get somewhere aside from trolling Elon's twitter which I'm not on and never will be?

#2 - is there a thread on here I missed where people are compiling this data constructively?

thanks much!

For number 1, unfortunately, no there isnt (and I am with you on the twitter thing. I have an account but only used it to follow the local fire departments during fire events).

For number 2, there are lots of threads "talking" (complaining) about various UI things in the software / firmware section: Software: Firmware Updates, Features, Tesla App

I wouldnt call it "compiling constructively", but there is lots of discussion there. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, it basically goes back to point #1 in that there isnt any place to send it. Its "likely" that tesla has interns trawling sites like this one looking for super hot button issues, but there is not any place to give feedback to tesla on this kind of thing.

They dont want it and dont even pretend to want it (they got rid of their press department recently so they dont even respond to the press now).

On the bright side, unlike almost every other vehicle, the UI is not set in stone and has changed a few times since I have had the car (2 years now). We get updates roughly every 4 weeks or less, with most being bug fixes or small additions, and a few being major UI changes that are almost always hated when they are first released, but eventually tolerated.

 

[UncertainTimes]

I hope your car came with the holiday update because if it you’re in for a UI treat

 

[Dolemite]

with UI experience and married to someone with 20+ yrs of UI engineer experience

I am sorry

 

[Gasaraki]

Hi everyone,

I am a Tesla newbie with UI experience and married to someone with 20+ yrs of UI engineer experience.
We just got our model 3 and have to say that I am a little surprised about the lack of driver usability in both the display and in the car overall.
I've only been driving this car for nearly 2 weeks and could barf out a few paragraphs already despite feeling pretty accustomed to the car.

Ii have a 2 quick questions to ask before potentially beating a dead horse beyond recognition...

#1 - is there a place to report feedback where it will actually get somewhere aside from trolling Elon's twitter which I'm not on and never will be?

#2 - is there a thread on here I missed where people are compiling this data constructively?

thanks much!

1- No
2- What are you trying to ask? What are you trying to do? Don't know what "lack of driver usability" means.

 

[sneakyright]

1- No
2- What are you trying to ask? What are you trying to do? Don't know what "lack of driver usability" means.

Thanks to all for the replies!

#1 - To me, the single display/single display orientation approach is super limiting and distracting. It is just too minimal and also busy to the point I think its dangerous in the sense of forcing all interaction to a place a bit below the dash and to farther the right from the road.
They should go back to a small driver dash display for the basics and not force it all into 1 spot that is not as easy to keep your eyes on the road despite the autopilot features that are there to protect you but yet meanwhile always force you to look at the screen and ask you what to do to the steering wheel to make sure you aren't sleeping (seems like 2 flavors of this now since the last update?).

#2 - The display UI should be editable like an Android phone for preference. Why should I have to reach across the car just to defrost something? Why do I have to drill into 2 menus just to modify my mirrors? I want to get in my car and go, not spend 5 minutes perfecting everything before I leave. If you are going to help determine my safety within a 1-minded tesla approach and your AI, you might as well let me take my destiny into my own hands a bit more.

#3 - I am big on my music and not always satisfied with what plays next....and for how far I now need to go reach skip a song (remote would be nice or maybe some steering wheel interaction that has been around for decades), I might as well sit in the passenger seat and do all the antics auto-pilot needs from there instead. In short the display is simply oriented for someone sitting in the passenger seat - makes me wonder if people in the UK have it better than in the US. I am happy to accept I haven't learned better tricks if anyone has suggestions.

#4 - Useless white space. I assume this has been beaten beyond death and possibly a bit into the afterlife - but why submerse a virtually useless cartoon and it surroundings into what seems like 30% of the display? I dont need the car to show me a truck is passing me or how big my car is in relation to everything else around me. Tesla wants me to watch the road no matter what mode I'm in, right? I dont need to watch myself in video game mode. Its not like I can always trust the display anyway as it tells me to make lane changes into cars at the moment despite the red warnings that I may hit something by confirming the lane change. This is just terrible UI 101 missing here.

These are all very simple asks stemming from subjects that all demand road safety at its best just for starters.

And all of this feedback is coming from someone who loves their 2007 FJ Cruiser that they still prefer to drive because all the tesla UI failures that make me feel less safe than driving an SUV with notorious blinds spots. I haven't even turned my wife loose on this yet as she has not driven the car as much as I have - so get ready for that, Elon.

 

[jjrandorin]

2. You dont have to reach across the car to defrost something. You can push the voice command button and say "turn on rear defroster" or "turn on front defroster" or "set temperature to XX degrees" or a number of other things that you would want to control (like wipers).

3. You use the thumbwheel to advance to the next song or rewind that song, while keeping your hands on the wheel.

4. yes that is beaten to death... its my opinion here that tesla is prepping for more changes for FSD but it is a bit jarring from what we were used to previously.

TL ; DR basically everything you likely want to do while driving can be done with voice commands. I never use voice commands in my wifes BMW (2019 X3 with every option, the car never understands me, and I am a native californian with no accent. My model 3 always understands everything I ask for, and I can ask for almost everything I want while keeping both hands on the wheel.

 

[nvx1977]

UXer here. to address your points;

1) the lack of a binnacle or heads-up display was quite the debate here back in the day before Model 3 was widely available. There was a lot of concern about the ergonomics of having to rely on looking right for everything. However after more and more people started to get their cars, most people were able to make the adjustment easily. I think this is one of those design decisions that was VERY deliberate and therefore unlikely to change if some subset of users are vocal about it. This is because many interactive components in Model 3 were designed with autonomous driving in mind. Before FSD is real, the ergonomics can be a pain. But once we pass the "singularity", all the issues go away.

2) I have always loved Android's launcher capabilities to customize things. Not sure if Tesla would ever give us that degree of freedom, but some day they might. We might not care if the car becomes fully self driving, and we'd rather just watch Netflix on the screen. Regarding your mirrors, that really should be a set-it-and-forget-it thing, so having it buried under 2 taps is not a big deal IMO. I have never changed my mirrors ever since I first set it up in 2018.

3) Left scroll wheel allows you to control music. up/down is volume, left/right is prev/next track. Press in to pause.

4) Agreed, the visualizations aren't so useful if you don't have FSD. However if you check out some of the FSD beta videos floating around out there, it makes total sense to devote more space to the lane visualizations than the navigation map, since the car is driving to the destination, not you. This is again an artifact of designing for a long-term use case that isn't realized yet. Musk did say he might give us the option to resize the visualization pane, esp if some people never intend to get FSD.

I have had a bunch of UI gripes in the past where I was able to submit feedback to Tesla via their website. They've since made it harder to get to that form, but it's still there. You need to log in to your account first, and then head over to their support pages, and then find the Contact Us button. Here's where you need to be if you can't find it:

Tesla SSO - Sign In

(again, you have to log in first to access it).

One of my UI gripes is that my homelink list is shown vertically, when my actual garage bays are oriented horizontally. It would be so much easier on the brain to have the homelink list be shown horizontally (customized so they map to the physical garage bays).

 

[TLLMRRJ]

You know the UI engineers are incompetent because of the way the various screen behave differently when opening and closing them, which is just so basic.

When you open the Radio window, it behaves very differently than the climate control, vehicle, and "other" screens when closing it. Whoever is responsible for that massive error in judgement needs to take themselves to HR immediately to have themselves fired.

 

[CactusOne]

I think you can still send a “bug report” via the voice recognition system. I haven’t tried it in a while, since Tesla has “fixed” most of my gripes over the years...

Try pushing the right scroll wheel and say “bug report”, along with a short message explaining your bug or grip. No guarantee, but I heard someone actually looks at those...and if enough people chime in, they will fix it.

 

[jjrandorin]

I think you can still send a “bug report” via the voice recognition system. I haven’t tried it in a while, since Tesla has “fixed” most of my gripes over the years...

Try pushing the right scroll wheel and say “bug report”, along with a short message explaining your bug or grip. No guarantee, but I heard someone actually looks at those...and if enough people chime in, they will fix it.

That (bug report) doesnt go anywhere. it simply puts a pointer in the cars log file for a service center or other tesla people to look at, if you take your car in for service.

 

[sneakyright]

Thanks to all for the helpful tips and feedback. I'm sure I am going to wander into a bunch of stuff that is old news to the vets. I didnt realize how long these cars have actually been around until recently and even more recently sitting in an 8 yr old model to see how much has changed.
One of the important elements of a successful design is not only the ease of use but something that gears to a mostly intuitive learning curve. I guess the difference here is we are entering into uncharted areas of the driving experience. To to me pushing left and right on those wheels wasnt natural for me...only just realized how to increased the following distance so maybe in a few weeks I would have tried the same on the left wheel out of curiosity. I didnt notice the indicators pointing left and right so thats totally on me, In the same sense when I first got a samsung tv i didnt realize you had to lean up or down on the volume and channel controls right away, so maybe I'm just getting crusty. As much as I've been in tech for over 25yrs and like to think I represent I'm in the group that should be in the know with a natural inclination to all things tech, I'm also not someone who grew up with an iPad in my hand which I may help to pave a more open mind as things change.

 

[sneakyright]

Somehow the site cached my post that i started yesterday and posted it and not what i ended up intending.. anyway......
At the end of the day I've been driving the same FJ cruiser for so long that I'm probably among the last people Tesla would want critique from. In my defense I have been fast forwarded into the 21st century in recent years by driving my wife's 2017 Maxima Platinum which I thought was a great car in all aspects. We might have gotten a second one if we didn't take a look to see if a less expensive Tesla model might be available. In that sense I guess I cannot come down too hard for since we bought the entry model but the fact remains that I still think the driving experience is way too distracting overall and I feel safer in my FJ.

 

[Murray C.]

How can we as owners make suggestions to Tesla for common sense changes such as (much) larger touchscreen fonts to show current range/percentage of charge, and for the clock? For my 2019 M3 it is not only a matter of convenience, but much more importantly SAFETY.

Twitter messages are apparently not effective. Are there any sites or venues that are more closely monitored by Tesla engineers/designers who are empowered/motivated to acknowledge and facilitate practical suggestions for improvements? If so, how do we reach them?

And Tesla, if you are reading this - and one would have to think you should be - we'd love to hear from you!

 

[jjrandorin]

How can we as owners make suggestions to Tesla for common sense changes such as (much) larger touchscreen fonts to show current range/percentage of charge, and for the clock? For my 2019 M3 it is not only a matter of convenience, but much more importantly SAFETY.

Twitter messages are apparently not effective. Are there any sites or venues that are more closely monitored by Tesla engineers/designers who are empowered/motivated to acknowledge and facilitate practical suggestions for improvements? If so, how do we reach them?

And Tesla, if you are reading this - and one would have to think you should be - we'd love to hear from you!

There is no chance someone from tesla would actually post on a thread about this (even though there is a decent chance that someone from tesla might actually read it.

There is no avenue other than social media to get these type of "suggestions" to tesla.

There was a wish list thread, that someone started:

What would you add to your Tesla M3/MY screen?

If you could talk to a Tesla software engineer, what would you recommend to add/remove to the system?

teslamotorsclub.com

You can post suggestions there if you want, but there is no direct avenue to provide feedback like that.

 

[Gasaraki]

Hi everyone,

I am a Tesla newbie with UI experience and married to someone with 20+ yrs of UI engineer experience.
We just got our model 3 and have to say that I am a little surprised about the lack of driver usability in both the display and in the car overall.
I've only been driving this car for nearly 2 weeks and could barf out a few paragraphs already despite feeling pretty accustomed to the car.

Ii have a 2 quick questions to ask before potentially beating a dead horse beyond recognition...

#1 - is there a place to report feedback where it will actually get somewhere aside from trolling Elon's twitter which I'm not on and never will be?

#2 - is there a thread on here I missed where people are compiling this data constructively?

thanks much!

Yes this forum love beating on dead horses...

Welcome!

1-No
2-No

Let the beating off begin!