Solution based approach to holiday updates.

[NpOverspeed]

I am wondering if, as a community of owners, we can post some potential solutions to future holiday updates. V11 has clearly struck a nerve with many. My own opinion can be found pretty easy but that is besides the point. My idea-which may have already been suggested- is a voting system that could be run into through the Tesla website. Proposed updated functions or additions can be listed and prioritized through votes. Then throughout the year the specific layout proposals can also be voted on by the community so that the end product is as close to what is requested as possible. Maybe this is not practical because it is not my area of expertise so I am curious if there is a better way. I am also aware that Tesla does not necessarily monitor this forum. Just maybe there is a workable solution. Thanks in advance for your input.

 

[linux-works]

you confuse tesla with a company that CARES what its customers think.

 

[jjrandorin]

My personal opinion is, Tesla is following one of the famous sports sayings:

"If you listen to the fans, next year you will be sitting with the fans".

Translation: Tesla does not want feedback in the manner in which you are suggesting, at all, and would not listen to any such feedback. They dont have to look at what people "might" do, these are the most connected cars in the world. They likely have data on how often people manually do X or Y in the car, how much time is spent on swiping on Z, etc.

They have all the data they could possibly want from these connected cars uploading... constantly. They dont want to know what people "might" want. They look at what they are doing, then design around that, based on whatever vision they have (which may or may not match the vision of a vocal minority, which is what any online forum is.

If there is extreme outrage, "everywhere" they may or may not do something about it, if it continues. I would not expect Tesla to ever pay attention to any such feedback as you are describing, though.


TL ; DR --- they dont care about what people think they want, so any such website / action etc will not be anything they ever pay attention to.

 

[linux-works]

there's also ego involved, and even if one of us was a UI designer god, how would they know?

so many user complaints to sort thru. aint no one got time for that!

look, if they even went down this ui-destroying path, its clear they lost their way. nothing we can do about it, either, but stop taking updates. (even that wont really work long-term, right? if you take it in for any service, they are known to flash you to latest, like it or not! I have a minor thing I want done to my car, but no, I'm not risking it.)

 

[smogne41]

Honestly at this point I don't see much hope appealing to Tesla for anything. As long as they can sell every car they can make they don't care, and Elons ego is way to inflated to allow something like this.

There is good academic research going into driver interaction with touch screens in cars (spoiler alert, it is about as safe as texting while driving). And yes, Teslas are part of that research and score very badly as well. Eventually national safety bodies will probably have regulations that will come down hard on bad UI design with touch screens, but that will probably take a while.

 

[NpOverspeed]

Sounds good. Thanks for the replies.

 

[moa999]

You take a poll and you'll get thousands of different opinions.

Personally think there was a big UI ethos in this update - it's just we are all suffering from Change Syndrome and having to relearn things.

The clear ethos was
- Simplify the screen while driving - and only show functions that are absolutely critical for driving
- Have all settings chosen under settings - accessed via one or two touches.
I think what they've done is far more intuitive to a new user.

It was always weird that to turn WiFi on you went to a button on the main screen, to reset trip computer you used the cards, and to change the drive mode you went into settings. Now that's all consolidated.


I think many people's issues could be solved by
1. Having additional favourite icons (Profile, Tyres, Trip for example)
2. Allow more than 4 favourites (use extra space, or let you remove passenger temp control)

 

[EVRider-FL]

Every major UI change from Tesla has resulted in much negative feedback in the various forums, and that’s never going to change regardless of how much input Tesla takes from the owner community — some owners will be unhappy no matter what. At least for V11, Tesla is listening to feedback and has said they will tweak things to address some of the issues: Tesla's Elon Musk confirms V11 UI improvements after receiving owners' feedback

 

[Transformer]

I think what they've done is far more intuitive to a new user.

...

I think many people's issues could be solved by
1. Having additional favourite icons (Profile, Tyres, Trip for example)
2. Allow more than 4 favourites (use extra space, or let you remove passenger temp control)

V11 made several things more discoverable. E.g. the cards were nicely positioned but not discoverable. The sentry and dashcam icons were not obvious nor their states (off, on when you leave maybe except at home, recording, saving, and esp. the long-press to safely remove the USB drive).

Rather than asking people what they think they want, do usability-testing of each incremental change with various drivers in multiple situations. That's very informative. It'd reveal some people having trouble doing touch screen interactions while driving in traffic + weather, compounded for multi-step interactions. It'd allow testing design ideas like *maybe* temporarily using the volume control to adjust wiper speed.

It'd also reveal some people having trouble reading the smaller, fainter text in the 2020 holiday update. How did they go a year without fixing that (and the smaller map), and make the speedometer yet smaller???

I agree that more favorites would help, like defrosters. Those buttons should show status like the old defroster, seat heater, and dashcam buttons did -- no-touch interaction to get key info.

When the car starts adjusting the seat to a profile position, the UI should make it easier, not harder, to overdrive the auto-profile choice ("trash compactor").

If an update hides info, I'd add a setting to make that optional. That'd be a fair ways towards an optional UI update.