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Why do the front heated seat controls deserve so much room on the UI?
- Thread starter SDKoala
- Start date
jgs
Active Member
Oops, my bad. Didn't see that this thread got dragged up from the depths of history
That's kind of the point. Why do these buttons need to take up valuable space when they aren't needed by every owner throughout the year? Obviously the controls need to be there somewhere, not where they need to be visible 100% of the time. Believe it or not, I've actually used the heated seats here in San Diego when it gets "cold" overnight. It looks like they remember the last setting and come back on after the car turns on again. That's even less that you have to interact with it.
If there is a federal regulation that stipulates the controls must always be visible (like how the hazard lights has to be a physical hardware button), I can live with that explanation. If it's just a UI design choice, Tesla could do better. The answer is obviously a customizable icon bar/launcher, which you would think would be easy to implement, but instead we get the design that a few people thinks works best.
What prompted me to write that initially in June in sunny San Diego was that the auto AC temp was not working well to regulate the car and requiring frequent adjusting of (at that time) the tiny up and down arrows. Wouldn't cool down fast enough after the cabin was 130F+, then wouldn't stop cooling shortly after getting to the target temp. I had my car checked out and there were no problems with the sensors and the behavior was deemed normal. Adjustments are a little better now after Version 9 introduced the slider, but hitting those tiny arrows all the time made me wish they were much bigger. They could easily be the size of the seat warmer controls and take their places.
pdamski
Member
SDKoala, are you using the Cabin Overheat Protection on your car? Wondering why it gets to 130 degrees?
jgs
Active Member
I daresay there's almost nothing that's needed by every owner throughout the year. That being the case, the only way to satisfy your demands would be to make the UI skinnable. People have been asking for this since 2014 at least, and I bet all the way back to 2012. Their inaction -- and even progress in the opposite direction -- makes it clear Tesla isn't going to do it, and I'm not even sure they're wrong, there's something to be said for a predictable UI, especially on a car.
Be that as it may, asking for a skinnable UI is reasonable, although you're probably never going to get it (sorry). The part of your position that I find amusing is the casual assertion that seat heaters are so unimportant their adjustment should be hidden away behind an extra UI step. To those of us in the snow belt, no, they aren't, and it shouldn't.
Putting the seat heater controls in a sub-menu is not the same as taking them away entirely. I see your argument as the UI works for you the way it is. My original point when I wrote this in the summer was that there are other controls used by more people in every climate year-round (HVAC controls) that they should take priority over something that is only used at certain times of year by a portion of the owner population. Sliding to adjust temp has made the HVAC interface a little better, but it could be even better if it had more real estate along the bottom icon bar to utilize.
FelixtheCat
Member
My experience has been that the seats heat up really fast - no pre-heating necessary!
I would also like to have a UI that can be changed as per driver preferences, but then I would also like to win the lottery. Jokes aside, I would prefer to have the defrost controls moved to the left side, because they are vital for safety in low visibility conditions. The seat heater controls can be moved more to the right side, because they are not vital to safety and more of a convenience feature for us in the North, and maybe not needed at all for folks in warmer climes.
For automation and efficency, cars need to be the same. As to why the big buttons, well Starman cruises in a high altitude neighborhood, and usually has his big gloves on, so that what Elon came up with was the smallest button that Starman could safely use (while dodging space junk and meteors).
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