I always wonder how it is that multi-billion dollar companies are incapable of hiring a top-notch UX team, and then following through on whatever that UX team recommends
I keep wondering about too. My current guess is that it's a combination of the following considerations:
- Cars design is focused on sales, not utility. Futuristic tech like touchscreens looks better in commercials, and makes people think they're buying high-tech. This is incidentally what IMO is plaguing software industry too - software products are designed with focus on pretty looks, not utility, because it's the initial experience that drives sales / subscriptions.
- A touchscreen interface simplifies car design. When you're design the car's interior, a touchscreen is just a box connected to the CAN bus. You can ignore the rest. Which means, all UI work can now be done completely in parallel by a separate team, or (more likely) subcontracted out. Also, altering that software to e.g. move a button elsewhere is much cheaper than moving a physical button.
The car industry is famous for prioritizing sales over _human lives_. "Sexy looking muscle cars" was an image that sold cars, unlike "unsafe deaththraps without seatbelts, collapsible steering wheel columns or airbags" (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader#Unsafe_at_Any_Spee...).
It's hardly surprising that they'd prioritize looks, regarding touch screens.
Eh well, synaptic controls like buttons and levers look better in my opinion anyways. I really don't know why there's so much initial hype. "Wow!! This onboard touchscreen allows me to do things I don't know how to access, and without any feedback whatsoever!" ??? The design is usually really bad too, in terms of aesthetics.
Our ten year old daughter also thought the touchscreen was cool in the new car. Until she was allowed to finally sit in the front seat while we were driving. She directly came to the conclusion that a touchscreen is stupid in a car :-) Well, at least on the bumpy roads in northern sweden...
Many bad votes in appstores seems to come from "ugly interface" or "looks old" and other similar things. Why is it that an app needs to follow the latest fashion trends? There was a time when we computer nerds looked down at fashion trends, thinking that they just repeat themselves anyway. Why is it that you have to have the latest fashion colors/UI to get more than two stars from some people? No matter if the program does what it needs to and does it fast and efficient.
>Why is it that an app needs to follow the latest fashion trends?
I think our fashion and design tastes directly reflect something important about the time we are living in. For example, minimal and clean is in right now. You could speculate many valid reasons for this. It's also dependent upon the person. The majority of people are attracted to the latest fashion for various reasons, but some people go somewhere else, and others don't care. Users are thinking, if you're not on trend maybe you're out of sync with the user's needs?
It's also about consistency, and appearing as though you've spent time on the app to give it a consistent design. It doesn't necessarily need to be on trend as long as the design says something about the functionality of the app. A retro game in the play store should have a retro-looking menu!! If your design looks significantly outdated without being consistent with the functionality of the app, I think it sends a subconscious signal that the functionality is also deprecated, or that the developer was too lazy to care about an aspect of development that usually gets a lot of attention.
Because UX people are often completely lost in the fog of their own "brilliance".
Just observe the new task switcher on the Android P preview.
Where before you hit a button (either on-screen on fixed depending on the OEM design) and got a list of previously used apps, now you have to swipe from the center to the edge at the bottom of the screen to flip though them.
Sometimes UX people design the UX to wow the people who (1) control their paycheck (2) review their work externally (3) appreciate UX theory/trends/etc. No different than a programmer using a needlessly complex algorithm to impress people on the internet.
I remember MS word putting in the 'word count' feature for the article authors who reviewed the software. That feature is a high priority item for the writers and people who need their work to fit in a certain constraint, but not for most users.
