Counterintuitive Controls
 

All cars have their little "opps". Engineers aren't perfect, And even when you don't agree with their choices, they can given you many good reasons why their choices were the right ones. But here are two things I just don't understand:

1) The delay setting for the windshield wipers. When the knob is turned in the UP direction (as seen from your thumb) the wiper interval should shorten...but in our car the interval is increased. Opps. For what its worth, I also think that the arm itself moves in the wrong direction (down position 1 for intermittent - down position 2 for low - down position 3 for rapid).

2) The door lock button. The upper half of the switch is lock and and the lower is unlock. This runs counter to any car I've ever seen. Opps.

What the heck were these guys thinking?

I'm gonna go ahead and say, dawg you nitpicking like no other.

I found neither of these things to be standout issues and, now that you point them out, I rather like them this way rather than the supposed normal way...

2005 Camry, same thing. Hardly an "oops"

-alex

I've been driving a WRX (which works the way you expect) and Sequoia (which works like the twins) for 10 years. Both make sense to me. It's only confusing because they are different. In the WRX, you turn the knob forward to increase the rate. In the Toyota you turn it forward to increase the delay.

It can be discombobulating. My daily driver, a Mazda, is just the opposite in both cases. I was surprised at the inconsistency.

Not nitpicking...not even complaining...just pointing it out.

I've been a licensed driver for 35 years and have owned 25 or more cars. I've rented at lease that number of vehicles during business travel. This is the first time I've encountered these configurations. They just seem like odd choices.

Like spelling "oops" with two p's and one o? OPPS ;)

On the automatic, when you have it in "manual" mode, if you use the stick, fwd is up, and back is down in gear. 100% backwards from every race car I've seen, where you pull back for upshift, and push forward for downshifts...using inertia, rather than working against it.

This is usually the difference between Japanese vehicles and the rest of the world. It all depends on the original designer and the engineers though.

Windshield wiper speed settings piss me off to no end. It's always backwards no matter how many times I try to remember.

Norton (and many other British) bikes have pedal shifters on the opposite side of most motorcycles on the road.

It's really not odd. It's just not what everyone else uses and is just a mental roadblock to get over.

-alex

I went to school for graphic design and interactive communication and learned a lot about how people perceive things, and how to communicate ideas intuitively and creatively without spelling out instructions. Human interface is something that's always intrigued me.

After getting past all the odd legacy quirks of cars in general, things like this (wiper delay) aren't necesarily a point of frustration or bad design, but they just feel odd when it's different from one car to another. Should they all be identical? Should they all be completely different? What makes it right or wrong? To me, considering the stalk in this particular situation, I would personally assume a roll forward motion to mean more of something, and a roll back motion to mean less of that same thing. Controlling the delay within this respect is a bit abstract. Most people would assume more wiper or less wiper because its intuitive, not trial and error until you learn. (Another example is a kitchen sink light switch next to the disposal switch, which should be on the left or right?

Some people think this is stupid, it's just a switch. But then again, how much thought went into the ergonomics of the 86's driver position? Same overall concept, just bigger scale.

Glad to see someone else who thinks about these things. I'm a UI/UX Engineer as my career, and I think about these things dozens of times a day in software and also in real-world objects. Really fascinating once you get into it.

The only thing that bothers me with many new cars is for a single wipe on the wiper. My 05 LGT, you pull back to do a single stroke. Now most cars have it going up and pulling back is for the washer.

I've driven cars from ones that started with a hand crank to the cars of today. The more different cars you've driven the less you let little changes bother you.

Wiper was obvious from the start.
It's marked right on the lever.
Long dashes at the top and progressively shorter down the part facing you.
Done.

because racecar :bonk:

That's where the question lies, does the ramped line mean increased frequency or increased delay? The fact that there's a question means it could be made more intuitive.

Consider a volume control... Roll it to the right to increase volume, and left to decrease it; this is largely considered the de-facto standard. What if a company used the same knob to increase attenuation? (This would decrease volume). They would be laughed at by everyone but audio engineers. Some manufacturers such as Yamaha, show volume display as signal attenuation in dB, so instead of 0-50, quieter volume is represented as a larger negative number (such as -65 dB) and full volume is 0. The knob works the standard way (right increases volume) but the numbers on the display appear to move backwards. Some people don't like it even though its functionally is normal.

You rented or leased?

:lol:

Um, that's still small - large. Nothing backwards about it.

Correct, I only stated it was unconventional to an average user as "the numbers on the display appear to move backwards" (until you realize it's showing negative values). I've heard it personally- Why do the numbers go down when I turn up the volume? or- Why is the volume a negative number, why not 0-100? You see what I'm getting at... You and I understand it perfectly fine, but some perceive it as strange because it's a little unconventional to them.

After 8 years, today I learned the explanation of my Yamaha receivers audio control.

:word:

and I can never get the intermittent wiper speed setting to the way I like.

Forget about it! Get over it! We KNOW you can adjust. Just a little effort every day will lead to success.

Yes, but not entirely Japanese. Actually it depends upon the vehicle. See my earlier post, #6. (re Mazda)

They make an Automatic version of the twins??

Yes.

I instantly adjust to any vehicle I'm in because I've been in so many... Doesn't bother me in the slightest, especially having driven lots of Subaru's and Toyotas.

I have never been in a car where unlock is forward, that sounds rather un-intuitive if you ask me... and I've driven Fords, Nissans, BMW's and Toyotas...