You certainly wouldn’t be an outlier to think that a vehicle dash that’s cluttered with individual buttons looks so dated.
It’s been nine years since Apple introduced the first iPhone, which replaced the typical cellphone’s suite of buttons and replaced it with a capacitive touch screen and a home button.
And with as much time that we spend with our smartphones and tablets, it’s not surprising that consumer preferences for vehicle interfaces are closely mimicking that of the devices they carry in their pocket.
When the consulting firm IHS recently asked a wide range of consumers about in-vehicle interface possibilities that included individual buttons and knobs, multi-function controllers, touch screens, speech recognition, steering-wheel controls, and gesture recognition, users prefer touch screens first and speech second.
What is surprising is that the trend held true across all generations—even for those 70 years old or more.
“This is actually a situation where we’re seeing all ages adopt similar technology preferences,” said Mark Boyadjis, principal analyst at IHS Automotive, a consulting and market research firm.
Smartphone-like interfaces transcend generations
Boyadjis explains that there may be some variations by age, but “on the whole, the preferences toward speech recognition and touch screen are pretty broad, because no matter what generation you’re in you’re probably using a smartphone, and that familiarity becomes foreign wheh the car you get into doesn’t have a touch screen.”
The big issue here, Boyadjis says, is that OEMs can’t just check the box and say they have a touch screen and speech recognition. It’s the implementation that matters; and that easily transfers to end-user satisfaction, and ultimately to better customer loyalty and feedback.
That’s now being factored into customer perceptions of quality. Infotainment-system issues with voice controls and capacitive controls have recently pushed down certain automakers’ dependability and quality ratings, as measured by J.D. Power, for instance.
There are of course other interface options for replacing traditional buttons. One that Millennials (and younger respondents in general) responded more favorably about was the multi-function controller or touchpad—of the type used by systems such as BMW’s iDrive, Audi’s MMI, or Lexus’ Remote Touch.
Very few respondents in general knew about gesture recognition—making selections without actually touching the screen—but for that the preference rate was also much higher among Millennials.
As IHS found younger shoppers expected voice commands to affect a wider array of vehicles functions, including climate control, while older shoppers preferred voice controls most for calling, testing, and apps.
Read more of the original article in The Car Connection.
