Renault's driver UX is a disaster waiting to happen - <AUTHOR> https://grumpy.website/post/0S6F8ozn5 <comment><USER4> Yeah, I've rented latest-model Renault and Peugeot cars in Europe and I cannot believe this stuff. It's probably same in new North American vehicles, but I haven't driven those.

This Peugeot 308 was trying to kill me with its "lane assist" in a construction zone, forcefully steering the car towards the concrete barrier because the painted lines on the road were tapering towards the concrete barrier (due to the construction). I finally found out how to turn that off _after_ nearly being killed.

Make my car less like a desktop computer, please.

My favorite is _waiting for the car to boot up_ so I can turn on the air conditioning in the sweltering heat :)

There's also the joy of fumbling through terribly-designed touch screen menus so you can turn off the radio that for some reason auto-tuned to some nearby station. Since my FM transmitter wasn't broadcasting audio I guess the car just decides it needs to get something pumping through the speakers ASAP.

The other hilarious thing is the cruise control pretty much slamming on the brakes because someone merged into my lane 300m+ ahead (not even slightly at risk of driving into them because they are about the same speed as me). I guess the system that detects an obstruction ahead cannot tell that it's moving at the same speed as me. Not surprising, but regardless, can I please be the driver of the vehicle?

Oh yeah and how about those software-driven dash gauges that feel like they have a full second of latency? The ability to customize the UI skin is something I want for WinAmp, not my car's tachometer and speedometer.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure how much the UI is indeed at play here, rather than the User's state. The keyword here is 'rental'. This seems to just amplify grumpiness.

Picking a rented car, I normally don't spend much effort trying to figure out all features. Just basics - adjust the seat, the mirrors, reset the trip, rarely link up the phone. Touch-n-go.

It always gets irritating later, as I would try to figure some needed feature while already on the go. Climate, radio, what's that beeping, which side is the fuel port (while already pulling to the pump), the curiously long-lasting parfum on the seat-belt from the previous renter at times triggering unexpected memories...

I guess, it's just a mild form of self-inflicted road rage. RTFM would be an easy answer, but we all know how that works out.

<comment><USER6> That reinforces the article's point. Having a car as a rental allows you to see its UI foibles without the blinders that inevitably come down when people are forced to adapt to some problem over a long period of time. And like the OP says, the UI of most modern cars is _horrendously bad_. For example, my personal car is a 2019 Subaru Legacy. I rather like it. But there's no way to make it start with the stereo off. If the car is on, the stereo is on. The only way to turn the audio off is to twist the volume knob all the way down to zero before you turn off the car.

When I first had the car, I found this to be totally ridiculous. Whoever heard of a car that automatically turns on the radio when it starts? But, after having had the car for a month, the problem is already fading, as I've developed a habit of turning the volume down before I turn off the car. At this rate, six months from now, like you, I'll be _defending_ this anti- feature. (Hey, you're going to turn the radio on anyway when you drive, so why not have the car do it for you on startup?)

I agree that the key word is rental, but my conclusion is exactly the opposite of yours. The fact that this is an unfamiliar rental is what is allowing the OP to see the issues with the car's UX clearly. If the car were his daily driver, he'd have adapted to it, and he wouldn't notice himself getting distracted.

[1]: [https://www.subaruxvforum.com/forum/interior-audio- hvac/1460...](https://www.subaruxvforum.com/forum/interior-audio- hvac/146089-turning-radio-off-so-will-stay-off.html)

<comment><USER7> Same "feature" with the radio in my Peugeot. How can anyone design something like that?

<comment><USER8> > But there's no way to make it start with the stereo off. If the car is on, > the stereo is on. The only way to turn the audio off is to twist the volume > knob all the way down to zero before you turn off the car.

I have a 2016 Hyundai Tucson with a similar, but slightly different feature.

Turning the volume all the way down before switching off the engine does not effect the startup volume. When the engine starts, the radio comes back on at a preset, but reasonable, volume.

However, if I turn the entire screen off, by pushing the volume knob in until it clicks, before stopping the engine, then on start-up the radio will be off, but so will the entire screen, which also controls navigation, bluetooth connectivity and the reversing camera.

My first action after starting my car is 90% of the time to turn the volume down on the radio.

However, I must say that's really the only niggle I have with the Tucson. Everything else I'm pretty pleased with. While it does have a touch screen, I hardly use it, as everything can be controlled with tactile knobs and buttons. The touchscreen is used most when stationary and inputting a new destination address for navigation.

<comment><USER6> _However, if I turn the entire screen off, by pushing the volume knob in until it clicks, before stopping the engine, then on start-up the radio will be off, but so will the entire screen, which also controls navigation, bluetooth connectivity and the reversing camera._

My Subaru has the same behavior, minus the backup camera remaining off. In reverse, the screen turns on and displays the image from the backup camera. It turns off again once you switch into drive. It's certainly _a solution_ to the problem I described, but it's obviously not ideal for all the reasons you've enumerated. Turning off Bluetooth, navigation, and (in my case) Android Auto is certainly a drastic way of dealing with this radio behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No recent car UX I've seen has been worse than the Hyundai Ioniq. The button to toggle reverse is right next to the cup holder / center storage, and placed & designed such that it's easy to accidentally hit it as you put your drink down[1].

I took a sip of my drink while waiting on a red light. When it turned green I unexpectedly _backwards_ and just narrowly avoided crashing into the car behind me by slamming the brakes. Turns out I'd switched it from "Drive" to "Reverse" accidentally.

Toggling that button requires about the same amount of force you'd expect from a button that turns on the radio in any other car.

1\. [http://www.cleanmpg.com/community/index.php?media/31669/full...](http://www.cleanmpg.com/community/index.php?media/31669/full&d=1488215988)

<comment><USER10> Having a look at the photo, the compartment in question was probably intended to house an ashtray (where it may make perfectly sense), but is now a nondescript storage space. (The actual cup holders are behind it, reasonably away from vital controls.) It's probably more at about repurposing this space appropriately – and they really should have closed the compartment rather than having it used as a spare cup holder. If true, it's more about bad second thoughts (what are we doing with this in markets where smoking is practically banned?) than about bad design. Probably marketing is to be blamed and not the design department.

<comment><USER9> What they intended to use it for isn't relevant. It's still dangerously bad design. Steering, breaking, accelerating and shifting gears in a car should require deliberate and unambiguous action from the driver.

Some of the UX for these differs in ICE vehicles, but I don't know of a single example in an ICE vehicle where just e.g. dropping your phone on the center console could shift into reverse.

This is the case in the Hyundai Ioniq, and seems to be a trend as EV designers dangerously reinvent standardized control surfaces to optimize for some combination of trendy design and cost cutting.

In my case I was fumbling around the center console for the cup holder while keeping my eyes on the road. In no sane car UX should doing that unintentionally shift the car into reverse.

In pretty much any other car doing the same and accidentally bumping into some button between the seats will at worst turn on the seat heating, or screw with the radio.

<comment><USER10> I do not contest that this is a highly dangerous arrangement. However, I do think that the original design was safe and that there was no open space at all nearby. If I were right, this is actually a dangerous situation created by UX in the sense UX is more related to marketing than the more traditional concepts of human factors and usability had been. "What may we do with this space in those markets? Surely you want some convenient space in the central console to drop your things! Why didn't they think of this in the first place?" (A human factors expert, on the other hand, would have told you that there had to be at least some sort of self-closing lid, just like car ashtrays used to have them for decades.)

<comment><USER9> It's categorically dangerous to have a easily pressed button shift gears in the car. I don't see how it's relevant that some designer can say "don't put something that can be used as a cupholder next to it".

The design creates a hazard that's categorically avoided in other vehicles, without any benefit other than saving a few dollars for the manufacturer. I can't imagine what else they're gaining over having a traditional gear stick there, it would take up the same amount of space.

<comment><USER10> I don't think that the buttons are for cost saving, rather, buttons are thought to be modern (even, if they are not, think of the starter buttons found in recent cars as well as in early ones) and levers and gears are not. (UX again, probably aiming at a fly-by-wire experience.)

P.S.: The entire central console arrangement is always a bit questionable in cars with a manual gear shift, even in the traditional layout. If a passenger wants to access some in the console, s/he inadvertently interferes with the driver's action. Certainly not a good thing… – At some point, you need to know, what you may do and what not in order to avoid dangerous situations, and there will be probably always off-limits zones by convention. But, of course, you should do everything possible in your design to avoid hazardous situations and mishandling, and to communicate usage as clearly as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Touch screens in cars should be banned. The interaction affordances are abysmal compared to physical controls, and tactile feedback is obviously non- existent. Not to mention that as the author mentions, many UI targets are too small to touch accurately without diverting a significant amount of your attention from driving.

<comment> a-wu I disagree. Touch screens without accompanying physical controls, maybe, but I don't think touch screens should be banned. I'm a quadriplegic and drive a heavily modified van. I accept that I belong to an extremely small demographic but without a touch screen I wouldn't be able to control any secondary functions. I think the way my Chrysler Pacifica does it is nice- there's an 8" touch screen but also physical controls for the HVAC and media.

<comment><USER12> How does driving as a quadriplegic work? What are tools and modifications that make it possible?

<comment><USER13> I am assuming you mean _paraplegic_? Don't know of many quadriplegic people who can (or would be allowed) to drive, but I know a couple of paraplegic people who do.

I was surprised at how little (and quick) the modifications were to a standard car to make them accessible. Really only the mounting of a grip knob on the wheel, and a side handle for the throttle/brake. There were other mods such as pull down strap handles for the boot lid etc., but by and large the biggest mods were those two in the cockpit.

<comment><USER14> > I'm a quadriplegic and drive a heavily modified van

> I am assuming you mean paraplegic?

This is the most contrary Hacker News I've seen yet.

Do you honestly think it's likely that someone is mistaken about whether they're paraplegic or quadriplegic?

<comment><USER15> A more charitable interpretation would be that parent is replying to grandparent alone, having found the comment on 'new', and is unaware of the great-grandparent comment that prompted it.

<comment><USER16> The "comments" page (not "new"; that's articles) has no reply buttons, presumably because replying without context is anti-conversation. I don't think it's charitable to assume other commenters would do that.

<comment><USER15> So there isn't! I occasionally look at that page, but have never gone so far as to actually try to respond to anybody that way, so I never noticed the lack of Reply button.

This is a thread about people being dumb, I suppose, so I am proud to have played my part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Renault Megane owner here (the small Talisman), i want to address some of the criticism in this thread and the article.

> The steering wheel contains two dozen buttons

The buttons on the wheel are pretty well designed and usable. The left side is all about cruise control, one button for each action: faster, slower, ON, OFF. That's it, look at the picture to check it. All these buttons are close to your hand, have great feedback, and very simple to use. It's really nice to have them here. Right side is about phone handling and the (crappy) "Siri" or the car, I only use the button to answer the phone. Behind the wheel is the radio control, which is actually standard for a Renault car.

> The cruise control buttons being next to the handbrake button reminded me of > the worst car I drove

The button in the middle of the car is only to choose between "Cruise control" or "speed limited". People rarely change it and I end up mainly using it after I moved it while cleaning the car. It's okay to place it here.

> Touch screens in cars should be banned.

I have to agree the UI on this car entertainment system is terrible and slow. Some controls such as the light power on the dashboard requires 3-4 presses, which can be difficult while driving. It's a shame they never addressed this problem, this UI can receive OTA updates.

All in all, this is a really nice driving experience. The main feature are available on buttons and really fast to reach. I've droven a lot of rental cars, and I remembered fumbling several minutes in the menus of a GM to change the steering wheel settings, which is WAY simpler on a Renault.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Behind the wheel is the radio control, which is actually standard for a > Renault car.

I've yet to find radio control on the steering wheel. The inly controls behind yhe wheel are colume up/down and mode (IIRC), whatever mode means.

No way to cycle through radio stations or change tracks.

<comment><USER18> > I've yet to find radio control on the steering wheel. The inly controls > behind yhe wheel are colume up/down and mode (IIRC), whatever mode means.

On some cars there's some sort of wheel in that stalk (sometimes embedded in the stalk itself so can be easy to miss as it's hidden behind the steering wheel).

Also if the volume up / down is on the radio stalk, maybe the track up / down and stations change is the arrow buttons on the handsfree controls? Or does that always just scroll through the contacts list?

I assume the mode is to switch between inputs e.g. radio / bluetooth / USB / ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> No one is mentioning the most negative aspect of touch screens: Constancy. Arguably more important than feedback. When you are used a physical button, you can bet with quantum mechanical accuracy that the gluons are holding the quarks pretty well together and that button ain't going anywhere. A touch screen is configurable and hence I cannot be 100% sure that button is still there.

You can _count_ on it. Just like you can _count_ on typing with a keyboard vs speaking to Siri. Yes, a particular job can be done both ways, but the former guarantees user interaction and feedback.

Also, no one mentions that touch screens are introduced in cars as a cost- saving measure. Automotive grade buttons and encoders are expensive - <USER2> ALPS catalog. That's the main reason behind this fog of UI/UX bullshit that people are debating about.

Fuck the modern life. As I age, I am getting more and more grumpy. Can someone explain why electric cars _have_ to look like a fucking spaceship!? Why can't they just be regular cars with electric drivetrain? Why do men's stuff have to look like it came out of tron and women's design look like a decorative art piece in Cinderalla's castle? Design is a hot mess. I want to see a world with a design dictator - someone like Dieter Rams who approves every design. Joking.

<comment><USER20> > Fuck the modern life. As I age, I am getting more and more grumpy. Can > someone explain why electric cars have to look like a fucking spaceship!? > Why can't they just be regular cars with electric drivetrain?

That's probably the result of trying to appeal to early adopters. For all the progress that's been made in shifting how people view electric cars, making them appear a bit more futuristic through design is apparently still an advantage for the marketers. We're still early enough in the transition that you can feel like you're buying "the future" today. That said, the shift towards using touchscreens for everything is really an industry-wide trend, and not specific to electric cars. They appear futuristic (which appeals to consumers), and they're cheaper than physical buttons.

If it makes you feel any better, time will probably erase that first consideration. It's the Tomorrowland problem[0]; eventually the future catches up to your design, and what once appeared futuristic becomes dated. It's the second one that's a sticking point for a future shift back towards physical buttons.

0\. [https://boardwalktimes.net/the-future-that-never-was-the- tom...](https://boardwalktimes.net/the-future-that-never-was-the-tomorrowland- problem-41829d45a933)

<comment><USER19> [https://bollingermotors.com/](https://bollingermotors.com/)

I found something interesting. Electric truck that looks like it is from the 70's. Bravo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The current generation of Mazda have a very pleasant interface. Controls on the steering wheel are split by function. Left side is audio/comms, right side is cruise and driver MFD controls. Automation overrides (lane departure/awd) controls are on a panel left of the steering wheel only the driver can access. AC/Temp controls are physical, below the touch screen. Their is a jog/cmd dial just behind the shifter that controls the center touchscreen. The entire system can be operated from that dial. The system locks out certain center dash functionality when the car is moving. The colors of all displays are the same, including a heroic effort to match the brightness between the digital and analog displays. The only control oddity to me is the location of sports mode in relation the the parking brake switch. Both are next to the shifter which makes sense, but enabling/disabling sport mode is hard to do by touch. There is voice recognition for the av/nav but I have found it useless.

<comment><USER22> I agree. My only other complaint is the display latency/responsiveness... I don't understand why so many car manufacturers refuse to make their infotainment systems perform well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Please watch this video on what's probably the worst car ever designed: [https://youtu.be/Y16ObVRvgOE](https://youtu.be/Y16ObVRvgOE)

I've watched it probably two dozen times and crack up every time.

<comment><USER24> Unbelievable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "There are more times than I can count on my right elbow when I deactivated it by accident. On a highway. Doing 120 kmh. Prime time to crane your head awkwardly down and slightly back while awkwardly bending your right hand to try and re-activate it."

United 777 jets have buttons on the top surface of the armrest right where you put your elbow down.

One of those buttons is the flight attendant call button:

[https://mk0runwaygirl0t0gjwt.kinstacdn.com/wp- content/upload...](https://mk0runwaygirl0t0gjwt.kinstacdn.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/03/IMG_4019-Custom.jpg) [1]

I have inadvertently hit this several times.

[1] [https://runwaygirlnetwork.com/2017/03/09/review-uniteds- dome...](https://runwaygirlnetwork.com/2017/03/09/review-uniteds- domestic-777-presents-mixed-bag-in-economy-class/)

</comment><comment><USER26> The cruise control buttons being next to the handbrake button reminded me of the worst car I drove, I don't remember the model, but the brand was Mercedes:

The handbrake button was located on the windshield wipers handle, at the top of the handle itself. I had the misfortune to hit that button going 75 miles/hour while trying to find how to do something else (I can't recall what).

Thankfully the car detected I was going fast and quickly disengaged the parking brake.

What a stupid idea to put such a dangerous button in such a weird place ...

edit: as gambiting commented, the button I am referring to is the P button, it is located on a stalk on the right hand side of the wheel, which is dedicated to shifting P N D R.

It is not on the windshield wipers stalk. The windshield wiper stalk on this car is located on the left hand side of the wheel, above another stalk for the turn signals.

Driving this Mercedes was utterly confusing.

<comment><USER27> That was never the case in any Mercedes ever - in some automatic models the "P" mode switch is at the top of the stalk(you use the entire stalk to move between R N D modes), correct. But pressing the button while moving does absolutely nothing - you get a beep telling you that you can't do this right now. The actual handbrake button is usually below the lights switch next to the steering wheel on the door side.

<comment><USER25> "But pressing the button while moving does absolutely nothing - you get a beep telling you that you can't do this right now."

Not quite ...

We owned a 2013 Mercedes E320 4matic (wagon) (US version) and although these did not happen often, you could:

1) Hit park while idling and lurch to a park even though you were driving >0 MPH.

2) If you were creeping along into a difficult parking space and you opened the door at, say, 1-2 MPH to look down at the divider line or something, the car would insta-lock into Park. I assume it is a safety measure or something as the door was, indeed, open, but I really don't want the major driving mode of the car auto-selected for me ... also it's quite a KER-CHUNK to throw it into park at 1 MPH ...

<comment><USER28> I knew someone who told me his wife stopped at their mailbox to pick up mail and neglected to put their Mercedes in park when she opened the door. The car, while idling ran over (some part of) her! I'm not sure how hurt she was, but I've met her and she seems just fine now.

He claims that because of this incident (and I suspect others like it) in new Mercedes opening a door automatically puts the car in park.

<comment><USER27> Yes, and it's an incredibly hated feature by the owners of the G class who actually use those cars off road - you're in the middle of a difficult manouvre and need to open the door to look at clearance - bam, car goes into park.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The funny thing is, anyone who read Don Norman [1] could have told you this after 2 seconds' thought a decade ago.

Why then, do multibillion dollar companies continue to produce such boneheaded designs in 2019?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things)

<comment><USER30> They probably produce these designs because they sell better. I explicitly ordered a full screen dashboard on my skoda kodiaq (similar to vw/audio digital dash) because I like it better that analog dials.

Companies produce things that sell, so probably better to ask why consumers buy these things...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I drive 2017 Renault Talisman, which is basically the same as 2019 model (there was no facelift in the meantime).

I really don't understand where some of the complaints from the article come from. The "another stick" to control audio is pretty nice. I find especially volume control pretty natural. Contrary to article it _does_ allow switching tracks/radio stations. I don't mind the steering wheel controls. I don't use cruise control that much, so left side is mostly unused, but I often use right side). I drove 2004 Mazda 6 before this car, where I had volume control on the steering wheel and I do not find Renault's layout interior.

The R-Link infotainment system is far from perfect. Menus are quite confusing to me. I don't find it slow though, but I guess the main point is that I do not use it much. I sometimes change something in the settings (usually when stopped), but more often I just start Android Auto and use that. I don't remember if the setup visible in photo in the article is the default, but there is a hidden option in Android Auto which allows it to take much more of the screen space than shown by author. It's kinda like square display then? I find using touchscreen then tolerable (but I do not advise to do it while driving). My son selects own music without problems though. One thing missing from the article is that the main infotainment system and Android Auto can be controlled via the knob/wheel controller visible in the photos. It supports rotating, 4 wheel directional action and press. The operations I perform the most while driving (that is controlling music via Spotify) are really quite comfortable when using this controller. Note that, unlike some other cars, there are two physical dials for setting climate control temperature. These I do use and can't imagine having to use touch screen for that (that eliminated for example Peugeot 308 when we were shopping for car)

But how I (180cm height) or my wife (163cm height) accidentally press the cruise control/speed limit button? I have no idea. I have automatic gearbox, but quite often (when stopped and, obviously, when changing gears) I drive with one hand on the stick and elbow resting on the the elbow-rest and I can't imagine how that switch could be pressed. Maybe if someone is really short and the seat is in very forward position? _Certainly_ not in position as shown in photo. Also never heard such complaint from other Talisman owners.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Contrary to article it does allow switching tracks/radio stations.

I think I've pressed every single button on the wheel and all the sticks. Still haven't found a way. If you need to read the user's manual to figure out such a simple task, it's a failure of design.

For example, I would think that the right thumb stick would do that. Because it literally does nothing. But no.

In the end thanks to HN and elsewhere I found the wheel. And of course it's just as abysmal as the rest of the design: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20354178](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20354178)

> ne thing missing from the article is that the main infotainment system and > Android Auto can be controlled via the knob/wheel controller visible in the > photos.

Yeah, no. It's much _worse_ than glancing at the screen and reaching to touch it. Because you have to constantly look at the screen while manipulating the knob. Because at any point in time you don't know where the current selection is and what actions will be triggered by activating the knob.

Unless, of course, you set it once (on the "change track" button) and never move it.

> But how I (180cm height) or my wife (163cm height) accidentally press the > cruise control/speed limit button? I have no idea.

Having it done three times already, I also have no idea, but I did (I'm 178cm). Possible reasons:

\- While parked I had to reach to the passenger seat from the driver's door (the button is extremely easy to deactivate)

\- Fumbling with my water bottle when trying to put it into the compartment under the hand rest

\- Leaning over to the right and putting my elbow down for something (probably reaching for something or scratching my leg)

However, "I can't imagine how" cannot be a justification for this design decision. The reasoning is simple: when you are already driving, how do you turn cruise control on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> VW seems to have a nice balance between touch and buttons. All of the wheel buttons are useful and in a good spot. Physical buttons for climate also in a good spot. Touchscreen in the newer models is large and tap zones are pretty forgiving - although you shouldn't even need them while driving.

<comment><USER33> Volkswagen really knows how to design cars that are 100% intuitive. Big, easy to find buttons in a spot where you can easily reach them. Hyundai, in my opinion, is similarily easy to operate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Funny how technology keeps making cars in particular worse. I'll probably be sticking with 90s models for a very long time. My 99 JGC 4.7L has basically everything I want or need with an FM transmitter and phone mount added.

<comment><USER35> I tried going back to an old car, but 45mpg hybrid Kia Niro, push button to start, Android Auto, backup camera, blind spot warning, blue tooth, and adaptive cruise control, etc, never again will I drive an old car.

<comment><USER36> That is like a $90 head unit from Amazon, my friend, except for adaptive cruise control and a pushbutton, though that is not difficult or expensive to add either.

<comment><USER35> I also would like to add the emergency break assist. I have already had that save me from one accident, I suspect this is very hard to add aftermarket. Plus a $90 head unit will be utter crap.

<comment><USER36> You would be surprised at the level of quality, but a $30 head unit, still not bad.

But, yes, you have me on the emergency brake assist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm unfortunately in the market for a new car, and I'm having to look into work vehicles like small cargo vans to avoid all this nonsense.

Touchscreens, radars, special Android apps, automatic climate control, buttons on the steering wheel...

Enough already, I just want a fucking car!

Airbags and antilock brakes save lives. A/C is useful in summer. Radio is nice. The rest is garbage.

<comment><USER38> The right set of buttons on the steering wheel are a life saver. Quite literally. How often do you take the hands off the steering wheel to adjust the radio? Be honest. Even if you're not looking at the radio, your attention is focussed on finding and manipulating the controls by touch. The control over the car is diminished because you don't have both hands on the wheel (important for quick reactions, less so for driving straight). The same goes for cruise control that can be controlled entirely with the thumb and hands on the wheel.

Maybe a set of _useful_ buttons should be mandated on the steering wheel?

<comment><USER39> My Ford Fiesta feels like they really half-assed the QA on the steering wheel UX. There are some << and >> buttons on the steering wheel, which work fine for FM radio, but I exclusively use Sirius in the car and instead of going to the previous/next channels like you'd expect, << and >> just go straight to channel 184, and you have to use the center dash buttons to adjust the channel.

<comment><USER40> Is "184" the only channel that has been saved as a preset? Typically those buttons cycle among preset channels.

<comment><USER39> Oh my god, I've had this car for six years, and you're entirely correct. Thank you so much.

Still awkward UX since the steering wheel buttons have exactly the same icons as the dash buttons yet do different things, but their functionality is described correctly if you read the entire vehicle manual.

<comment><USER40> Haha you're welcome. Also you should upvote that comment. b^)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I own a Renault Duster and I was convinced the UX is crappy by design to make me switch to a higher "tier" of a car (duster is about 12K USD for a new one)

\- Audio system has a huge knob that changes radio stations, but buttons for volume

\- The "Turn off ECO" button that gets me higher RPM for overtaking is behind the cups on the cupholder. I cannot use it if I have a drink. Its quite dangerous when I want to overtake but dont have enough power and cannot get it

\- The magical buttons to control audio / phonecalls behing the wheel is a shitshow. There are some buttons I cannot see, but I have never pressed the correct one

\- Rearview mirror adjustement is under the parking break handle

\- Cruise control is such a shitshow that I never use it

</comment><comment><USER42> "\- The steering wheel contains two dozen buttons"

Actually, one dozen. I also have a Renault, but older, so the configuration is different, but I use regularly three of the cruise control buttons, and three or four of the audio control buttons, and I don't have the phone connection which I would use too if I had it. I can imagine many people using most of that dozen buttons on a very regular basis.

And if you don't use them, you don't have to.

<comment><USER38> I have a Hyundai i30 (Elantra GT in the US, I believe) with a similar set of buttons on the steering wheel. The only button I don't use is the one to activate voice recognition for Android Auto or Car Play (I use neither).

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is why I love old cars. And especially the "moderately expensive" cars of their era, like the Bertone-designed Alfa Romeo GTV from the early 1970s. A well kept specimen just feels so nice to drive and it is so easy to drive as well because there's nothing that needs fiddling with and nothing that is trying to meddle with your driving.

I wish they'd make simpler cars. With physical knobs that have proper tactile feedback.

(I'd wish for normally aspirated engines as well since they are nicer to drive, but turbos are the price we have to pay for 270-300hp 1.8 liter engines. _sigh_ )

<comment><USER44> _there 's nothing that needs fiddling with _

On an old Alfa, everything needs fiddling with (including the things you can't adjust like the position of the pedals and other controls).

<comment><USER43> Oh yes.

Plus you need to be built like a monkey. When the pedals are the right distance you can't reach the steering wheel. And when the steering wheel is close enough, your knees are pointing up at either side of the steering column.

Glorious. Just glorious :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'd take that over a Tesla any day.

Once you learn where the buttons are you can control them without taking your eyes off the road. That looks like most cards other than a Tesla.

<comment><USER46> Have you actually driven a Tesla?

Most of the stuff that I want to do is steering wheel, or is controlled by voice after hitting a button on my steering wheel.

If you have to look at the screen while driving, you're doing something wrong.

<comment><USER47> Can we please put to rest that canard that only people who did not drive a Tesla criticize it?

Depending on what you want from a car it is entirely possible and reasonable to discover that while Tesla is the best EV on the market, they do pretty crappy job of being a _car_ as good as one that costs half as much.

<comment><USER48> "they do pretty crappy job of being a car as good as one that costs half as much"

I would disagree emphatically with this assertion.

The UX in particular seems to have been very thoughtfully considered whereby the few controls that are used frequently get some dedicated buttons and the remainder in the touch screen and/or voice control. The degree of thoughtfulness between Tesla and nearly all other manufacturers is very starkly different.

<comment><USER47> Well, Tesla lovers do seem to believe that recalling a saved seat position from several layers deep in the center screen menu is more convenient that pressing a button on the door, but I will just respectfully disagree here. I suppose there must be some car, somewhere, that is thought out worse (for UX, obviously) than a Tesla, but I haven't seen one.

<comment><USER49> Uh, isn't that one click at the top of the screen? I have a Tesla, fwiw, and to say the UX is the worst just makes me dismiss everything you say. There are a couple things that I don't like (eg turning odd the headlights takes a couple clicks), but after owning one for a few years while also owning a Toyota and Audi, I'll take the Tesla.

<comment><USER47> Well, I'll take the Audi. And according to someone who was bragging about how great Tesla does it (with all their software updates I will not insist that my experience several years ago is indicative of today's UX) claimed that you need to switch to the right screen, select correct user profile, and press a button from there. And even if it is, in today's software revision, a top- level UI element that's always present, it's still located on the bloody center screen that you can reach only after you've squeezed yourself into the seat.

Seriously, I am not really going to take seriously any claims from anyone who says that a touchscreen in a moving vehicle is a good idea. This is an idea that is absolutely ridiculous on its face.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Wow, that touchscreen UI gave me serious flashbacks to Windows Mobile 6.1 (especially the dark theme used on the HTC Touch Diamond). Especially because the font looks like Tahoma, but even the appearance of the soft buttons is dated and the overall design is so bland.

Barely looks better than the UIs that come on no-brand Chinese radios.

</comment><comment><USER51> > The touch screen is filled with insanely small targets

I'm running the latest iOS beta. One of my biggest complaints is that they changed the CarPlay interface and made all the targets smaller! I had a hard enough time hitting them before, now it's even harder, especially when the car is moving and bouncing.

Luckily the worst outcome is that I skip a song or something, and not safety related, but still, come on Apple. You should know better.

<comment><USER52> > _One of my biggest complaints is that they changed the CarPlay interface and > made all the targets smaller!_

Do you mind elaborating? I'm also running CarPlay with iOS 13, and the apps all seem to have the same usual button sizes/target areas.

I suspect you're thinking of the new "dashboard" view (pictured at [https://www.macworld.com/article/3403343/everything-new- in-c...](https://www.macworld.com/article/3403343/everything-new-in-carplay- in-ios-13.html)), but even in that case I haven't run into a scenario where the buttons/targets seem smaller.

<comment><USER51> Specifically the "Now Playing" screen. Before the cover of the album was a transparent background, but they instead made it a standalone picture on the right side, shrinking to forward and back controls (and in my podcast app, shrinking the skip 30 buttons).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I've been working for a few years for a large European trucks manufacturer. Two brands were co-developing a new range of models, one brand a bit more luxurious than the other. The "slightly lower end" brand were making a very fancy HMI with two large colour screens, lots of menus and the stuff. The top end stuff just had a huge bunch of well placed physical buttons and switches. When the prototypes came into drivers' hands, everybody liked the buttons, nobody liked the screens. It came as a bad slap to the people who had worked for years on it. "Those young drivers, the iPhone generation, think our screen based HMI is way too complicated and misleading."

I drive a Dacia and I love its simplicity... I fear the day when they try to make a Dacia look fancy.

</comment><comment><USER54> I bought new Renault Logan Sandero in 2015 and couldn't be happier. No stupid assist stuff, no computer stuff, just engine, wheel, gearbox and brakes. The only safety stuff that I'm aware of is ABS and airbag which is more than enough for me. My next vehicle will absolutely be Renault Duster with a similar configuration. I need car to drive, not to think instead of me.

Though some things would be nice to have. Like car detection in blind zones. I think that it's not invasive, just some kind of light bulb.

I thought that I would want an advanced cruise control (which measures the distance and accelerates or decelerates a little bit) but I definitely don't want it to hit brakes instead of me. If this feature does more than controlling an engine, I don't want it.

</comment><comment><USER55> I hired a Renault Mégane about five years ago. The headlight control was a rotational control with very low friction on the end of a stalk. The same stalk also did full beam and indicating. You can guess what happened repeatedly: whilst driving on dark country roads, I'd flick the beams up or down, or indicate, and that flick would also spin the headlights, turning them off. Happened several times to me and my wife who also drove it.

I suppose maybe that car was faulty and the friction was lower than it was meant to be, but still, it was an accident waiting to happen: being plunged into darkness on a twisty country road after passing another car was not fun.

So bad UX is not a new thing for them.

</comment><comment><USER56> I feel the same way about the Model 3.

The touchscreen interface is fine for a computer or when you're parked but when you're driving it's utterly useless.

At the very least, they need to move the AC to tactile knobs and buttons. I can't change anything to do with the air while driving because it takes too much of my concentration to figure it out. The glove compartment also needs to be moved off onto its own real button but that's minor compared to the AC.

</comment><comment><USER57> A touch screen is pure evil and stupidity and the product of grey old men dictating their products: "We NEED touch, build it in!"

Thing is, roads are bumpy. G-forces make your extended hand go all over the place. A touch screen in a car is pure stupidity. You want to rest your arm and take control of ONE single controller, either an Apple-like quality touch pad, or a knob you can navigate and press.

They'll get there, eventually. When those fossils die.

</comment><comment><USER58> I have a Mazda 2 (2017 model) with a touchscreen, but my model also has a rotary control knob which works great - I never have to touch the screen - <USER3> fact it's being disabled when I reach 30km/h. The nastiest problem I have is bluetooth volume - where FM/USB (mp3) playback at volume 9-10 (out of 50) are perfect, for bluetooth I have to be at 34-37 to be on the same level. And the problem is when switching between them - the horror!!! But even worse is if I forget to activate bluetooth on my phone and start the car, which after a few seconds of trying to connect to the phone switches automatically to FM and BLARES the fucking sound at me! It's insane.

I didn't have this problem with a Sony player in a rather old car (Opel Astra 2001). It remembered the volume setting for each function separately, so when you switched between FM, usb playback or bluetooth you had the volume you used previously for each.

I contacted Mazda with this problem, but they never bothered to answer.

</comment><comment><USER59> Moving the cruise control on/off buttons off the steering wheel doesn't seem like the worst decision -- that's something that I usually press once per drive, and never touch it again, so in the interest of reducing the number of buttons on the steering wheel, putting the buttons elsewhere makes some sense. The center console seems like an unusual place to put it, the dashboard itself would seem to be a better place.

Though I don't understand how he hits it accidentally with his elbow, the only way I could hit a button on the center console would be if I lean down and do it intentionally. In the photo with his hand on the shifter, his elbow is on the armrest and couldn't touch the red buttons accidentally

<comment><USER4> For highway driving, having all the cruise control buttons on the steering wheel is a godsend. Guess it depends on the driver's usage of the car, but I'm a big fan of not having to fully take my hands of the wheel to enable/disable CC or alter the cruising speed/etc. :)

<comment><USER59> My cruise control has a "cancel" button on the steering wheel (which is not the same as "off"), but almost all the time, I just tap the brake pedal to disable it since I generally want to disable it when I want to slow down.

As far as I can tell from his pictures, the Renault has only the main on/off button on the center console, and the rest of the cruise buttons are on the steering wheel.

EDIT: I found the owners manual, and indeed the center console has only the main on/off button, the steering wheel has the speed up/down (+/-), Resume (R), Cancel (O) buttons.

[https://www.renaultusa.com/News/DriversManuals/talisman.pdf](https://www.renaultusa.com/News/DriversManuals/talisman.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> It appears to have a door lock _button_ , so it scores at least one point against Tesla.

<comment><USER61> Which one? The S, X and 3 have very different interiors.

I had an S for a week recently and it has physical controls for most everything. It felt like driving a normal car, I hated it.

I don't really see a need. The Model 3 automatically locks when put in drive and unlocks when in park. You can disable the unlock on park option. Child locks are controlled via setting and not switches in the door panel that kids can easily play with.

Apart from a scenario where you are in danger and need to quickly get in the car and lock your door, why do you need a dedicated button?

<comment><USER60> > I had an S for a week recently and it has physical controls for most > everything. It felt like driving a normal car, I hated it.

What Model S did you drive? Unless new ones are radically different from any I've ever seen, there are no physical door lock controls, HVAC controls or audio controls (except on the steering wheel).

Suppose you stop in a dangerous neighborhood for long enough that you want to put the car in park. The auto-unlock, especially in the absence of a button to re-lock the doors, is potentially dangerous. So you turn it off, and now you have to remember to double-tap to unlock.

To make it more fun, the Model S can get into a state where the doors are nominally unlocked but the handles are retracted. Getting in the car when this happens is awkward at best.

There's a reason that almost every other car has a physical control for the door lock.

<comment><USER61> > The auto-unlock, especially in the absence of a button to re-lock the doors, > is potentially dangerous. So you turn it off, and now you have to remember > to double-tap to unlock.

Double tap to unlock? There is a padlock always in the same place at the top of the screen that you can see to get state and touch to change.

If you need have auto-unlock on and put the car in park, your hand is inches from the padlock to re-lock the doors.

The only scenario where a physical button makes sense is when you urgently need to lock the doors.

<comment><USER60> > Double tap to unlock?

Double-tap park.

> There is a padlock always in the same place at the top of the screen that > you can see to get state and touch to change.

That's newish, embarrassingly. And sorry, but a little tough target in a corner of the screen is nowhere near as ergonomic as a button you can feel.

<comment><USER61> Maybe older models are different but I've driven both pre and post bumper redesign Model Ss and a Model 3. In all three Double-tap is for the emergency brake. Single tap on the control stalk parks the car.

> That's newish, embarrassingly.

Newish? It's always been there to me and to anyone buying a vehicle after it's introduction, whenever that was years ago.

How many other automakers add new functionality to their vehicles years after purchase?

> And sorry, but a little tough target in a corner of the screen is nowhere > near as ergonomic as a button you can feel.

A dedicated physical button is always easier to locate/use but adds unnecessary clutter when there is a button for everything.

I personally have never longed for the button as the only time I recall using it in other cars is to lock my partner out of the car just as they try to open it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> It's not that difficult lol. Important stuff (= what the driver needs to be able to access during driving) should be physical buttons that are unlikely to be hit by accident, the rest is well served by a touchscreen that optimally can be controlled and seen by the passenger.

Oh and for what it's worth why are "map updates" still a thing in brand new 2019 cars? That's what OTA or, even better, live map fetching from the Internet is for? And why doesn't any car manufacturer work together with Google for the maps display?! Even a top notch BMW still looks gross compared to Google Maps.

</comment><comment><USER63> How can they not have designers? It's like they designed it explicitly to be both cheap and ugly looking _and_ have a terrible UX. Making it one or the other could at least indicate a tradeoff being made (form over function or vice versa), but here it's just a complete horror show of too many colors, poor layout etc.

Are "good looking" (boring looking at least) interiors such as VW or Volvos really _that_ hard to make? Just do clean lines, a color scheme, keep things within reach etc. This looks like it was designed by children.

</comment><comment><USER64> It makes me curious to know how much is bad Ux design and how much is simply people not being able to transition into a new set of technology since they have grown acustomed to the previous way of doing things.

It would be interesting to see the experience that new drivers may have with these designs and then ask them to compare it to the older version.

<comment><USER65> That's a good point. Often when I see UX this bad, it's also usually the result of siloed teams or designers working on individual parts without thinking about the whole experience, and it all just gets stitched together at the end.

I can see the console designer being like, "Oh cool, steering wheel designer is out of room, so I get to design cruise control buttons" rather than pushing back with, "This is a really bad idea"

<comment><USER66> If you've ever worked at a company whose bread and butter is hardware, you know many of them treat software like just some other line item on the BOM: Like a screw or nut that needs to be as cheap as possible and "meet the spec", however insufficiently defined that spec is. I'd be willing to bet that this attitude is what's ultimately behind crappy software in cars. They don't see software as value-add, they see it as a cost that they grudgingly must eat in order to barely compete with the other car companies who also have crappy software. Yet, these companies who are so bad at software, and obviously hate it, keep adding more and more of it into their products!

It was a lot better when you could just ignore the bad software and use your phone for navigation/music. Now you need to use the bad software to operate more and more essential things in the car. What's next? A big screen in front of your face with a 10FPS animation of a steering wheel that you have to drag around with your finger to steer?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I for one really dislike touch screens and menu driven controls in most applications. Especially if driving. Even controlling an iPhone is error prone when it's mounted to a gps holder in a moving vehicle.

Give me tactile buttons, switches and knobs that do one thing well, are keyed with different feeling textures and are backlit.

</comment><comment><USER68> It took nearly 6 months to learn to accidentally stop hitting the "reduce traction control" button in a 2013 Subaru BRZ with my arm. I considered printing a custom cover for it. In the end it turns out I learned not to hit it, but it's recessed and flat, unlike this Renault nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER69> I'm driving a Renault Espace Initiale, and the mug holder is placed in the middle at shin height, below the big center block containing the stick shift. It is impossible to insert a full can of coke without spilling some because you have to tilt it. I'm not kidding.

</comment><comment><USER70> And that's why I drive a Subaru.

</comment><comment><USER71> My last few cars, were a confusing mess of UI. Both of which had poorly thought out touch screens. This Renault seems to have them both beet in bad ui though. I miss my mini with no touch screen and simple functional buttons!

</comment><comment><USER72> I empathize, vehicle user interfaces are becoming terrible. How about forging a startup focused on doing outsourced UX for automobile cockpits? Aim to be the "Apple" of design for the automotive industry.

</comment><comment><USER73> I assume the author is talking about user interfaces when he mentions UX, so...

>Which is a shame because the elements of the design that don't have any actual UX are extremely well executed (both the aforementioned cruise control, lane assist and some minor things).

That _is_ UI design. An interface is a much broader thing than just computer interfaces. It most certainly encompasses placement and behaviour of physical controls.

As for the touchscreen, I got a new MP3 player a while back. I could not find anything but touchscreens now. My old player had physical controls, I could do the common things like skip and fast forward without thinking, without _looking_.

The new one, well, that touchscreen - put bluntly, I hate it.

</comment><comment><USER74> I have a recent megane with this and it really isn't a problem

</comment><comment><USER75> Rented a new Opel GrandX (SUV) - the same issues described in auricle. Whole nightmare as a car for driver.

</comment><comment><USER76> i find car UX very interesting and see them taking more chances with design sometimes. BMW's iDrive is a great example of where they do some cool stuff such in the music/contact search, lots of buttons, heads up display, and lots of customization

<comment><USER77> I bought a new X1 in December and I'm constantly amazed when people praise the iDrive system. The User Experience of the car as a whole is horrific, and yet apparently it's a great example in comparison to everything else.

Like the article, I'm amazed at the dumb or careless decisions that have been made. No play/pause button anywhere for example (the on/off button is used instead). Music doesn't stop until you open the car doors after shutting it off. The backup camera doesn't turn off for several seconds - so whenever you take your car from park to drive, it turns on the camera and then just leaves it on for a while. Whenever my gas tank gets near to an 1/8th full an alarm which sounds like the Law & Order theme goes off and a [!] appears in the notifications. The nav system takes a while to start up, so you can't enter an address for a minute or so after getting in. The air conditioning won't let air just pass through from the outside (I'm in California, just let the Pacific chilled air in!). Also, when BMW says you need to change your oil (waaaay too often), you need to go through a secret reset method to clear out the message.

Even many of the physical buttons and functionality are moronically missing. Want to put the back seats down from the back? You have to go around front to pull the tabs. Such a pain. Why?? I want my Kia Sportage back.

It really does make you appreciate California tech companies and their attention to design and the customer experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Things like this, make to keep my two "analogic" cars for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER79> All that my eyes can see is the six-speed stick; all else is forgiven.

</comment><comment><USER80> Definitely too many buttons

</comment><comment> stef-13013 They should have used Qt :)

</comment><comment><USER81> So many HN folks suggest touchscreens are inferior to physical controls in cars (safety or UX wise) and I can't agree.

Bad interface design is the culprit not the device. I did not need to read manuals for my iPhone, Polar watches (touch), more complicated machines in the garden, washing machine, fridge, coffee machine nor my Tesla Model S.

On the other hand using my ventilation unit controls at home was impossible without manual (non-descriptive menu items, non-circular menu starting in the middle so up/down matters and remembering where is the entry you need when there are many of those you almost never need is painful).

I love my Model S and I am satisfied with its UI design with some remarks like "Quick Controls" content I never use. There is no bullshit, no attempts to look too fancy and hinder the experience. Complete game changer of this car is the possibility of improving UI with software updates.

I am yet to encounter the car without touchscreen that has intuitive controls. My current list of the cars and quirks I remember the most:

2007 Kia Ceed I do not know remember to change C to F degrees or setup clock after owning the car for the 12 years and driving it daily for almost 5 years. IIRC holding the Trip button (one of four in the main row of computer controls) changes something depending on the current context. Kids like to touch and hold buttons and I am doomed afterwards.

2011 Ford Mondeo Alerts present somewhere in the Settings. Paring the phone requires you to push the Phone button and the Menu button. Arrows are only for cycling, Enter is useless.

2017 Peugeot 5008 Rented it for a week on holiday, physical controls. Interface design was complete mess - confusing icons, excessive layers combined with "innovative"/unique naming of menu entries etc. I quit trying to comprehend it after a while. This was one of the worst interfaces ever encountered, on par with the Ford SYNC in the latest models I had the opportunity to use as loaners.

2017 Mercedes GLA Same holds for Audis I've driven. Graphic design is consistent and quite polished which might confuse you that the interface will be intuitive and carefully designed. Animations and images accompanying any task are definitely made for marketing purposes and sales people showing off and to hide the difficulty of achieving the tasks you are up to. Visual clues are often missing and using the control wheel was like spinning the roulette and waiting for the outcome. I believe people who drive Mercedes whole live like it and are used to it. Btw numerical keyboard in the car, really?!

2018 Volvo XC 60 Had it only for a day as a test drive, quite good, no major issues, definitely one of the best interfaces. However the graphic design was inconsistent and this car has touch screen.

2018 Hyundai Ioniq One weekend, no major issues for me, bad graphics design. Do not recall if it is touch based or not, but some buttons were present.

</comment><comment><USER82> eh, on the bright side your car has _the correct number_ of pedals (three).

<comment><USER83> My commuter-mobile hauls me from point A to point B perfectly fine with only two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> > There are more times than I can count on my right elbow when I deactivated > it by accident.

The author manages to periodically elbow a button that is placed right next to the hand-brake switch and the seatbelt buckle receptacle, below the armrest?

While that's an uninspired place to put half of the controls for assistive driving you'd have to adopt a pretty strange driving position to hit it with your elbow.

Edit. Downvotes aside, I found this random image as a reference [0]. I'm having a hard time picturing the elbow naturally reaching _below_ that armrest while driving. I'm sure someone can find a way to do it but not in any position that a driver should have. "On the highway. Doing 120Km/h."

Even later edit. @dmitriid, any chance you can post a picture of what kind of body position leads to such an accidental press? Don't take this the wrong way, I am genuinely curious how the elbow can get there while driving.

[0] [http://www.renault- me.com/CountriesData/GCC/images/cars/Tali...](http://www.renault- me.com/CountriesData/GCC/images/cars/Talisman/otherImages/LFD-UH- SdVAmbianceDrivingPleasure_R_ig_w965_h543.jpg)

<comment><USER85> > Downvotes aside, I found this random image as a reference [0]. I'm having a > hard time picturing the elbow naturally reaching below that armrest while > driving. I'm sure someone can find a way to do it but not in any position > that a driver should have. "On the highway. Doing 120Km/h."

Not even to change gears?

On this other image I found[0], would it not be the arm rest (which folds up) the elbow seems so much closer to the button.

[0][https://s1.cdn.autoevolution.com/images/news/gallery/officia...](https://s1.cdn.autoevolution.com/images/news/gallery/official- talisman-is-the-name-of-the-renault-laguna-successor-will-debut-on- july-6th_7.jpg)

<comment><USER84> Sure and now the button is 25-30cm forward of the elbow, and possibly 5cm lower. The guy in your picture would have to hold his fist against the center console and slump a little to elbow that button.</comment></comment></comment>


Chomsky was wrong: evolutionary analysis shows languages obey few rules - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/04/chomsky-was-wrong-evolutionary-analysis-shows-languages-obey-few-rules.ars <comment><USER3> Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but a genealogical analysis of language seems like a strange way to attack Chomsky's overall hypothesis. The fundamental point of the poverty-of-stimulus argument is that there must be strong inductive biases in whatever language-learning apparatus we possess, since we seem to quickly converge on something deemed grammatical in our language, with relatively few examples.

Showing that a particular property varies pretty randomly across languages, correlated only with lineage, is decent evidence that that property isn't universal. That would attack some stronger possible formulations of universal grammar (which maybe Chomsky has actually advanced; I don't recall) that claim not only that we have an inductive bias in language learning, but that: here is a list of specific language features that are universal.

But it doesn't show that there _isn't_ some inductive bias, or even a generative-grammar-style inductive bias, where "human language, in all its possible variations" is a parameterized space significantly smaller than the space of all possible symbol protocols, and relatively easy for us to learn because we're hardwired with the parameterization (but not the specific parameter settings).

Admittedly I am familiar with machine learning and not very familiar with current work in linguistics, so I could be totally missing some reason that makes my field's methods inapplicable to theirs, inconceivable as that might be. ;-)

<comment><USER4> Chomsky's idea wasn't that there was a strong inductive bias in language learning, it was that language isn't learned at all; it grows in the brain, as his accolyte Pinker claims, "like teeth grow in the mouth." You don't "learn" to have teeth, do you?, Pinker asks.

How can this be, when we see so obviously that kids raised by Greek speakers learn Greek while those raised by English speakers learn English?

It's because, acc. to Chomsky and his followers ("Modern Linguists"), Greek and English are really the same language, and kids don't LEARN this language, called "Universal Grammar," they GROW it. What they DO learn is the values of some "parameters" that cause different instantiations of UG to appear superficially different, like Greek and English.

This quickly required the definition of "language" to exclude every aspect of language except syntax, because everything else so obviously was learned and wasn't universal, and even with syntax, they ended up having to exclude the syntax actually used by real speakers really speaking. That syntax become known as "performance" as distinct from "competence", which was the universal language people really knew deep down inside but which got corrupted in real use by various noise-inducing factors.

So "real language" became syntax only, and then, only carefully constructed written examples of proper, uncorrupted "competence" syntax. And with those, all native speakers could use their innate rules plus parameter settings to unanimously agree on which word sequences were valid and which were invalid. You had a rule-based syntax with universal rules, right?

Except that, with each passing year, researchers outside the linguistics departments found more and more examples where native speakers disagreed over validity, and validity decisions that weren't discrete (clearly valid or clearly invalid) but were often shades of gray. (Inside linguistics departments, conformity to Chomskyism orthodoxy was usually enforced, as academia tends to do, so "linguistics research" has supported Chomsky for decades, while cognitive science hasn't.)

There were so many differences among native speakers of a single language, not to mention the ever-growing catalog of diversity between languages and the way that languages gradually diverge instead of in clearly discrete jumps, and so many shades of gray in judgments among natives that the notion of parameters got more and more ridiculous, even with the notion of "language" pared down to almost nothing.

Sure, you could claim that all books are the same universal book, too, as long as each character is a parameter. If so, then all languages are the same language under the surface, too, plus or minus some parameter settings.

Chomsky's ridiculous language ideas would have been thrown out long ago if he hadn't been such a leftist "intellectual icon" in the leftist temples of academia and media. Instead, his theory just changed dramatically from version to version but remained unquestionably true throughout. Every few years he would significantly revamp his "program." In 2002 he seemed to abandon everything about syntax, too, except for recursion. What's unique about human language, as opposed to the general principles found in all human (and some animal) cognition, is just the innate, universal ability to handle recursion in syntax. (That paper apparently infuriated Pinker by cutting his "Language Instinct" position down to just a syntactical recursion instinct.)

What a bunch of nonsense. And this paper is just one more nail in the coffin of "modern linguistics".

<comment><USER5> This is factually wrong in a number of ways. Modern linguists don't throw out "every aspect of language but syntax" (as you yourself indicate later in your own post). There are falsifiability problems ("all books are the same universal book too, so long as each character is a parameter") with some theories, but you have to start with a theory at some point.

I can relate to your sentiment that he's favored because he's such a lefty, but it's not really an argument.

He revamps his "program" every few years because he recognizes it as wrong. I'm not sure why you cite that as a bad thing?

<comment><USER4> "He revamps his "program" every few years because he recognizes it as wrong. I'm not sure why you cite that as a bad thing?"

The "bad thing" is not the person who decides that he was wrong; the bad thing is the theory that was wrong and the "modern linguists" who still promote it. The notion of "universal grammar" came from the original version(s) of the theory: Everyone knows a fantastically complex rule system perfectly by some very young age, which can't possibly be learned from noisy, real-world experience in so short a time, so language must be innate, like teeth, and since humans are all the same species, the language must be a universal language, which must have some parameters to explain the illusion that they aren't the same.

By 2002, there were not enough legs of that original theory still standing (still believed by even Chomsky himself) to support the notion of a "universal grammar."

Yet despite the fact that nobody starting fresh with what we know today would ever propose a theory of innate, universal grammar, we still have most people calling themselves "modern linguists" claiming to believe it.

Universal grammar is nonsense, and modern linguists' failure to drop it is the "bad thing."

"...you have to start with a theory at some point."

Yes, and you have to drop it at some point when new evidence keeps making it less and less plausible. That point was years ago.

<comment><USER6> The alternative to Universal Grammar is Skinner style behaviorism; which is clearly wrong.

Think of Universal Grammar is a rule for building grammar rules.

It's pretty clear that humans have a distinct innate ability to learn language: no monkey can learn English no matter how much you try to teach it. You can teach animals all kinds of interesting behavior but you can't teach them language.

> Yet despite the fact that nobody starting fresh with what we know today > would ever propose a theory of innate, universal grammar, we still have most > people calling themselves "modern linguists" claiming to believe it.

Quite the contrary. Anyone starting fresh would probably start with an assumption about some innate ability to learn language.

<comment><USER4> The alternative to UG is not behaviorism; there are countless alternatives. There are all sorts of learning algorithms that are more plausible than UG or behaviorism.

Yes, it IS clear that humans have an innate ability to LEARN languages, as you insist. Unfortunately, UG denies this, claiming that we CAN'T possibly learn anything as rich and complex as a human language in so short a time with so little, and such messy, input, and since humans have NO innate ability to LEARN human (first) languages, they must instead GROW them "like you grow teeth."

"The alternative to UG" isn't behaviorism, it's that languages are LEARNED.

>"Quite the contrary. Anyone starting fresh would probably start with an assumption about some innate ability to learn language."

You're so right, except that your claim is not contrary to me, it's contrary to UG. Now try to convince the modern linguists of your theory that humans have the innate ability to LEARN first languages and see how that goes.

<comment><USER7> You are substantially mis-characterizing modern linguistic theory/linguists. The 'grow them like you grow teeth' is meant to indicate that, given certain inputs/environment, a child will develop normal language function. You don't need to 'learn' it in the sense that you _do_ need to learn e.g. how to read. The reason for the contrast (argues a linguist) is that we have some internal cognitive structures that react to certain kinds of input, namely linguistic input, and that that reaction is called 'learning your first language(s)'. They disagree with the 'common sense' approach, that learning your first language is just like learning anything else.

I would characterize the debate between linguists and a certain class of cognitive scientists like this:

CogSci: Hey, you keep talking about UG/Innate mechanisms! We don't like that/it seems implausible. Instead, we should just have general learning algorithms that can be utilized to learn language!

Ling: Cool! Show us! Show us!

CogSci: Well...Here's a machine learning model that can learn English past tense with the following training data.

Ling: Oh. Um. Hmmm. Yeah, the data is more complex than that. How far can you get with _this_ data (unloads data by the truckful). Also: that looks like how adults learn things (the kinds of errors made), not really how kids learn language (they make different kinds of errors). Can you model that?

CogSci: It's a simple model! It can't handle that data. That's for a later paper! Also, we don't care about the error classifications, as long as it looks like learning.

Ling: Ok. Let us know when that paper comes out. Have you seen this Bantu data? It's pretty cool too.

CogSci: _later_ : Ok, look. We didn't get the model to work, but we really think your multiplying entities. I mean, it's just crazy/biologically- implausible/ugly to postulate this innate knowledge.

Ling: Yup. But here's the deal. We can't manage to actually explain everything we want even if we postulate innate rules/knowledge like _crazy_. Maybe we have a fundamentally broken model. Maybe machine learning really will come and eat our babies (or maybe the kinds of things we're postulating will turn out to built on top of machine learning, as explanations at different levels). But so far, it's the best we've got.

Obviously, people write books on these arguments, so some massive simplification was done here. And there is some really cool work being done by general cognitive scientists in the language space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I studied linguistics in the 90's, including a class and a few seminars with Chomsky, but left grad school after a year. At this point I'm neither a linguist nor an expert but maintain a slightly more than passive interest in the field.

These kinds of crackpot articles surface every couple of years in the mainstream press, always from people who demonstrate no knowledge of Chomsky's work beyond having read the back cover of his 1965 "Aspects of the Theory of Syntax."

I didn't read the original article, but as described in the Ars article, the thesis makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The fact that we may have a hard time reconciling how languages can be diverse in their handling of subject/object/verb order doesn't disprove the concept of Universal Grammar. In fact, it's an argument _for_ Universal Grammar that we can even have a coherent conversation about the way _all_ languages handle subject/object/verb order - Universal Grammar is not about providing a set of rules describe all languages, it's about explaining what a possible rule is, and you have to approach that with logic rather than statistics.

The Ars article talks about "languages that have been evolving for a minimum of 4,000 years," as if those languages simply sprung into existence a little more than 4 millennia ago with no relation to anything else. This is the linguistic equivalent of creationism.

[Edit: expanded acronym "UG" to "Universal Grammar" for clarity]

<comment><USER9> Sorry, but even though my passing knowledge of linguists may be far outstripped by yours, I still think you may be mistaken.

The statements made by the article are related to something called Universal Grammar, it is not related to syntax theory or Chomsky hierarchies:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar>

According to the article, Chomsky probably didn't invent universal grammar, but he was certainly a strong proponent.

As to the second point, the article claims that languages have been evolving for a minimum of 4,000 years, not a maximum of four thousand years. This is a perfectly accurate statement about all known species of animals. All it really says is that we have records that lead us to know for certain that certain sets of languages had common roots as soon as 4,000 years ago, but we are not sure about their common roots before that.

This sort of argument is very common in genetics; I recall reading a book about how human men can all be traced to a common ancestor 90,000 years back. This does not imply that scientists believe humans sprang into being 90,000 years ago.

<comment><USER8> Well, I was admitted to a PhD program in linguistics which required more than passing familiarity with the basic concepts of Chomsky's research, of which Universal Grammar is _the_ basic concept.

In my comment UG = Universal Grammar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A friend of mine, who is a graduate student in linguistics, told me the following story. (Caveat: this is urban legend-ish; the details could have been exaggerated.)

Once Chomsky was giving a lecture on different features of languages. For some feature (call it X; I forget the technical details), he boldly asserted that no human language could conceivably do X and proceeded to go on and on about why X was absolutely impossible.

There was a hand from the audience. "Estonian does X."

<comment><USER11> It would be hard to put anything beyond a language that has 14 cases: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_grammar>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So here is the issue that the actual article discusses. In generating sentences, you have grammars with rewrite rules like

      PP(Prepositional Phrase) := P(Preposition)NP(Noun Phrase).

In such a rule, the preposition is the head. There is an assertion that languages have the property head-first or complement-first. In this case, the complement-first rule would instead be

      PP := NP(Noun Phrase) P(Preposition)

So in head-first languages, we would see:

      PP := P NP
      The man is PP(in the house)
      VP := V NP
      I VP(ate the bird)

And in complement-first languages, we would see:

      PP := NP P
      The man is PP(the house in)
      VP := NP V
      I VP(the bird ate)

The article states that if head-first and complement-first were robust, universal features of languages, then we would expect the evolutionary model to show that the appearances of word orders demonstrating these features are dependent on each other across language families. However, it does not show this across the language families. It only shows that certain word orders created by head-firstness or complement-firstness are dependent in certain language families.

I hope this was a decent enough explanation and easy for others to follow. I was a Linguistics major, so it can be hard for me to explain it well and in an easy to understand way.

[edited in an attempt at formatting] [edited to provide more examples]

<comment> T-R I'm admittedly having a bit of trouble parsing the first sentence of your last paragraph.

When you say "if head-first and complement-first were robust, universal features of languages", do you mean "head-first and complement-first cover the whole set of possibilities for the property 'word order'", or "all languages (within a family?) are one or the other", or something more like "a given language cannot contain both head-first and complement-first structures", or something different?

Also, with "appearances of word orders demonstrating these features are dependent on each other across language families", in what sense do you mean that the appearances would be dependent on each other?

<comment><USER12> I mean something along the lines of if head-first and complement-first are the only possibilites for phrase rules and that they must apply to all phrase rules for a given language, i.e.

      for all X, s.t. X is a grammatic category which can be the head of a phrase ; XP := X _

or

      for all X ; s.t. X is a grammatic category which can be the head of a phrase; XP := _ X

Then, modulo processes which change a sentence from its underlying form to its surface form, we would only see forms characteristic of head-first or complement-first phrase structure.

In the second case, I intend dependent as the article means dependent. That is co-appearing because of the same underlying feature. To use the genetic analogy, co-appearing because one gene (the head firstness gene) determines them.

<comment> T-R Thanks kindly, much appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's impossible to have an intelligent discussion without the original paper.

Chomsky didn't claim that all grammars obey the same word order, so it _sounds_ like they're making bigger claims than they should be, assuming they're just showing that word-order is mostly lineage-dependent.

<comment><USER14> The original paper is always at the bottom of Ars articles. That's one reason I subscribe.

Anyway, there seems to be a growing body of evidence contrary to Chomsky's universal grammar–see Dan Everett for some more, e.g. It's interesting to see some more about it.

([http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature09923.html))

EDIT: As pointed out below, you probably can't view this unless you're at a university/college with access to Nature. Sorry about that. Open Access is something you should support if this pisses you off.

<comment><USER15> I will say: Putting the link at the bottom of the article automatically makes this better than 90% of the "science journalism" I ever see.

Now for problem number two: I don't have thirty-two dollars (!) to spend reading this _one_ paper. Neither do most other people who aren't already in the field.

For so long as the primary literature is behind these enormous paywalls, science will continue to consist of a tiny tiny percentage of humanity talking to themselves.

<comment><USER12> Oh yeah! Working at a university pays off again. I'm glad you raised that point, I was about to start commenting about the text of the article and now I realize that everyone may not have access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here's my understanding of Chomsky's argument.

Facts: I can write sentences that no one has ever spoken before. The rest of you will have opinions whether they are allowed in English. Those opinions will tend to agree.

Conclusion: Our knowledge of English is not purely derived from the sentences we've heard. We must have had some model of a language in common when we started, and we fit the parameters to what we heard as children.

I find that more convincing than anything in the linked article.

<comment><USER17> >The rest of you will have opinions whether they are allowed in English. Those opinions will tend to agree.

These agreeing opinions could easily be due to a common cultural heritage and a history of reinforcement. People get reinforced for speaking in a way that is understood (and seen as correct) by others and so they speak that way. It benefits them to conform. Since everyone who speaks English shares a cultural language heritage, there is obviously a shared history of reinforcement. The shared history of reinforcement leads to widespread agreement about rules, and yet there are still plenty of examples of English dialects that violate rules of other dialects.

For instance, Ebonics vs. American English. Both are valid dialects with different rules. Both are English. Are you claiming that Ebonics speakers have a different generative mechanism than American English speakers? Obviously Ebonics has evolved __from__ American English, into something new.

Creative, meaningful responding exists outside of language and the evidence is overwhelming that this creativity is due to reinforcement history rather than some innate quality of the brain.

Anyway I don't think your facts lead to your conclusion at all.

<comment><USER16> Obviously, feedback is part of learning language. B. F. Skinner argued that it was the whole explanation, as you're claiming. That was the idea Chomsky challenged.

You're not addressing the crucial point. The suprise isn't that people can invent new sentences. It's how well they can tell if other speakers will regard those sentences as valid English (or valid Ebonics). People can evaluate sentences, and forms of sentences, that have never been spoken. They could not have learned that by feedback, and linguists stuggle to state the precise rules by which they do it.

<comment><USER17> >They could not have learned that by feedback

Why not? I'm not saying that grammar doesn't exist, I'm asking why it needs to be innate?

The existence of grammar rules is what allows us to determine if a sentence is grammatically correct. These rules could be learned through experience. Why do they need to be innate?

I believe you don't understand Chomsky's argument. I'm not a die hard behaviourist I just know the behaviourist position well enough to know that your particular formulation of the "language is special" theory is easily refuted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The main argument I took from Chomsky is that the human brain is predisposed to language. I don't think proving whether language may have (/ may have not) evolved from a single root is so interesting.

The interesting part for me, is that the brain is an organ that has evolved in part due to its capability to process language, which in turn has been able to affect our capacity and capability to think.

I believe humans do have an innate capacity for language - and this capacity has provided us with an evolutionary advantage.

Whether or not all languages are similar or different isn't the point - <USER2> fact that the brain is able to efficiently process (and evolve) language can be seen as an example of evolutionary biology whether or not the precise mechanisms are understood.

<comment><USER19> It's more than that there is just a predisposition for language. Chomsky argues that this predisposition is a result of a universal grammar, or set of grammar rules for organizing language that is a fundamental part of our brains:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar>

So, for this theory, it does matter what differences and similarities there are in grammar for different languages, and how those similarities or differences came about. What this study does is show that at least for one aspect of language, word order, what might seem to be universal fundamental rules of grammar are not, and are shaped by cultural, not genetic, evolution.

<comment><USER18> But I don't think a suggestion that there's such a thing as 'universal grammar' is the same as a suggestion that syntactic grammar is going to be shared between all languages.

As I understand it, the unifying element of UG could be simplistic or complex - which might make the concept hard to discredit.

I'm pretty certain that syntactic grammar _would be_ the result of cultural and genetic evolution. If both factors are available to influence a language's evolution, I'd imagine that both would be likely to influence the way that language evolves to some degree.

I think the most interesting part of this mystery is _how_ the brain's capacity for language might be innate - and in this respect, looking at the resultant artefacts produced by this processing might be a bit like looking at the remnants scattered around the room after a party the night before.

Perhaps the concept of a shared UG is more relevant to the process than the resulting syntactic structure?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The author of the paper is on Reddit and is taking questions.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gpb84/chomsky_was_w...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gpb84/chomsky_was_wrong_evolutionary_analysis_shows/c1pa7xp)

</comment><comment><USER21> > given that there aren't obvious word order patterns across languages, how > does the human brain do so well at learning the rules that are a peculiarity > to any one of them?

That simply means there are rules at a deeper level in the brain, and they may crystallize this way, or that way, depending on the particular language.

The study, if correct, simply says the rules are not apparent at the outermost level. Well, dig deeper, go closer to the hardware, and at some level the universal order should appear again.

After all, my neurons don't work any different than your neurons. But I suspect the highest level where universal rules operate is higher than that.

<comment><USER22> There are similar analogies to bird songs.

In bird studies, one bird species can be raised completely around a foreign bird species until they learn the foreign songs, yet the native fledgling will sing the new notes in their own species specific patterns (as if there is a neural template).

I'm not a linguistic professional, but I imagine humans have some hardwired language patterns and others that are historical artifacts.

<comment><USER23> Or it could just be because they are _different species_ \- that means different vocal chords, different brains, different ears and so on. It's equivalent to saying "chimpanzees act like baby humans when taught to play with blocks, yet still retain distinctive means of movement".

<comment><USER22> That study was about the presence of a neural template (and perhaps a linguistic one). Before the study people thought it might be possible for any singing bird to sing any other bird's songs.

An abstracted view of the point of the study is perhaps there is some hardwiring in our communication. Kernels of hardwiring that can't be nurtured away. In humans it would be analogous to the universal laws of linguistics.

It was just something to think about. Next time I'll just link the study.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> And all this time, I thought the language hierarchy, and it's correspondence with math/logic categories, was the real theory. UG is kind of an irrelevant side point, sort of an argument between "strong" vs "weak".

Type 0 - Recursivey enumerable. Type 1 - Context-sensitive. Type 2 - Context- free. Type 3 - Regular.

As all languages fall into one of those 4 categories, and no other (so far), that seems to me to be THE definition of "following the rules" to an extreme.

Once you've identified which category a language is in, the word order and semantics are pretty damned irrelevant, as any experience computer programmer can attest (Java vs C++, Python vs Ruby, etc).

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm writing a robust parser for English using the principles of construction grammar. In contrast with Chomsky, CG has as its chief characteristic a pairing between form and semantics. We learn that "bird" means the concept of bird. We learn idioms the same way: "he's a cool customer" means the concept of a person calm in pressure situations.

One is indeed _lucky_ if born into a culture with patterns between these pairings.

In my opinion there is no universal grammar and if my parser eventually works for English, it will have completely different construction rules for each targeted natural language beyond English.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wish I knew more about this subject.

For one thing, if we're looking for a biological basis of language, what makes subject-verb order the right level to look on? Why not look at the fact that language is arranged into subjects and verbs as the relevant layer?

</comment><comment><USER27> >Human languages are far more complex than any animal communication system we're aware of...

may be we need to spend some time out of the anthropocentric box. There is a whole world outside of it.

</comment><comment><USER28> Language is a recursive process, and (according to GEB) a property of recursive processes tends to be wild unpredictability the deeper you go.

Just thinking aloud.

</comment><comment><USER29> Chomsky proposes only two rules: Merge and Move.

</comment><comment><USER30> Sounds like languages aren't manufactured by consent ;-)

Sorry - I couldn't resist ;-)

<comment><USER31> The phrase "Manufacturing Consent" has nothing to do with universal grammar. It is about the factors that create a news environment that favors specific interests.

<comment><USER30> Yes, I fully know that. I read Chomsky's politics far more than linguistics. I was making a joke where the analogy was that:

A: Languages were the 5 factors of media control cover in MC. B: "Consent" was a common set of language principles representing Chomsky's linguistics.

Too much of a reach?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Generative grammar, verb-noun order disproves?

Against Bayesian analysis, "Wittgenstein's language games predisposed to play we are," universal grammar better describes.

English still Yoda speak is.</comment>


Google Web Toolkit  - <AUTHOR>

I have recently been playing around with Google Web Toolkit and frameworks built on top of that (GWT-Ext and MyGWT in particular). I am curious to hear from anyone who has done something real with these frameworks and what impression it left on them. <comment><USER2> I've been working with it a little over a year. Our startup is based heavily on it and I believe it to be our "secret weapon" relative to our competitors. Its just that damn good.

Popular I would say it is not, probably because it is java based and just about everyone hates Java. Once you get over the learning curve and negative Java bias I think most will discover it is worth it though.

GWT 1.5 is stable enough in the trunk, I actually recommend using that even though the RC is not out yet (probably late summer at the earliest I've read). There are instructions on how to build it on the GWT site, its very easy. And then you can use Java 5 syntax which helps out greatly when dealing a lot with RPCs.

Also check out gwt-dnd, its a fantastic library which enables drag and drop. Its leaps and bounds ahead any of the other drag drop libraries, definitely recommend it. Fred is the guy in charge of it and he is a great resource: <http://code.google.com/p/gwt-dnd/>

I've been using GWT Widget Library for animations. Its just a simple wrapper around Scriptaculous libraries. It has some other functionality too which I have not explored. Animations of existing widgets are super easy though, and can make your UI far more dynamic.

Haven't visited GWT-Ext in a while, but last I checked it was coming along pretty well. As far as drag/drop functionality goes though, you will be able to build more custom implementations with gwt-dnd. GWT-Ext just seemed a bit "vanilla" to me since it looks a lot like a lot of other Ext sites out there. We just preferred something that felt more custom, but I guess thats just a matter of preference.

If you code in Eclipse, I'd recommend checking out GWT Designer plugin from Instantiations. Unfortunately its like $30, but if you end up doing lots of coding it will be well worth it. I use it to mock up layouts initially, and its also great at handling RPC code generation. There is a new free GWT plugin for netbeans 6, but its not quite the level of GWT Designer yet.

GWT is great though because it is so modular. As new libraries come out you can just mix and match to get the widgets you want. Try that in native javascript on a large scale and you can quickly get a headache..</comment>


If the moon were only 1 pixel: a scale model of the solar system - <AUTHOR> http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html <comment><USER2> Original HN post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7341690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7341690)

</comment><comment><USER3> This would be cool if I could actually scroll down to move sideways. My mouse's side scrolling is terrible and dragging the scroll bar skips a lot. :(

<comment><USER4> It would be a bit more fun if I could read the comments without having to scroll. After ten minutes of scrolling to reach Jupiter, and being about 1/4 of the way through the solar system, I could not keep scrolling. I got the concept and was not ready to invest another half hour.

<comment><USER5> Read the comments without having to scroll: view- source:[http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.h...](http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The close distance between Venus and the Earth reminds me of a proposal to use a Saturn V to do a 1 year manned flyby of Venus: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_Flyby#Apollo_Appli...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_Flyby#Apollo_Applications_Program)

Basically it would use a repurposed S-IVB like Skylab. Skylab has a (relatively deserved) poor reputation, but it was spacious as hell: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awe6vOXURpY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awe6vOXURpY) (I wonder if Pete Conrad, seen running around the station in that video, had seen _2001: A Space Odyssey_ )

</comment><comment><USER7> It is incredible how far voyager 1 has gone, that would be 3 times more scrolling, according to Nasa's website it's 19 billion km away

[http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/](http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/)

<comment><USER8> Yeah. Voyager 1 blows my mind. I wonder about some future travel tours people will be taking where they take a faster than light tour bus to go see V1 continuing on its trip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Since someone brought it up, here are the radius of each planet rounded to nearest hundredth, with the first row provided by NASA, and second row used in the OP's visualization. Just for those interested. (Really appreciate Crito's formatting suggestion below.)

      MERCURY VENUS EARTH MOON MARS JUPITER SATURN URANUS NEPTUNE PLUTO
      0.38    0.95  1     0.27 0.53 11.21   09.45  4.01   3.88    0.19
      0.33    1.33  1     0.33 0.67 13.33   11.33  4.67   4.67    0.33

<comment><USER6> Slightly formatted (you can put spaces in front of lines to fixed-width them):

      MERCURY  VENUS  EARTH  MOON  MARS  JUPITER  SATURN  URANUS  NEPTUNE  PLUTO
      0.38     0.95   1      0.27  0.53  11.21    09.45   4.01    3.88     0.19
      0.33     1.33   1      0.33  0.67  13.33    11.33   4.67    4.67     0.33

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's neat, but Earth is 3 pixels wide and Venus is 4 pixels wide. Last I checked Nasa claims Venus is about 95% the size of Earth.

</comment><comment><USER11> Also see: [http://www.distancetomars.com/](http://www.distancetomars.com/)

</comment><comment><USER12> That was enjoyable. Save some of the odd "nothingness" talk, it was a fantastic demonstration of the freaking scale that cosmological physics takes. Think, and people have modeled these scales so well, it's hard to freaking believe.

</comment><comment><USER13> nice page.</comment>