# Consumer Reports: "Usability"



## bwilson4web

I was somewhat surprised to "Usability" in the September 2020, Consumer Reports shown as terrible. So I have an online account and found this:

*Usability*​​_In the Model 3, only the seat controls, turn signals, and window switches are placed and operate traditionally. All of the other controls are managed through the large screen . . ._​
Reading the review, it was the absence of traditional switches and knobs that defines "Usability." So do they carry a cell phone with a keyboard or rotary dial?

I realize some are unable to operate in a world without enough button, dials, and knobs. But that is not a problem for the young.

Bob Wilson


----------



## slacker775

These sorts of gripes about the M3 really are quite annoying. They do seem similar yet longer lasting to the ‘omg the iPhone doesn’t have a physical keyboard??? Who could ever use that??’ cries from 2007. I haven’t had any issues with the touchscreen and find having a gazilion physical knobs and buttons to be quite annoying. Probably the only issue I ever really see with the touchscreen is when I’m leaving the house and the wife is messing with the ‘radio’ and I go over neighborhood speed bumps. A small price to pay IMHO. 

When I’ve been in a rental in recent years, all the buttons and knobs has actually been a bit overwhelming and needlessly complex.


----------



## NR4P

Being objective, it takes a few weeks to learn the touchscreen UI's. The car is so advanced we see people come to this site for help with features and finding the controls. 

I see weekly posts at this site with charging questions and endless posts on range loss. Or which charger do I get for home?

Thats all usability. Lets acknowledge we all have learning curves. Its very advanced technology.


----------



## MelindaV

NR4P said:


> Being objective, it takes a few weeks to learn the touchscreen UI's.


I would not say that is universally correct for all new owners. I knew where settings were and how to get around the UI immediately (but i am also the type who will download a new gadget's owners manual and read thru it before buying whatever the gadget is)
And even without that, it is organized pretty intuitively and anything needed while driving is done with the steering wheel settings or on the main screen (bottom bar or left pane)



> I see weekly posts at this site with charging questions and endless posts on range loss. Or which charger do I get for home?


if you go to any car model owners forum, you will see just as many reoccurring questions. Maybe not on the EV related stuff, but traditional cars that you would think have the same general controls that have been around for decades, but new owners will always have questions or comments/complaints about something functioning differently than their last car or from what they expect.


----------



## SP's Tesla

I really like the controls being consolidated into the main screen. My only gripe to this would be the glovebox. Seems like a traditional latch or even a push-to-open latch would be simpler and easier to access.

Sean


----------



## JasonF

I'll be honest and say that the one thing missing with a single touch screen is you don't get that muscle memory you have when the car has buttons and knobs - where you can adjust the music or volume or the climate control without even looking at it.

But there is also a critical mass point where if the buttons are too many, or placed badly or too close together, you have to look at them anyway - worse yet, you might actually have to _read_ them to see which one to push, which takes your eye off the road even longer. When buttons are done badly, they're actually _more_ distracting, because they basically all look the same.

And on top of that you have some automakers who make misguided attempts at transferring some controls to touch screen, but not all. And those often require going through multiple pages of stuff on a tiny screen, which is even more distracting.

So really, all Tesla did was go beyond the trend of those automakers and their misguided touch screens, and instead put in just one screen to control everything, and then focus on refining the UI so its as non-distracting as possible. In the end, the screen that people feared would cause more distracted driving probably attracts _less_ attention in the long run.


----------



## lance.bailey

Back in 1986 or so when I started studying and being interested in UI design - or as it was called back in those days "Computer Human Interface" or "Human Factors in Computer Systems", I remember a talk at SIGCHI 1987 where the speaker compared using a computer system to driving a car. That even though cars are all different we can all get in and drive without too much difficulty - the signals, pedals, steering and adjustments are all in about the same location and operate the same way. We don't need training to drive a Ford versus a Chevrolet the same way we need training to use the new HR system (or in those days Word vs WP vs Publisher).

Fast forward 3 decades and cars are still pretty much the same, while people freak out because Microsoft introduced a ribbon task bar or Apple ditched the home button. I don't get it either @MelindaV but there is still a lot of business in teaching people "we now click here instead of there" and still no business in "how to drive a Ford vs a Chevrolet" business out there.

Enter the Tesla Model 3.

About the only thing the same when you first sit down in a Model 3 is the steering wheel. Oh wait, there are also pedals, whew, but what do you mean I only drive with one of them?! Even opening the door takes a few lessons, at least more than my mother-in-law has had, for she still grabs and pulls the emerg handle to open the door.

Consumers reports - which I read in the 70s and 80s - is very good at validating the familiarity of a product. Even the movie section was based on reader ratings not actual reviews. What is popular or familiar will get better ratings. My Dad used to read Consumers to have flaws in product identified for him. He said that if there is a flaw (the kettle doesn't actually boil water only close to boiling) or a safety issue (the kettle boiled water, sparked madly and set the test kitchen on fire) then CR will likely spot the flaw. Everything else from CR is subjective, a theory borne out when I started down the audiophile path and reading reviews of stereo equipment in CR and comparing them to my ears (Good lord, you need to actually lift the tone arm at the end of the record? What were Linn/Oracle/Michell/et al thinking?).

The Model 3 flies in the face of that familiarity which CR rates and ranks highly. The Model 3 flies in the face of that ability to get out of your Ford or Chevrolet sit down in the 3 and drive away without a second thought. The Model 3 flies down the road like none other, but that is not what CR is rating.

Until the Model 3 and other cars get to the point of familiarity where we all know how to turn off/on/adjust things intuitively CR will not be the fan-boy of the Model 3. As @NR4P said we regularly get questions about how to do this or how to adjust that.

As long as Model 3 usage questions remain a presence on the forums, they indicate that we have not yet reached familiarity in the "Computer Human Interface" of the Model 3 and until we reach that familiarity publications like CR will find flaw and issue with the Model 3.


----------



## MelindaV

lance.bailey said:


> bout the only thing the same when you first sit down in a Model 3 is the steering wheel. Oh wait, there are also pedals,


maybe it also didnt bother me as much going to the Model 3 because my prior cars had minimal buttons. first car I had had a couple heat levers, wiper switch, head lights (highbeams on the floor) and turn signals and that was about it. Next 'modern' car had not that many more. So i've never depended on having 50 separate switches/buttons/knobs (although I did find the lack of that 3rd pedal to take some getting used to)


----------



## lance.bailey

yeah, first non-manual tranny I've ever bought. Followed by a second in the hybrid - am I becoming old? Do I need to start listening to opera? Do I need to stop drinking prune juice for just the taste?


----------



## msjulie

What strikes me as the cheap-way-out is rear seat heater controls. The touch screen is reachable by front seat driver/passenger but the rear seat folks need to ask the driver to adjust their seat heating settings. That's lame since the rear seat folks in my car, when present, are all adults so no parent/kid excuse here. 

And I'm still not a fan of the auto wipers cause they fail to function properly too often - smart stalk like on the S would not clutter up the clean look of the 3 in my view. Otherwise things seem to work well enough


----------



## JasonF

MelindaV said:


> maybe it also didnt bother me as much going to the Model 3 because my prior cars had minimal buttons. first car I had had a couple heat levers, wiper switch, head lights (highbeams on the floor) and turn signals and that was about it. Next 'modern' car had not that many more. So i've never depended on having 50 separate switches/buttons/knobs (although I did find the lack of that 3rd pedal to take some getting used to)


I would venture a guess that people who have always bought one particular brand of car would absolutely hate the Model 3 touch screen. Because those people have years or decades of muscle memory to overcome.


----------



## lance.bailey

Save for the Model 3, I have only bought Volvos since 1991. Had a 1989 245 from 1991 until 2015 and the muscle memory was scary accurate, but no problem here driving the model 3 and transitioning to the touch screen.


----------



## SAronian

Similarly for the Model Y under "Don't Like" they note "no real blind spot warning." I would rather have a car that steers me away from a collision than one that signals a warning.


----------



## JasonF

SAronian said:


> Similarly for the Model Y under "Don't Like" they note "no real blind spot warning." I would rather have a car that steers me away from a collision than one that signals a warning.


Correction: No blind spot warning _that allows you to change lanes blindly_. Because that's what most "traditional" blind spot warnings do, allow the driver to just start moving over blindly, and the car will scream at them if someone is there.


----------



## AutopilotFan

lance.bailey said:


> Back in 1986 or so when I started studying and being interested in UI design - or as it was called back in those days "Computer Human Interface" or "Human Factors in Computer Systems", I remember a talk at SIGCHI 1987 where the speaker compared using a computer system to driving a car. That even though cars are all different we can all get in and drive without too much difficulty - the signals, pedals, steering and adjustments are all in about the same location and operate the same way. We don't need training to drive a Ford versus a Chevrolet the same way we need training to use the new HR system (or in those days Word vs WP vs Publisher).


I remember that talk. In 1990, I got a master's degree in Engineering Design -- which is the same thing as "computer-human interaction" (the "CHI" in "SIGCHI").

If I were to perform usability testing on the Model 3, I would observe what Consumer Reports observed. But if I repeated that usability test with an experienced driver -- someone who had been driving their Model 3 for months -- I'm sure I'd observe what we all understand.

A better analogy might be early smartphones. Do you remember the big argument between those used to phones with keyboards, like Blackberrys? People thought the iPhone was hard to use because of its on-screen keyboards. How could anyone type at a decent speed with no touch feedback? But the on-screen keyboards were smart in ways that people didn't realized, and they could use predictive algorithms to guess what word you were typing and let you select it in ways that physical keyboards can't.

I think we are in that transition with cars. Newer cars are coming with larger screens and fewer hard controls. Over time this gives folks a shorter learning curve to Model 3-type UIs. It won't be too many years before people will ask why we ever wanted all those knobs and dials. And they'll also wonder why anyone objected to the idea of driving a smartphone.


----------



## NR4P

MelindaV said:


> I would not say that is universally correct for all new owners. I knew where settings were and how to get around the UI immediately (but i am also the type who will download a new gadget's owners manual and read thru it before buying whatever the gadget is)
> And even without that, it is organized pretty intuitively and anything needed while driving is done with the steering wheel settings or on the main screen (bottom bar or left pane)
> 
> if you go to any car model owners forum, you will see just as many reoccurring questions. Maybe not on the EV related stuff, but traditional cars that you would think have the same general controls that have been around for decades, but new owners will always have questions or comments/complaints about something functioning differently than their last car or from what they expect.


I never stated Universal(ly). Comments were in general.

But every time I offer a chance for a family member to test drive the car they don't know how to go forward or backwards.

And how many times do first time riders ask "how do I open the door"?

If you rent a 100 different cars you are very likely to know these things without asking the car rental agent for help.

Thats a fair comparison. Door opening, forward and reverse are not Generally Self Evident.

No complaining here just been objective with UI/UX design and testing experiences. EVs are a new experience.


----------



## JasonF

NR4P said:


> But every time I offer a chance for a family member to test drive the car they don't know how to go forward or backwards.


This is also true with some ICE models that use unusual transmission selector knobs now. And some of the more unusual designs don't have a traditional selector at all - they use one method to go park-reverse-drive, and separate controls for neutral and low gears. So the "changing UI" aspect of phones _is_ finally starting to bleed over to things like cars.

But yes, the Tesla _is_ far enough from the established norm that when I occasionally go to this hand car wash, or Firestone to rotate the tires, I try to convince them to let me drive the car into the bay. Usually they agree because they know looking at it that they're going to end up coming back to the waiting room looking for me to ask how to move it.


----------



## TomT

And cars with bizarre shifters like this also universally get bad scores for usability... You shouldn't need to look in the user's manual to figure out how to put a car in drive or reverse.



JasonF said:


> This is also true with some ICE models that use unusual transmission selector knobs now. And some of the more unusual designs don't have a traditional selector at all - they use one method to go park-reverse-drive, and separate controls for neutral and low gears. So the "changing UI" aspect of phones _is_ finally starting to bleed over to things like cars.


----------

