Lets Compare Radio Interfaces in Two Different Cars.
This is the radio interface in my Mother's 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan.
Now, many people will likely prefer the Dodge stereo over the RX-8, and that's fine. An LCD touch screen has many benefits that hard physical buttons just compete with, including custom arrangement of buttons, future firmware updates, and generally being able to perform more functions.
There's one thing that LCD panels will never have, and that's tactile response. It's very important that a car's sound system be as eyes-off as possible, because, well, you're driving. The more you can comfortably do without looking, the better. Now some would argue that after knowing the car well enough you'll be able to do anything you need without looking because you just know where things are, but what if you hit a bump while trying to switch back to 70's on 7 (cause you're old enough to like that sort of thing), and you accidentally switch menus? You're not going to know you switched menus because you can't see it. You won't be able to navigate back to the menu shown because you don't know where the buttons on the new menu are (because you don't even know which secondary menu you're on). You won't be able to obsessively adjust the equalizer (if you're me) because you'd have to flip through 3-4 menus to do so. And see that Direct Tune button? That goes into a menu where you type in the radio station by frequency, as in [1]-[0]-[6]-[.]-[5]-[enter], which takes a lot of time and looking.
Of course, none of that matters if you're stopped; no, being stopped at a light doesn't count. For the most part, though, you'll need to access most of the radio's functions without paying much attention to the radio, and I consider that fairly self-explanatory (you did go through drivers' ed, didn't you?).
But even beyond just the basic format, I think Mazda did some excellent stuff with the layout. If you notice, each button is different (at least on one side). Of course, there's the main volume knob (also the power button) in the middle, and 3 radio preset buttons on each side of that. There's a reason for this, and that is that it's difficult to differentiate more than 3 or so identical buttons in a row. In other words, if you have 12 radio preset buttons in a row, it's very difficult to quickly feel out the 5th button. So by splitting the buttons in rows of 3, two of which have bumps on them, you can very easily hit any one of the three without looking.
The seek/scan rockers are easily to feel out because they're curved differently than the rest of the surface, the tuning knob sticks out clearly on the left, as does the EQ/options knob on the right, and the menus are simple enough to work without looking at all. Even the mode buttons at the top are two-button rockers so that the user can (again) easily differentiate all the buttons.
So back to the LCD touch panel capabilities, what does that LCD screen system do above and beyond the RX-8's simple hard button system? You can watch DVD's on it, at least when you're parked, which really isn't all that useful for most. Also, all the extra light from the LCD screen can really hurt your night time vision.
So What's My Point?
I hate the Dodge Grand Caravan. More importantly, I want to show that there are many small things in cars that often may seem better or cooler and otherwise innocuous, but could instead be harmful.
I also believe, and this is one of my blog's founding principles, that many car companies are willing to make bad decisions (like using an touchscreen based radio system) in order to sell cars. Yeah, those options are cool. Yeah, they seem advantageous. Yeah, you can brag about them. So it sells. Same with colored gauges...
Car Gauge Colors Comparison
So what's the difference. They all show about the same information (I do like having an oil pressure gauge, but it's very unlikely to ever be needed. The different cars have different priorities; I'd argue that the RX-8 has the sportiest gauge since the tachometer is large and centered, the Eos is neutral, and the Dodge is the least sporty since it doesn't seem to think the tach is as important. But here are two more bits of detail.
1. The RX-8 is the only one of the three that has the gauges setup for racing. By that I mean that the gauges will all point straight up at running conditions (running temperature and oil pressure). This way, the driver doesn't need to look at his/her gauges in order to see that the car is running properly and not hot or losing oiling. The fuel gauge is positioned differently than the others in order to keep the driver from confusing that gauge as being another "up is running conditions" gauge. Also, when racing, the engine will run 6-9k rpms, making that needle near straight up. Finally, the speed is digital, so once again, won't be confused for a dial gauge (numerical speed is not important when racing).
Who cares? Not many people and that's fair. Then again, why orient the gauges like the Dodge's? No reason at all. So might as well go with the one way that makes sense. Again, does it matter? Not for most drivers, but it's nice to know that even small aspects of a car are so well worked through.
2. Gauge color. Gauge color matters as gauges need to be seen. During the day, it should be bright, during the night, it shouldn't interfere with your night time vision. The Dodge has a white-faced gauge cluster, which is great in the day, but at night, the light blue-white backlighting can be VERY bothersome. At dim settings, numbers can't be seen clearly, and at brighter settings, it always seems to get in the way, and I can never seem to be able to find a happy medium.
An old discovery shows that the human eye sees less red out of the sides of the eyes than any other color, so night vision is less effected by a red light than other colors. Cockpits in airplanes are often strict red because of this. Violets pretty good too. It's very difficult to get a light blue/white gauge to not be too bright or too dim because of our anatomy. The violet/red gauge cluster in the Eos is really great and never gets in your way, even at brightest settings, and is very clear even fairly dim. The RX-8 would normally be too bright, except...
These are the night time settings for the RX-8. A little bit of soft white keeps the LCD numbers clear, but the red keeps out of your vision, and the blue glow is a purple-y blue The blue isn't my choice, but it doesn't really hurt much either.
And Back to the Point
So car companies may offer cool looking gauges to sell cars, and people love them. Most of the best selling cars (Toyota/Lexus, GM, Kia/Hyundai, Honda...) have very overly-bright and colorful gauge clusters because most people love stuff like that. I believe that Ford now even has color-changing gauges available on the stock vehicle.
Companies will always do things like this because it's the easiest and cheapest way to increase sales. They often will cave under pressure to sell cars and knowingly hurt their products. Unfortunately, knowledge of many of those things can be hard to come by for those that aren't really seeking it, and often sound like silly elitism. It's often small things like this that causes divides between truly quality cars from those that sell very well. People often love cars for things like cool touch panel radios and colorful gauges, and I'd agree with them if they weren't a bad thing from an objective view.
Many people would further argue things like "my Civic has super bright blue gauges and I've never felt like it was a problem for me" and that gets pretty tough to argue. Hopefully, this will always be true, but little things like this make little differences, from allowing people the vision and attention to miss potholes instead of getting flat tires. Mostly I hope to make people aware of marketing decisions that override the decisions of engineers and designers and ergonomists. I have a difficult time respecting companies who hurt their vehicles primary purpose in order to sell more.
