New Is Not (Always) Better

The advertisement of the new Volkswagen T-ROC highlights variety of technological features as differentiators and advantages. Among them are touch controls on the steering wheel. This definitely LOOKS cool.

At the same time Ars Technica reports that "After complaints, Volkswagen will ditch capacitive steering wheel controls".

Touch controls work for screens. Period. I have not seen any other implementation of touch which trumps old school mechanical. Be it mice with touch scroll-wheel emulation or the Bose glasses with touch-based volume or the car steering wheel. Or even the original iPods.

Capacitive touch works in laboratory conditions. But it breaks so easily in real life. Drops of water and gloves are the most typical issues rendering capacitive touch inoperative. Of course this is the only technology today which works for touch screens, so there is no alternative. And we basically know we should take gloves off before operating a phone and that it does not work when wet. 

On the other hand car's steering wheel controls must work in all conditions and replacing good old mechanical buttons with capacitive touch is just stupid. No reward and lots of potential issues. The touch-based volume control is also the only annoying feature of the otherwise brilliant Bose audio glasses. When I run in Summer there is always sweat to distract the touch-based volume slider. In Autumn there is rain which renders the volume control inoperative. And in Winter I am typically wearing gloves. And have to take a glove off to change the volume.

I can, to some extent, understand why it was tempting for glasses designers to opt for touch (smaller footprint, less complexity). But car designers? They should stay away from breaking the user experience as much as possible. And the buttons vs touch bill of materials difference is negligible in a car.

The bottom line is newer is not always better. Actually recently I have had a lot of evidence the new designs are either worse or not worth the price tag. Don't be afraid to buy second-hand or factory - refurbished an older generation device. New is not always better. It can be the opposite.