“It is really important that steering, acceleration, braking, gear shifting, lights, wipers, all that stuff which enables you to actually drive the car, should be tactile,” says Kyffin, who once worked on smart controls for Dutch electronics company Philips. “From an interaction design perspective, the shift to touchscreens strips away the natural affordances that made driving intuitive,” he says.
“Traditional buttons, dials, and levers had perceptible and actionable qualities—you could feel for them, adjust them without looking, and rely on muscle memory. A touchscreen obliterates this,” says Kyffin. “Now, you must look, think, and aim to adjust the temperature or volume. That’s a huge cognitive load, and completely at odds with how we evolved to interact with driving machines while keeping our attention on the road.”
— Read on www.wired.com/story/why-car-brands-are-finally-switching-back-to-buttons/