- Kia’s interior design chief believes buttons are necessary for ‘certain functions’.
- He said burying features deep in menus is “bad for everyone.”
- The brand has no plans to eliminate buttons in future vehicles.
Some automakers went a bit too far by overloading their cars with touchscreens and removing many physical controls. Kia wasn’t one of them. While the automaker’s latest vehicles have large screens, buttons remain for core functions like HVAC and media. And that won’t change anytime soon.
“There are certain features that you have to find right away and that you don’t want to mess up, so we keep them physical,” said Jochen Paesen, Kia’s head of interior design, in an interview with Coach.
Photo by: Kia
The automaker has learned that accessing a feature that requires three taps in a menu is “bad for everyone,” Paesen said. He credited Chinese automakers for bringing new ideas and technologies to cars, but added that it is important that companies not only add endless features but also be useful.
“The key is finding the balance between creating a certain level of warmth and ambition,” he said, and that means exploring new possibilities as technology allows and experimenting with future Kia vehicles.
Car manufacturers admit: mistakes have been made
Photo by: Kia
It’s not often that automakers admit they messed up and reverse course, but the dials were different. In recent months, Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, Volkswagen, Skoda and others have expressed support for maintaining or restoring physical control in their vehicles.
Touchscreens require drivers to take their eyes off the road while scrolling through menus, which is dangerous. Capacitive buttons aren’t much better, but car manufacturers are even pulling back on their use, like VW.
The demand for real buttons and switches among consumers is so great that Hyundai is starting to wonder whether cars even need large screens. Not doing so gives designers more freedom to create unique-looking interiors that are more than just two large tablets on the dashboard.
Taking Motor1s: Kia’s decision to keep buttons for core functions was the right idea and helped the brand stand out from those who simply followed the trends of a few. Consumers have been asking for buttons in cars for years, and some automakers are reversing course, with Kia leading the way and refining the button-filled instrument panel.
#Kia #refuses #kill #buttons #functions