Hyundai also wants to return to physical buttons

Hyundai is one of the few manufacturers that has not completely given up on physical buttons in their cars. Even in the most recent news, in fact, including the latest ones Ioniq 5 e Tucsonit is possible to find a fair number of buttons in the cockpit.

The reason for this peculiarity was explained by the company in new research conducted by its internal American division dedicated to design, which demonstrated that people today tend to want meno touchscreen compared to the past.

In-depth research

The study was conducted by the US branch of Hyundai Designbased in California, United States, and was analyzed in detail by the magazine Korea JoongAng Daily.

In the analysis, HDNA vice president Ha Hak-soo admitted that Hyundai was initially fascinated by Tesla’s revolutionary infotainment, with everything incorporated into one large screen.

However, the South Korean company then realized that cramming access to almost all functions into one display would not be the best solution. In this regard, Ha Hak-soo explained that:

“As we added integrated (infotainment) screens into our vehicles, we also tried putting touchscreen-based controls, but people didn’t prefer them.”

“When we did the test with our focus group, we realized that people get stressed, annoyed and angry when they want to control something in a difficult moment, but they can’t.”

A question of “climate”

According to the company, as stated in the same document, using a touchscreen can be particularly difficult when trying to set the temperature in the passenger compartment.

For this particular function, in fact, it would be better to maintain knobs e physical buttons that are always in the same place, so that drivers can rely on muscle memory to keep their eyes on the road:

We’re not entirely against touchscreens, but some controls should be easily accessible. If Hyundai were to do the research again on a global scale, the result would likely be the same, as common sense suggests that an all-touchscreen layout is not the ideal solution.

Photo at: Hyundai

Hyundai Santa Fe, the interior