Acura Designer: Buttons Like a Cassette Player

Are buttons as endangered as the device that used to play your favorite mix tape?

Yes, says a top designer, who likens “button mode to the cassette player that stayed forever” in vehicles’ interiors.

“(Eliminating buttons) opens up a lot of structure in that center stack,” Dave Marek, global creative director-Acura, says in an interview. “There’s still a lot of hardware from the HMI (human-machine-interface) system, but it frees up design to thin out the center console. You get rid of some of that architecture behind it.”

But button fans need not revolt just yet. Marek doesn’t believe switchgear will go away soon, but rather coexist for the time being with touchscreens.

“There’s some people (that) freak out – ‘Where’s my volume knob?’” he says of taking physical means of control away from those who may be eager to hold onto them.

Acura’s sister brand Honda has received criticism from industry-watchers for removing the volume knob in its newest models, the HR-V and Pilot CUVs and Civic small cars. In those vehicles, volume is controlled via a touch-sensitive panel adjacent to the touchscreen. In models equipped with steering-wheel controls, a small, touch-sensitive pad on the wheel also can be used. Users can slide their fingertip up and down the pad or tap it at its top or bottom to increase or decrease volume.

Marek believes in the near future, the auto-interior HMI will look like that in an Airbus.

“They have the complete (package): it looks like a giant iPhone, but then they have analog gauges,” he says.

The new Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger plane, has multiple large screens in the cockpit, at least eight central screens, surrounded by physical controllers.

Such a setup could ease drivers into an eventual button-less interior, says Jon Ikeda, senior vice president-Acura U.S. and a former brand designer.

“It’s a transitional state right now. All of a sudden you take it all away and people feel like they’re missing something,” he says.

Although his company may push the boundaries of design, Ikeda says customer concerns about complicating a process that never used to be complicated are valid.

“I’ll tell you, when you have to push a bunch of flatscreens to swipe for volume, when I just used to turn a knob and the volume goes down…what’s the balance?” he says.

Ikeda acknowledges the standard for interior feature control is being set by the mobile-device industry, not the auto industry.

Picking up his phone, he says, “Whatever is easiest to do here, (car buyers) expect the same thing in their vehicle.”

For now, Marek says Acura is doing a “ton of study” on the user interface, trying to figure out, “How do you get enough people to understand to make (a device’s) usage simple?

“And how much do you direct the zone? Does the HUD become the navi or (show) the speed? Or is the micrometer reserved just for vehicle information (rather than) speed? That part of it is always ongoing.”

Acura’s future interior ideas can be seen in the Precision concept car, which debuted at the 2016 North American International Auto Show.

In that model, a touchpad suspended on the center stack controls a wide and curved center screen. The car’s HMI system also is said to scan occupants upon entry to select each person’s preferred audio, map and vehicle-performance settings.

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