![]() You still have to look at the damn screen to know what you’re selecting. This doesn’t solve the problem of keeping your eyes on the road, because despite Mazda suggesting “navigating by feel,” I don’t see how you could do that for almost anything I tried to do. One physical control that acts as a mechanism to navigate options on a screen is not the same as, say, having tactile knobs for volume or HVAC controls or whatever. Don’t be distracted! Screens are not great for most car functions, really, and I very much prefer physical controls. Now, conceptually, sure, this all makes sense. We’ve done studies that have shown navigating the infotainment by feel through the commander knob helps minimize driving distractions and keeping the driver’s eyes focused on the road.” “ Mazda’s philosophy is to minimize driving distractions. The system is so bafflingly awkward I had to reach out to Mazda to get a sense of what the logic was behind this choice. When I was using CarPlay on the CX-30, I found myself instinctively poking fecklessly at the screen over and over again, and then, dejected, having to spin that knob around until I was able to do whatever the hell it was I was trying to do, a process that invariably took far longer than the quick poke I had attempted. When it started to work again her face lit up with unashamed relief and joy. Her enjoyment of her car – which she is very fond of – is heavily dependent on CarPlay working. And let me tell you, it not working on her car was a big deal. For many people, the manufacturer’s UX just doesn’t matter, because they’d rather listen to music or navigate via the UX they already know, the one on their phones.Īs a bit of anecdotal evidence, a good friend of mine is a Honda Fit owner, and I recently had to help her perform some arcane system reset on her car so her CarPlay would work again. Ruining the way a driver interacts with CarPlay (and Android Auto) is a big deal, because there’s a huge number of drivers out there who are only interested in interacting with their car’s infotainment via such systems. Today, though, it is, and I think it’s pretty clear why. It’s like some UX designer at Mazda was playing a lot of Tempest and thought, hey, why can’t I control everything in my car the same way as I shoot squiggles with my yellow spiky thing here? Now, a good number of years ago, before touchscreens became commonplace, this sort of interface wasn’t that uncommon. Instead, you have a large knob between the front seats, surrounded by a few buttons, and it’s via this that all interactions with that screen must happen. Here’s how the Mazda UX system works: you have a wide screen atop the dash, and you can touch that screen all you want, point to icons or symbols or commands, but all you’re going to get for your poking efforts are fingerprints on the screen. I can’t help but think that the CX-30, which is pretty competitive in most other ways, would have done a lot better if only it had a UX that didn’t make people want to put their fist through the dashboard all the time. For the first half of 2022, it was ranked eighth among small SUVs/crossovers in sales: It’s not like nobody is buying the CX-30, but it’s not like it’s doing that great, either. And I do think this has to be causing Mazda at least some trouble. I don’t want Mazda to see this as an attack it’s more like an intervention you’d have for a friend who’s generally great, but is making some sort of bad life decision that is clearly causing them trouble. I think this choice is precisely the sort of dealbreaker for many buyers that would push them to a similar car, like a Honda HR-V or a Nissan Kicks or maybe a bit bigger to a Toyota RAV4. The problem is Mazda’s choice to have a center-stack infotainment screen that is not touch, and can only be controlled via a knob and some buttons. I was planning on doing a micro-review of the Mazda CX-30, but as I was testing the car and gathering my thoughts about it, I found myself confronted with something frustrating, over and over, to the point where I realized that I need to write a different sort of article about this car, because it’s not that common to find a generally good car hamstrung by one trait, especially something that can be so easily solved.
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