I don't know what you are on about but I put it down to being unfamiliar with the car.
I've driven a Tesla model 3 for 3 years and the context sensitive buttons in the steering wheel are too notch.
Want to change the windscreen wiper speed, press button on the left lever, roll the wheel.
I have driven Hyundai, BYD, Nissan, Toyota and Xpeng cars recently, all new models and all have buttons and dials overload all dialled to the 'auto' setting. What's the point.
I'm all for sensible buttons but they need to work within the car over all UI.
A Toyota Corolla has 10! Buttons in each side of the steering wheel. I need to take my eyes of the road to get the right one.
The one thing that I think should be improved in all cars is that I want to use the AC auto settings but still have the air come out of the bottom vents and not into my face only.
Let's say I don't agree (and indeed I don't) - why?
My argument would be that 'tools' should be designed solely with the purpose of enabling them to work in the most effective way possible. That is often not immediately intuitive at all. Go open up e.g. Unreal Engine and you're going to struggle to do literally anything. Maybe after an hour you might figure out how to put a square on the map. The same is true of something like Maya or any other really powerful tool.
Obviously things should not be unnecessarily hostile, but it often simply turns out that there are 'revolutionary' ways to do things that weren't really done in the past, and so somebody coming from that past will often find themselves out of their domain, at least for a few moments until they learn and/or have things explained.
We’ve had cars for over a hundred years. Go drive a 1990s-era car and you’ll see how intuitive and tactile the controls are. Everything added since then are basically frills and conveniences.
A car is not a 3D modeling or game world building system. They’re functionally much simpler and don’t really benefit from added control complexity.
What he's arguing for is more complexity for sake of 'intuitiveness.' A zillion buttons for every possible action is far more intuitive than knowing you need to interact with this knob or that in this way or that, but it's certainly not less complex. It's akin to when Microsoft decided to adopt the ribbon styling for various software they develop where now the UI is cluttered with a zillion scarcely decipherable icons piled into layers upon layers of tabs.
A zillion buttons aren’t really necessary in cars. Niche functions you use once in a blue moon can stay on screens. But the basic functions of a car, like turning signals, lights, or gear shifting, require tactile, obvious, well-known interfaces. I was taught to drive on a Toyota, and my dad’s car at that time was a Ford. I did not need to re-learn how to control the basic functions of the car; even though there were some differences as to where some things are located, the controls are immediately obvious. If I get a rental Kia or Volkswagen or Nissan, I’ll be able to immediately drive it even if I’ve never driven one. But if I get a rental stalkless stickless Tesla, I’d be completely lost and need extra training.
The one thing that I think should be improved in all cars is that I want to use the AC auto settings but still have the air come out of the bottom vents and not into my face only.