Acura’s new 2025 ADX keeps dials and buttons alike
Posted on 10/01/2025 5:36:30 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
It seems that the world of technology—including the automotive industry—is undergoing a “re-buttoning” phase. While touchscreens remain a dominant feature in vehicle interiors, automakers are revisiting the value of physical controls as drivers rediscover their importance. Driving, after all, is one area where practicality and safety demand simplicity. But what’s driving this shift in design philosophy?”
Rachel Plotnick, an Associate Professor at Indiana University Bloomington and something of a “button guru,” has been studying this tactile resurgence for years. As the author of Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing (2018), Plotnick has explored the psychology and cultural history of buttons and their enduring role in technology. Today, she’s helping companies refine their interfaces, balancing the digital with the tactile.
In an interview with IEEE Spectrum, Plotnick was asked about the factors driving the “re-buttoning of consumer devices,” a trend that is becoming increasingly apparent in car interiors. The expert responded:
“Maybe screen fatigue. We spend all our days and nights on these devices, scrolling or constantly flipping through pages and videos, and there’s something tiring about that. The button may be a way to almost de-technologize our everyday existence, to a certain extent. That’s not to say buttons don’t work with screens very nicely – they’re often partners. But in a way, it’s taking away the priority of vision as a sense, and recognizing that a screen isn’t always the best way to interact with something.”
In cars, this critique has teeth. Plotnick highlights that touchscreens can be unsafe in certain contexts, as they demand visual attention to operate—something drivers simply can’t spare. Physical controls, by contrast, offer the “simplicity of limiting our field of choices” and allow for intuitive operation without diverting focus from the road.
To their credit, many automakers are beginning to recognize the limitations of touchscreens—or, lets be honest, the pitfalls of cost-cutting measures that eliminated physical controls in favor of screens—all thanks to growing consumer backlash. Physical buttons, switches and knobs for essential functions, like climate control and volume adjustment, are making a gradual comeback.
Acura’s new 2025 ADX keeps dials and buttons alike
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Lol, after you use a swamper in the desert for awhile 85-90 is “cool” and comfortable. :)
“Please bring back the floorboard mounted dimmer switch and a knob for turning on wipers and headlights. Also vent wing windows would be a nice touch.”
Yep, I’m not too lazy to use knobs. All this revolves around pure laziness. Too lazy to turn a knob... It is incredible how many things have been screwed up because of mass laziness.
Like I always say, we now live in a world where two clicks of a mouse button is one click too many for most because of laziness.
“I guess people have to try and show each other up with the shiniest newest toys. So because of this they have now enslaved everyone with this technology.”
Meanwhile, the government is using their shiniest new technological toys to find out everything there is to know about you. They even want your children to explain how they determined 2 + 2 + 4.
You can add a LoJack to any car of any age. It is not smart enough to know the difference...
Yep, we have created a real problem for ourselves. Out of laziness and convenience.
Yep, Wrangler knows this.
My Mazda has a digital display up high and easy to see. everything is controlled by a physical interface. Entertainment, Navigation, and menus from console rocker knob and 4 buttons. Climate by buttons and knobs on the center dash. Entertainment, Voice command and phone on the steering wheel.
I love not having a touch screen interface. Funny thing is Mazda’s biggest complain is infotainment. I guess Gen Z like touch screen and finds it primitive?
Interestingly only the top of the line Mazda’s have a touch interface, and they still have all the button controls.
If you use LoJack or other similar programs for an older car, the tracking data issues still remain from what I can tell. That is how they find the car.
I wish someone would just line-up the accessory toggle switches in one spot like an aircraft instrument panel.
(Do I sound really old??)
Yes, that is true, just like a cellphone. But at least it is not listening to everything you are saying like the new cars do. But you could put the LoJack on a switch. Turn it off when you are personally using it and back on when you park or worried about it being stolen.
“I wish someone would just line-up the accessory toggle switches in one spot like an aircraft instrument panel.’
Built several race cars and that is what we do. A custom dash and instrument cluster with all the gauges and switches arranged like an aircraft.
Now want to know how to make a hidden switch? You mount a magnetic “Hall Effect” switch hidden behind a panel. Then you stick a magnet in the right place on the outside of the panel to activate it and switch it on. :)
What a world! That is SO wrong.
The federal government’s CAFE fuel mileage requirements forced the car makers to get rid of the triangular wing windows. You might lose 0.01 mpg when you had the windows open, but the auto makers were grasping at every mileage straw possible
FedGov sticks its nose into everything in our daily lives. Some things are good, especially in safety like seat and shoulder belts, door side crash protection, padded dashboards, collapsible steering columns, and airbags. But the “regulators” force car makers to make many stupid decisions like eliminating wing windows and shutting the engine off at stop lights all to save an ounce of gasoline every year.
Their CAFE regs are why every car looks the same these days. The design engineers all understand the same principles of aerodynamics.
I don’t think it’s so much laziness as it is infatuation with all things tech, both by the buyers and the designers. People (users and designers) rarely take ergonomics (aka, human factors) into account in design because they are chasing the latest and greatest cool gadget.
Interesting tidbit: the Three Mile Island nuclear accident was largely cause by poor human factors design in the control room. So it’s not just confusing controls in automobiles — it happens in industry, too.
Of course part of it is attraction to gadgetry. But I lived it and watched it evolve because I grew up in a towing and repair service. It started with electric windows to eliminate the effort needed to crank windows up and down. And that laziness spread to buttons. Automatic Climate Control was next to come because it was too much work to reach down and turn the heater control up/down or on and off as needed. Then came electric locks, Then auto search radios because tuning with a dial was too much work, then came...
I watched all this come about play by play, and it was all originally born of laziness and convenience. Window Cranks started it all...
For 60 years, I owned/drove a manual.
My current car, the last 3 years, is a 6-sp automatic with “Manual Mode” and steering wheel paddles.
I definitely prefer my current automatic/manual w/paddles...but 60 years of left leg/foot muscle memory still waiting/wanting to push the clutch pedal.
Manual transmissions are still around and people are buying them because younger car thieves do not know how to operate them. LOL
LOL...good recap of the progression of tech in cars!
I always hated having to turn the wipers on now and then when it was misting or road spray dirtied the window. I thought intermittent wipers were the greatest thing ever invented! I actually bought a DIY HeathKit to add intermittent wipers to my 1976 Jeep CJ-7!
I do use the steering wheel buttons to raise or lower the volume on my music or forward past a song, but I don’t have to take my eyes off the road to do that.
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