> is even in the right mode so the button is there at all.
This is actually really important, and it's something that even physical button-based systems can get wrong. Modal interfaces require careful thought because they change things out from under the user, making them unpredictable. Obviously, not all modal interfaces are bad (nobody would suggest that forward and reverse shouldn't use the same accelerator pedal), but in cars, most of them are terrible.
It's why those old radios with 15 buttons and 7 dials are a cinch to use, but the newer radios that hide everything behind menus are terrible. Even something as simple as bass/mid/treble/balance/fader/volume/tuner are an absolute pain to use when you have to click a button to switch between modes, and those features might as well not exist due to how hard they are to operate. I've tried tweaking them while driving in some newer cars and it's always a terrible experience, but my current 20-year-old car has 7 separate dials for those functions, and I twiddle them all the time without even thinking about it.
This is actually really important, and it's something that even physical button-based systems can get wrong. Modal interfaces require careful thought because they change things out from under the user, making them unpredictable. Obviously, not all modal interfaces are bad (nobody would suggest that forward and reverse shouldn't use the same accelerator pedal), but in cars, most of them are terrible.
It's why those old radios with 15 buttons and 7 dials are a cinch to use, but the newer radios that hide everything behind menus are terrible. Even something as simple as bass/mid/treble/balance/fader/volume/tuner are an absolute pain to use when you have to click a button to switch between modes, and those features might as well not exist due to how hard they are to operate. I've tried tweaking them while driving in some newer cars and it's always a terrible experience, but my current 20-year-old car has 7 separate dials for those functions, and I twiddle them all the time without even thinking about it.