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Automakers have increasingly moved controls for functions like air conditioning and volume onto touchscreens, and Volkswagen has been no exception. But now, the German car company is reversing course. VW is going analog, and will bring back physical buttons and knobs for essential cabin functions in future models. Volkswagen design chief Andreas Mindt told the British car magazine Autocar that beginning with its electric ID 2all due out in 2026, the volume, heating, fans, and hazard lights will all have physical buttons again. [Image: Volkswagen] We will never, ever make this mistake any more, Mindt said. Honestly, it’s a car. It’s not a phone: it’s a car. Although digital controls on sleek infotainment screens can signal to car buyers that a vehicle’s technology is cutting edge, what works for smartphones doesn’t necessarily translate to cars. It turns out many drivers prefer physical controls and they’re also easier to use. A 2024 J.D. Power study found car owners say passenger display screens are not necessary, and drivers who review them negatively blame usability issues. The Tesla effect Tesla introduced a touchscreen infotainment center in its Model X in 2012, and other automakers followed. Everything’s computer, President Donald Trump proclaimed Tuesday while touring the inside of a Tesla on the White House grounds as a show of support for Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s car company as its stock slides. [Image: Volkswagen] Packing controls into an iPad-style screen is cheaper for car companies who don’t have to manufacture extra controls and knobs, but according to one study, it’s worse for drivers. The Swedish car magazine Vi Bilägare found test pilots were able to more quickly perform tasks like starting the defroster, turning on the radio, and setting it to a particular station while driving a 17-year old Volvo V70 with physical controls than in new, pricier cars with touchscreens. It makes sense; with touchscreens, drivers have to take their eyes off the road to see what they’re doing, while with physical controls, they can feel their way around and keep their eyes focused on driving. [Image: Volkswagen] Volkswagen will still keep touchscreens in its cars, but in promotional materials for the ID 2all, the company emphasizes controls that are intuitive and easy to see and use, like its illuminated air-conditioning buttons and a practical thumbwheel for volume. Whether Volkswagen’s re-buttoning is the start of a wider trend back to more analog controls remains to be seen, but according to Mindt, there’s consumer demand for it. There’s feedback, it’s real, and people love this, he said.
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E-Commerce
One of the wonderful things about watching AppleTVs Severance is seeing the variety of “employee appreciation events” they throw. Each one worse than the last, but they provide wonderful satire of the flat attempts many companies make to demonstrate to their employees that they are valued. The truth is that employee appreciation is not shown by any event. It turns out that if you want the people who work in an organization to feel appreciated, you need to show that they are respected and valued every day. Managers should not wait for special occasions to say nice things about their employees performance. Instead, leaders need to be looking for chances to compliment excellence, effort, and improvement all the time. It is particularly important that significant recognition, praise, and rewards be given to people whose actions and ethos are aligned with the mission of the organization. When visible awards and praise go to people who are widely known to be favorites of management rather than to great team players, that undermines peoples belief that leaders care about the values they talk about. Intrinsic versus extrinsic rewards Psychologists have long distinguished between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Intrinsic rewards reflect the joy of engaging in a particular activity. For example, you might read often because you genuinely love engaging with a good book. Extrinsic rewards are rewards given that are independent of the activity itself. If someone paid me $5 for every book I read, that would be an extrinsic reward. The danger with extrinsic rewards is that people pursue the activity for that reward, and will often stop doing it when the reward is taken away. In fact, extrinsic rewards can sometimes interfere with peoples ability to learn that an activity is intrinsically rewarding. There is a parallel with employee appreciation. Authentic employee appreciation is embedded in the daily workflow in a way that feels connected (or intrinsic) to the work itself. Supervisors should regularly catch people doing good things and give them positive feedback. Highlighting great work during team meetings and in email updates is also valuable. What authentic appreciation looks like When compliments are freely given to acknowledge significant contributions, then other employee rewards often feel more authentic. Still, it’s useful for organizations to think about ways to provide perks that are consistent with their brand and mission. For example, I have seen leaders at my university use tickets to sporting events and other events on campus to reward service that goes beyond the call of duty. Rewards ring hollow when they feel separated from the work itself. When leaders routinely lead by creating fear, and fail to acknowledge great work, then any rewardeven ones that are on-brandwill still feel forced and inauthentic. On top of that, the rewards given to employees should feel like actual rewards. Holding a party after hours to honor people who have done great work may create a burden for those who have long commutes home or family obligations to attend to. Sending out gift baskets of food that get dietary restrictions of employees wrong is also a problem, because it signals you dont really know the people youre trying to honor. We spend a lot of our waking life at work. It’s nice to be recognized for the contributions we have made to the mission of our team. But an inauthentic reward can be worse than none. It leaves people feeling cynical because it suggests that their true contribution hasnt really been noticed.
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E-Commerce
On a remote Polynesian island, an eccentric lottery winner uses his earnings to bring his favorite musicians back togetherand theyre also former lovers. What could go wrong? The Ballad of Wallis Island is a new film that tackles this zany scenario; it premiered at Sundance to critical acclaim and will hit movie theaters March 28. This past weekend at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW, editor-in-chief Brendan Vaughan sat down with the films cast, writers and director to talk about how they found the right note for their musical rom-com. Panelists included four executive producers who all had additional roles behind and in front of the camera: James Griffiths, the director; Tim Key, a writer and actor; Carey Mulligan, an actress; and Tom Basden, a writer and actor who also wrote the original music for the film. Humble Beginnings The Ballad of Wallis Island is adapted from a BAFTA-winning short film produced in 2008, written by Key and Basden and directed by Griffiths. Basden returned to it over a decade later because he felt it was unfinished business. It was quite a short script, but we played around with it. It was all very loose and we just loved the characters and loved making it, Basden said. To lengthen the film from a short under 30 minutes to a feature-length film, the team made a few changesincluding the addition of Carey Mulligans character as a former love interest and bandmate of Basdens original character. In the first one, I live on an island, I invite this guy to an island, we dont really get on. And then . . . we start to get on and it ends. And then in the feature we sort of built on that, that felt like quite a winning formula. So in the feature he arrives, we dont get on, he has a fantastic actress with him, and theres two other people in it as well who are also fantastic, Key said. So basically everything in the first film developed and then added more dimensions and color to it. [Photo: Maggie Boyd for Fast Company] Preaching to the Choir The film has a strong musical component, with original music by Basden. Basden spoke about the writing process for the music: There was a long process of compiling the songs, but its not ever something Ive done for a living. Writing. Ive written comedy songs, but not songs like this. So Ive never really gone out of my way to spend time writing songs apart from when we were making the short, so I had to plug back into that and try to generate songs I was happy with. He added that he sent every song back to actress Carey Mulligan knowing that her husband, musician Marcus Mumford, would have an opinion on them. And Mulligan had only sung at a school choir level before and had sung alongside a few other actors in the film Inside Llewyn Davis. I’d done it a bit in films enough to sort of think that I could probably get away with it, Mulligan said. But with the caveat that I said to Tom: I don’t want to ever sing on my own. And we did shoot a scene that didn’t end up in the film where I sing on my own, and it was the closest I’ve been to tears filming anything. Creativity Under Budget The films team had to navigate what director Griffiths called a tight budget. He spoke about how the team tried to be as creative and ambitious as possible with limited resources. That’s where a lot of the fun isin the parameters of what you can afford, what you want to do, your ambition for the film. Our ambition was always high for the film, to make the best thing we could with the resources we had, said Griffith. But ultimately, youre only judged by the product that you create. Thats the only thing you can control, how good it is.
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E-Commerce
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