A vehicle has physical controls (buttons, scroll wheel, etc.) that can change function depending on the vehicle's state. An internal control system detects the state of various vehicle systems (e.g., whether the car is in reverse or parked). When the vehicle's state meets a predefined condition (a "trigger"), the control system automatically reassigns new functions to the physical controls, which are defined by a "context mapping." This allows a single physical control to perform different tasks in different situations.