A new vehicle interface

This appears to be a vehicle interface designed by someone who doesn't actually drive much.<p>When driving, you often care about acceleration as much as speed. Digital displays are horrible for indicating first and second derivatives; analog dials are great for first and adequate for second.<p>The best UI on a car I've seen (as far as actually driving it) is the Audi -- a Driver Information Display directly in line with the driver (showing next turn), and a center area. There's a reason for going for all-red indicators -- night vision. In rural areas, you often dial down the brightness of all controls to preserve night vision in case an animal or debris is in the road. If you're on I-5 driving from Seattle to SF, there aren't a whole lot of turns, so your nav system is really secondary (if on at all), and there's no reason for it to be in your line of sight.<p>For great designed interiors for drivers, I'd look to Audi, Porsche, and go from there.<p>When driving, I'd consider audio nav information to be primary, followed by simple next turn information, followed by a (north-centric, vs. vehicle bearing) map. 95% of the time the only nav info I need is "left turn in 200 meters, 100 meters, 50 meters, now", since I'm focused on other cars rather than my display. It's only with complex intersections (roundabouts, 5-6 way intersections where grids overlap, etc.) that I need to see the display.<p>Audio is inherently more minimal than visual information, so a car really needs to get it right. Simple things like the order of words in notifications, how frequently they happen, tones vs. words, etc. make a huge difference, and require design vs. advanced graphics to get right.

If you want to see a truly excellently designed car display &#38; navigation system, check out the new BMW 3-series (F30).<p>They sprung for a non-standard display size that is super-wide, which means you can show two things at once. I have it configured to always show navigation directions on the right 1/3, and switch the left 2/3 between map or music, or whatever.<p>They also have a heads-up display which is awesome. It uses computer vision to detect road signs and show me the most up to date speed limit, shows me my speed right next to that, and the next turn coming up. When I switch through my iPhone playlist, it replaces the turn directions with the playlist, same when someone calls in. It's completely non-distracting and right in my field of vision while I'm driving, looks like it's just "floating" in front of the car.<p>Then they have the iDrive rocker, which moves left/right/up/down plus spins to select more complicated things, like moving through a playlist or typing directions into the GPS. It means that I keep a very natural driving position even if I'm controlling something in the car, with one hand on the wheel and my right hand by my side.

I'm reminded of the time I heard the car talk guys bemoaning the growing electronics in car displays. They seemed to think that physical switches and dials were easy to work even by someone not looking at them, as opposed to touch screens and displays.

Normally I enjoy this sort of thing, but this I'm not taking to. As commented by others, it looks like it was designed by someone who drives very little<p>First up, the speedo is not only about the number, but also the position of the needle. I don't need to know if I'm doing 110 or 111, but the position of the needle will tell me at a very quick glance if I'm venturing towards 120 or slowing to 90<p>Second - I thought we'd decided adjusting volume by anything other than a physical turning dial was a poor way to do it about 10 years ago.<p>Then there's other odd things like 83% oil - what sort of use is a figure like that? Is that good or bad? Oil <i>pressure</i> is what I need to know, and even then a simple binary ok/not ok is sufficient<p>Possibly the main problem is that there's not really much wrong with displays as they are. I can see my speed and rate of acceleration, rpm, warning lights etc at a glance. I can dim them to my liking. And, importantly, anyone else driving one of my vehicles can very quickly acclimatise themselves and feel confident driving it. With the way things are currently, there's really only two things I need to figure out when I hop into a car i haven't driven before - which side of the steering column the indicators are on, and where the headlight switch is

Better come with a good dimmer switch or an off button. I find bright displays extremely irritating specifically when they are in my visual field. I've rented cars where I had to put my coat over the dash. You get the most information by looking out the <i>wind</i>screen. Navigation is best done by audio.

Personally I find it over-designed.<p>Why is there a graph plotting MPG and Regen (what is regen btw)? Why is there only one gear state (I use the dash to see where to shift gears)? Why do I need a wifi icon to tell me whether I have wifi or not?

I find it very scarey that I have to wait for a software update to be applied before I can drive the car.. I hope there is an override mechanism to allow the car to start anyways in the event that software update fails.

Although it looks nice, it would be pretty dangerous to actually use this while driving. I've been researching peripheral touch screens for the past year and making them easy to use without looking is <i>really</i> hard.<p>The effects of looking away from the road are pretty well known and they are bad. In this study [1] for example, noticeable differences in concentration and lane position/drift were seen when participants were just quickly glancing at the screen of a GPS. Now imagine you are not just looking at that screen, but trying to touch it in the right place (accidentally hitting the wrong button, getting frustrated etc.). These problems really have to be solved before replacing commonly used functions in cars with touch screens and this design does not adequately address them.<p>[1] <a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1620534" rel="nofollow">http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1620534</a>

UI: nice. Ergonomics: not so nice.<p>Just from my eyballing of the layout, that touchscreen on the right side of the panel will be out of reach for a significant number of drivers.

I'm generally a fan of Andrew's work, but this one misses the mark.<p>I don't really have a problem with the aesthetics or the graphic design - he consistently shows creativity and design chops. In fact, a lot of his points are pretty good. However, the final product is a bit shallow and while pretty, has some half baked ideas that don't contribute to an overall great product design that's not usable. It solves some problems, but ultimately doesn't solve some of the more important problems with driving nav these days (and perhaps exacerbates them)<p>I think this demonsttrates why areas like human factors exist and are needed in the design process. We shouldn't neuter designers at the beginning, but refine and distill designs like these into something even better

I do like that it tries to address the problem of phones advancing during the lifespan of the car. The hardware would have to be generic enough though, that it can be useful and adaptable in the long term.<p>I'm not sure if it's feasible though. to use Android as an example, not every Android ever released can run jellybean. It still requires newer hardware at some point.

I dislike the reduction of controls. One of the things that has always bothered me about driving with my phone as a media player is that I can't control it easily by touch. I want buttons and knobs that I can use by touch for all car functions.

Hmm. I don't like it. I wouldn't want it in my car. But I'm really thrilled that someone is starting to think about the UI in cars in a very serious way because most of the UI's in todays cars are horrible.

From what I can see in these pictures, this is a full featured computer with an OS and apps. It has access to the internet and to the internal bus (Oil, Speed and whatnot).<p>I have a _very_ bad feeling about that.

For the curious, "doko" means "where" in Japanese.

As someone who is 5'2 and prefers driving with the steering wheel a decent height above my legs, I wonder if I'd even be able to see the speedometer behind the steering wheel? Relying on color as an indicator is also a big problem.

I really like this idea, though I wonder what the Omni Group thinks of the logo...

Article aside, the name of the blog seems humorously redundant.

I like the 'blurred by 20px' image. It's like saying 'this is how your speedometer will look while you're drunk'.

this made me think of a business model for a piece of software. Charge per feature? I wonder if this could be successful. For example, you offer some software with base features, and have the users pay to add specific features.

Is it DODO or DOKO?

"Sorry officer, my speedometer was blurry."

When I read the title, I really got my hopes up that this was about replacing the steering wheel, pedals, shifter, etc.<p>I was sorely disappointed... this is just another rehash.

"You won't be able to drive during the update". I love technology and have from the earliest of ages, but that's a little bit eery.