The car is a lot more complicated electronic device than any iPod you can imagine. When you're behind the steering wheel, there's a lot of stuff on the menu: ventilation controls, audio entertainment options, navigation system, calibrations for the powertrain and chassis. It's no wonder that car designers have been trying to figure out what to do about operating all this stuff.
Designers have long recognized that a simple touch-panel display possesses superior Human Machine Interface (HMI) qualities, yet they continue to seek a more elegant solution than the customary computer screen jammed in the middle of the dashboard. This is what led BMW to bring us iDrive in 2001, followed subsequently by Audi's MMI and Mercedes-Benz's COMAND. Now even Lexus is headed down this route to the remote-control device, replacing its widely admired touch-panel display with its Remote Touch interface for the 2010 Lexus RX.
Most people in the HMI field agree that the touch panel is better than any other type of control. That's because the touch panel design is not only easy to use but also it has a very simple learning curve so the user can quickly master the interface.
Why then would many carmakers abandon this design in favor of remote-control devices that are meant to resemble a computer mouse, most of which have received less than stellar reviews due to compromises in usability? There are two reasons, and they're both related to styling.
As we've noted, various performance, convenience, and advanced technology features are being added to vehicles every year. Also driver-customizable features and preference settings are becoming more common. To accommodate all of these new features and their adjustment, the standard solution would be to have a dedicated switch for each of them. But if there are countless switches scattered about the cabin, the driver soon gets the feeling that he's in the cockpit of a Boeing 747 airliner. Integrating these switches into a single controller will minimize confusion and clean up the interior styling besides.
The other, more subtle motive for these controllers concerns the relationship of interior styling with the driver's seating position. In order to have a touch panel design, the shape of the dash (known in engineering parlance as the instrument panel, or IP) must be somewhat high and close to the driver so the display screen is within his reach. Unfortunately the side effect is limited outward visibility and perhaps an intimation of claustrophobia. So the substitution of a controller for a touch panel display improves visibility and promotes an impression of interior spaciousness.
Most important, the deletion of the touch panel display gives designers some important flexibility in the layout of the whole IP. This is important because the reach the driver must make to activate certain controls is a hard-point in the design and engineering process, part of fixed human-factor values that relate to safety. Plus any display within the IP can then be optimized for an optimal focal distance from the driver as well as protection from glare.
So the next time your friend brags about the superiority of his iDrive controller over touch screen displays, you can respond with a straight face, "In some ways, perhaps."
Next time we'll take a close look at the recent improvements to HMI controllers. -- Albert Austria, Vehicle Evaluation Engineer, Edmunds.com
trackwrex says:
07:10 AM, 04/ 1/09
Speaking of Boeing 747-type cabins, see the 2010 Porsche Panamera.
redliner says:
07:24 AM, 04/ 1/09
'747-type cabin'
I would actually like that. A car interior not built to the lowest common denominator. Make it complex, so that only the driver understands how to operate the car.
felonious says:
08:58 AM, 04/ 1/09
I want more toggle switches. Mini FTW
sigmabody says:
09:36 AM, 04/ 1/09
The most significant thing Lexus did with their navigation UI recently, IMHO, was when they removed the override capability which allowed entering navigation data while the car was moving (circa 2007). With this small change, they made their navigation system irreparably less functional than a Garmin, iPhone, or any other non-integrated navigation device, while simultaneously giving the finger to their customers. The placement and design of the MHI for the nav pales in comparison to the self-imposed destruction of the usability brought on by their legal department.
Give me a 747-cabin style nav any day, as long as I can actually use it; any other MHI design issues are secondary to basic functionality. It's like shipping a nav with the best HMI ever, but the only map data you could get was for the moon, because providing potentially wrong map data for Earth locations was a liability problem... go back to the drawing board.
altimadude00 says:
10:19 AM, 04/ 1/09
What's wrong with a navigation lock-out when the car is moving? Is it such an inconvenience? Maybe for you.
But there is a wide range of drivers out there. There are some people who can barely call someone on a cell phone. There are some people who don't operate the best and latest technology, simply because they don't need it. This so-called..."catering to the lowest demographic" really smacks of selfishness.
But then again, maybe companies should cater to "business class" clients and not the "lowest demographic" because they just don't get it. The old man doesn't belong in a jet fighter/Starship Enterprise anyway. Go along and get your Buick. A free market economy is only for the ones that play the game and not for the bystanders.
altimadude00 says:
10:25 AM, 04/ 1/09
Oh yeah. The lock-out might be inconvenient, but it will save the embarrassment of telling the officer that the reason you crashed was that you were adjusting your navigation system.
Oh, and all the lawsuits that will come because of the draw of the driver's attention away from the road.
sigmabody says:
12:06 PM, 04/ 1/09
Look, people could debate for a long time about the merits and risks of the driver or a passenger inputting navigation data while the car is moving, and at the end of the proverbial day there are still going to be two general opinions: people who want their car to not nanny them, and people who want other people's cars to nanny them. However, the indisputable fact is that for a few hundred dollars, you can get a navigation system with more functional utility than the one in a brand new Lexus, regardless of how much engineering effort they put into the HMI. For drivers in the first category, the lack of functional utility overwhelms the HMI improvements. For drivers in the second category, I'll bet you'll wish I was able to be using the haptic controller while keeping my eyes in the road instead of bending over squinting at the Garmin while I'm coming up behind you on the freeway.
uncanny_man says:
05:55 PM, 04/ 1/09
I may me a techno geek, but I say give me a true aircraft style cockpit! A true cockpit with rows of toggle switches and lights and displays (preferably projected on my windshield) would be really cool in my opinion.