Mercedes reinvents the car dashboard with its Hyperscreen
Mercedes promises this full-width screen can be mastered by five-year-olds in no more than 10 minutes
And, if a 5 year old can master it then no one above the age of 7 can.
We’ve had 50 years of trying to program video recorders to prove this, haven’t we?
The dashboard works fine as it is even with analog gauges. This is a techno toy and that is fine for those who want it. Seems to me that any electrical fault might render your car hors de combat.
And if it needs to be mastered beyond learning what each display is it sounds like extra unwelcome aggro for those more interested in getting there than the car in itself.
Grouch Marx got there first
https://youtu.be/V2rX-1rTuhE
Mercedes reinvents the car dashboard with its Hyperscreen
I am willing to bet that the appeal of this to Mercedes Benz is the data it collects on its drivers. They want to go the Google route.
Not sure that is to the users’ advantage. What if it is so smart it refuses to let you speed? Or turn on the air conditioning?
The only thing you need on a car dashboard is the speedometer. Everything else is superflous fluff. My current car only has speedo, revs, temp, and four warning lights. My previous car didn’t have a rev counter or temperature gauge.
Fuel gauge?
What Ecks said. And what various professors in university that specialise in things like car safety and UI specialists say.
When driving, the best things to view are analogue dials, and the best things to touch are tactile controls. Tactile controls keep your eyes on the road and analogue dials can be seen, regardless of lights, angles etc.
And if you want to change music, take a call or do a satnav, buy a £200 bluetooth radio and pair your android phone and just do it all with speech and pressing the button on the car radio. It works just fine, no fiddling, and when it breaks down, you pull the radio out, throw it away and spend £200 on a new one rather than getting your wallet emptied by a main dealer.
Not only that, analogue dials don’t have to be read – a glance is enough to see that speed is either “probably right” when the dial looks like \. or “getting a bit quick” when it looks like ./ (excuse the ascii art!)
FWIW the problem with VCRs is the same problem I see in every UI designed in Japan (Grundig and Philips VCRs were dead easy to program). Either the Japanese mindset is so different from ours (possibly because of the ideograms in their language) that no interface designed for one market can work in the other, or they’re just really crap at UI design.
Seems to me that any electrical fault might render your car hors de combat.
The days when most car faults could be fixed – sufficient, at least, to limp home – with a hammer and a screwdriver (or a pair of the girlfriend’s tights to act as a temporary fan belt) are long gone. Now you just get a warning light, usually with an incomprehensible symbol, and the only people who can fix it are main dealers for that manufacturer. The upside is that such faults are far less frequent than in days of yore, when setting out on a longish car journey was an exercise in optimism.
The article does carry on to say…
… which does, at least, show an awareness of the problem with video players that you mention, Tim… 😉
DK
We have touch screen control for radio and heating and various controls, I use the buttons below it as thankfully the designer didn’t get rid of them. Do like the auto function for the headlights and windscreen wipers though, less things to mess around with
My car has a head up display. When it was being repaired (as the cameras need to be looked at when driving into a bollard rather than ignored) we had one with no head up display. I really missed the instant view of speed plus the speed limit and sat nav directions being in my eyeliner. The dials and gauges… couldn’t care less.
All those screens inside the car are a distraction from what’s going on outside the car.
“FWIW the problem with VCRs is the same problem I see in every UI designed in Japan…”
This.
Go to Japan and try to work out how to flush the damn toilet.
Flush, damn you! I don’t want cold water squirted up there while you play music!
Incidentally, touch screens are now so ubiquitous that delivery drivers can’t cope with my doorbell. I caught one of them hoofing it off to the neighbours, and said why didn’t you ring? He demonstrated that the doorbell does not respond to a light brush of the fingertip.
Presumably his lightswitches at home are all controlled by a light brush of the finger on a smartphone touchscreen, using an app that sends instructions via a control centre in Guangzhou rather than just on the local network.
@Chris Miller,
“I see in every UI designed in Japan”, indeed, the UI of asian stuff is generally poor.
We have a samsung TV and the UI is awful. eg: when you press the remote for many functions, nothing happens for about 3 seconds and you wait in a state of stress to see if the click ‘registered’ – there should be a green light or whatever flickers or whatever to show that the click was received – I could go on. Apple have shown how good design should be, and the astonishing rewards that can follow. ( Though in apples case, it more than just a well thought out UI, apples are not only well designed, they are also well engineered).
@Chris Miller
“The upside is that such faults are far less frequent than in days of yore” , indeed, cars just don’t break down like they used to. I have a collection of tales from 20+ years ago of heroic limping home of broken bangers.