The Interaction & Interface Design Car Wreck: Julian Bleecker visits the LA Auto Show.
Making Sense of Complex Controls
The New York Times on how IDEO supported Ford in creating a new UI design language and framework:
New ideas were tested on drivers. Ideo teams quickly mocked up ideas, often using little more than sticky notes, cardboard and modeling clay.
For this project, a PlayStation 2 game console and a dashboard from an older Ford Edge were pressed into service, Ms. Brace said. For a driving simulator, the group used a projector showing the video game Gran Turismo 3. The controls — pedals and steering wheel — were worked up from controllers intended for racing video games.
In-car user interfaces are a fascinating, yet completely impenetrable topic to me. There seem to be many distinct systems with every manufacturer rolling his own and it’s impossible to buy a new car every six months just to fool around with its gadgetry and associated interfaces like you could with phones. Are there any weblogs specializing on in-car user interfaces? I would totally read those.
