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 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
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SEPTEMBER 14, 2004
Coming to a Dashboard Near You Auto designers are simplifying confusing, feature-crammed displays to help older drivers. Here are some innovations to look forward to Bill Fluharty wants to build a futuristic, high-tech dashboard that even a grandmother would love. So the vice-president for industrial design at instrument and control-systems giant Johnson Controls (JCI ) in Milwaukee helped put together the 3e, a bulbous concept car unveiled at the 2004 North America Auto Show in Detroit last January. This car's dash has only one dial, a speedometer. The rest of the myriad lights, gauges, and dials that one finds in most vehicles today have been merged into a single flat-screen digital control panel. At the display's base is one large knob big enough to be easily grasped by an arthritic, shaking hand. Want to see how much fuel is in the tank? Just turn the knob to bring up a menu, which includes a virtual gas gauge. One tap or twist and a computer-generated image of that gauge fills the screen -- big enough to penetrate the thickest bifocals. "As people get older, they're going to be stressed out and confused more. If our information displays and systems do a better job of communicating just the right amount of information at the right time, we'll help those people have a more pleasurable driving experience," says Fluharty. DIZZYING EXPERIENCE. Johnson Controls is hardly alone in the quest to create dashboards and control systems better suited to aging drivers. All the carmakers and major equipment suppliers are looking at the graying of America and planning systems to suit baby boomer needs. Part of what's driving them is an increasing body of research showing that making cars easier to handle for older drivers will also help younger drivers. "The more we study this, the more we find that features that are good for older drivers are good for everybody. No one complains and says the instrument panel is too easy to read," says Jeff Pike, a senior technical specialist at Ford (F ). Drivers would likely appreciate simplification as the trend to ever more car electronics is making the dashboard a dizzying experience. From climate control for individual seats to stereo systems that can accommodate MP3 players with 2,000 songs to GPS navigation systems, vehicle cockpits have come to resemble those found in fighter jets. CONTROLLING FEATURE SPRAWL. According to some in the industry, this features barrage, particularly in luxury models, has long since reached a point of information overload. "As cars become more and more complex, what do you do with the controls? The average driver isn't a 747 pilot. It's someone who wants to drive to Safeway and buy bottled water," says Joseph DiNucci, a senior vice-president for sales and marketing at Immersion (IMMR ). Immersion is a Silicon Valley software and tactile-feedback system outfit that helped BMW design its cutting-edge iDrive system. That system incorporates climate control, music, navigation, and other features into a streamlined menu structure controlled by a single large knob on the center console and a few buttons on the steering wheel and driver's armrest. iDrive represents the most ambitious effort to date to control the feature sprawl, but it also illustrates the difficulties in making these systems work. BMW was forced to dumb down iDrive after critics complained it was overwhelming and distracting rather than useful. BMW, however, swears that iDrive has been a success and that dumbing down isn't an accurate description. It claims the changes were mere simplifications and enhancements, and BMW just needs to train drivers to use these new systems. LOST ROAD FEEL. "It does take some time to learn. It's like sitting down at a home PC. You have to familiarize yourself with it. But we haven't any complaints from the people who own the cars," says BMW new products spokesperson Gordon Keil. Still, that approach could prove problematic, say industry executives. Consumers don't think of their cars as PCs. They expect to sit down and drive a car without having to learn anything new. Complicating matters is the ongoing switch from mechanical to digital control systems, a process that dramatically changes the feel of driving. While mechanical steering affords a driver a physical link to the wheels and the road, electronic-steering systems eliminate those sensations and take away road feel. For instance, if a driver hits a slippery patch of road, the steering would not feel any different than on normal, dry pavement.
BW MALL
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