UX THOUGHTS
Why do companies ignore this? Usability flaws in Indian Cars.
As a car enthusiast & a Product Designer, I would like to highlight some problems which I personally felt must be addressed & these issues lead to lower sales of good products.
Now I know companies try to innovate & provide a value for money product to the consumers but the problem arises when they try to do something weird and the market is not very ready for it.
NOTE: I am not a car-expert. These are just my views & I think others also (as the sales numbers of the cars show).
We always say, “Don’t re-invent the wheel”. Here’s are some prime examples of the same. I would be only talking about the Indian car market.
So let’s start…
Weird position of gear levers:
We, humans, have developed a certain mental model for everything. Everyone is used to the tradition gear lever position in the left hand near our left thigh in the centre console. So why change it?
You can clearly see in the image how the gear lever is placed. So what the brand try to do was provide a 6-seater config in a hatchback which was very weird as hatchbacks are already very small. To do so, they placed a gear lever in the centre console and the results were, this was the car with low sales figures in the brand’s portfolio.
The inverted position of stalks:
This is the problem with Skoda, Volkswagen, Audi cars in India. Now, this is not a very huge market & there is some specific group of people who buy these cars but I have seen people facing issues with the stalks whenever they drive such cars.
Now I know Skoda, Volkswagen, Audi belongs to the same group and their design language is more towards classic-ness but surely these things can be modified according to the market.
Weird handbrakes:
Innovations are cool but not when they are un-necessary which is the case with these cars having weird handbrakes. These are very good products but why change the general layout which is followed by others as well!
An unclear mechanism for opening the sunroof and sun-blind:
This does not apply to all cars. The cars which have sunroof sometimes have some weird controls as they try to fit in controls for sunblind & sunroof into one single button resulting in the user into confusion every time he tries to open it. The best solution can be providing separate buttons for every feature as some of the manufacturers do.
Weird position of the instrument cluster:
The instrument cluster or the MID/DIS is for the driver, right? Wrong, some cars have them for passengers. These cars had a unit in the centre console rather than being on the driver's side! I mean why do you want to freak out the family by showing them that you are driving on 100kmph+(which is very risky on Indian roads).
Imagine how distracting it can be for a driver to stretch his eyes all the way to the centre console to see any info. You cannot access it while driving for sure.
Touch-based volume controls for the music system
Last but not least and the most irritating change that carmakers have started doing is removing the physical controls & making it fully touch-sensitive. It is the worst change in today’s infotainment screens but the trend is for real and almost every other car has all touch buttons.
Touch screens are booming and yes they are useful but at the same time, these essentials shouldn’t be removed. It is overhead now to operate such screens!
Lastly, there are many more problems that need to address and solved but these were most important & weird so I shared my thoughts out! Let me know your thoughts on this.
Thank you!
Do you know you can give 100 claps by holding the clap button? Try it now!
Let’s connect
Portfolio — Instagram — Dribbble — Behance — LinkedIn — Github
