In-Vehicle UX — Part I

Marko Mattila
Jul 25, 2017 · 9 min read

Many UX related blog posts are usually related to web sites, mobile or touch devices only but there aren’t that many posts about in-vehicle user experience. So I decided to write few thoughts about it. I realized soon that I have quite many thoughts about it so maybe it’s a good idea to split them to separate posts too.

I work as an UI Chief for automotive industry and my responsibilities are (among many other things) UI specifications, collaborate with UI designers and in general make sure the UX is according to specifications and act as a “gateway” between clients, development team and managers. I spend quite a lot of my time to test different functionalities which development team has implemented and approving the tasks, if I think they meet the requirements.

UX is a very personal topic and depending of the person, people think differently and they have their own subjective views. Therefore I want to emphasise that these views, I write here, are purely my own views to this topic. Feel free to disagree or agree :)

The Basics

Before diving into in-vehicle UX, let’s go through the basics first. What is an IVI system, what is an instrument cluster, steering wheel controls or a HUD?

Dashboard or Instrument cluster (IC) has been in cars for ages. It shows all the essential information needed for driving such as speed, fuel or battery level, tell-tales, turn signals and many other things. Traditionally, instrument cluster elements are mechanical such as speed or RPM gauges. It may also be a mix of gauges, tell-tales and a small display in the center. Many newer car models uses digital instrument cluster which are displays and all the instruments are drawn by a software.

In-vehicle-infotainment (IVI) system in older cars consists of the radio, CD player, AUX, USB, HVAC and other controls. In newer cars, it usually is a touch screen display and a mixed set of HW controls such as volume knob and AC controls. If the car has a built-in navigator, it uses this display to show a map and turn-by-turn instructions. Newer cars also support Bluetooth, which is used for connecting a phone to the IVI system and use it for phone calls, messages and for music streaming. Some car brands supports Android Auto or Apple CarPlay too. The trend is that physical HW controls are replaced more often with software buttons and more and more functionality is controlled via touch screen.

HUD stands for head-up display which is a transparent display located in driver’s viewpoint. Usually above the instrument cluster. Idea of the HUD is to display relevant information such as speed or turn-by-turn navigation instruction without driver needing to look away from the usual viewpoints. HUDs will be more common in the future, but they are still quite rare in cars.

Steering wheel controls have been around for many years. Usually they are used to control IVI system or Instrument Cluster’s info display to show different content. Some cars have cruise control related functionality as a part of steering wheel too.

At this point, you should understand the basic terminology. Of course, depending on a car brand and model, there are lot of variation on the roads. I believe, if you’re not familiar about automotive terminology, you should know more now.

In-vehicle UX?

I personally value a good UX very high, because it gives me a feeling that product maker cares about their users. Unfortunately when it comes to cars, I don’t usually get that feeling.

In-vehicle UX is not just the software. It is the overall experience.

If a car feels great to drive, but if it has poorly designed IVI system or the touch screen quality is bad, it may ruin the whole driving experience.

Cars are very complex moving computers (carputers) stuffed full of technology so it’s not easy thing to do everything right. Nowadays people are used to of using gadgets like iPads, which are very performant devices and they basically raise a bar very high when it comes to usability.

In my opinion, we can’t just think about software or the IVI system when talking about in-vehicle UX.

In-vehicle UX means how all the bits and pieces are working flawlessly together in a car and how it makes the driver to feel.

Things which could be done better

I don’t want to dive too deep here and my plan is to write more posts of the instrument cluster, HUD, IVI and steering wheel controls later to keep this posts shorter. I have my own opinions how many of the current in-vehicle systems could be improved, so let’s go them through briefly here.

Instrument Cluster

Instrument Cluster is the most important source of information when driving a car. It should show a relevant information only related to driving and it shouldn’t distract driver. Of course not all data is driving related such as music source or a clock. But the idea is that the driver shouldn’t need to move his/her viewpoint away from a road while driving, whether he is switching a FM radio channel or a song played from USB or from a phone via Bluetooth.

Unfortunately many instrument clusters still show irrelevant information or don’t assist drivers as well as they could. For example showing a motor temperature is irrelevant information 99.9% of the time for 99% of the drivers. For hybrid or EV car drivers, it’s more important to be able to drive in an economical way. For example to use EV mode as much as possible to save fuel. To achieve that, it’s important to see statistics and how driving behaviour effects on fuel or battery consumption.

In the future and for some cars even today, the instrument cluster must adapt to different driving modes differently. Good example is how Tesla changes instrument cluster when an autopilot is activated. In autopilot mode, it shows a very simple view with a relevant information only such as a car itself, other vehicles, speed limit and a road.

As an owner of a hybrid car, I think there are still too much legacy from the old combustion cars. Big car brands don’t want to do too radical changes too fast either, such as let a user to configure instrument cluster to support his/her driving habits best or remove “legacy stuff” from the instrument cluster. Luckily, we are living in interesting era right now and also those old giants need to jump to the modern age soon.

Steering wheel controls

To control Instrument Cluster content or IVI system, it’s more important to have well designed steering wheel controls. Steering wheel controls usage should be effortless, non-distractive and after a using them a while, driver should have a well trained muscle memory in fingers to control different functionalities without need to observe every finger movement separately.

Unfortunately, it seems to be über difficult job to design steering wheel controls right. The most annoying thing is to have buttons on a steering wheel, which basically are disabled e.g. due lack of language support. Good example is Toyota’s voice command button, which is not supported when langauge is set to certain language. For these sort of cases, one “simple solution” would be to allow to assign buttons to other functionality via IVI or IC system settings.

In-Vehicle Infotainment System

IVI systems…. Well this is a topic where so many things could be improved in so many ways. The use of IVI system should also be intuitive, effortless and it should follow good design rules. Here are few basic things to consider first:

  • Startup Time — Slow startup time can be very annoying especially if you’re in hurry and you need to wait for the IVI system to start. Even a 10–15 seconds wait time can ruin the whole UX. Good example is that the driver wants to make a phone call right when she steps into a car or if she needs to wait too long for rearview camera view to show up. Therefore the startup time performance optimization is very important to make fast enough — especially for the first time user experience which may effect negatively to car purchase decision.
  • Run-Time Performance — IVI system should have an excellent performance. Personally I think, it should be in the same level as it’s in flagship mobile devices. If, for example, a touchscreen responsiveness is slow, it starts to annoy users really fast. If the UI or applications are slow or that combined with poor responsiveness, it is even worse situation.
  • UI Design — Unfortunately many IVI homescreens or applications aren’t very well designed. Good example is how a built-in navigation works for certain brands, which is way too complicated. All IVI systems should have a well defined design language and an application framework to provide the correct look &feel and guidelines for application logic, which is common for all the applications.
  • On Screen Virtual Keyboard (VKB) — Virtual keyboard is not easy to implement right. In-vehicle virtual keyboard has a more challenging environment than it is for mobile devices — cars sway and jump while they are moving and it’s hard to tap the right letter on the VKB. Therefore VKB shouldn’t be too small or it should have a predictive text input and context related intelligence to ease driver’s or passenger’s life when trying to type e.g. an address to a navigator’s destination field.
  • 3rd party apps — Some cars supports 3rd party apps such as Spotify. Big brands are very cautious how their brand feels and looks on any platform. It’s very important to be able to provide good enough UX to make sure people want to use those 3rd party apps. My personal opinion is that, it should be really carefully evaluated if 3rd party apps are really needed and why. They may also be a security risk, depending on how and where they are installed and if they can compromise security.

IVI system is very interesting topic and the areas listed above are only a tip of an iceberg. I’m planning to write more about IVI systems later, so stay tuned if you’re interested about that topic.

Security

Security is a very difficult topic, but it’s related to in-vehicle UX very much. Allowing access to system critical parts via malicious 3rd party app, USB or by serial adapter and letting to tweak the system, it can be very expensive exercise for a car maker. It usually requires recalling thousands or even millions of cars to update the compromised parts or software.

For car owner’s point of view, it’s always a pain in the ass to bring the car to the car service and schedule rest of the world according to that. That’s why Over the Air (OTA) update is becoming more and more important feature to keep car owners happy and also to make sure that car software can be updated easily without requiring very expensive car recalls.

Where to go from here…. ?

Cars and UX is a very interesting topic especially because we are living in an era where EV cars, hybrids and self-driving cars are getting more and more common. In-vehicle UX is not just the software, it’s the whole combination of software, hardware, CAN bus(ses), mechanics and other high-end and low-end technology. Technology is taking big leaps in self-driving cars which means that UX is getting more important too. And there is so much work to do in that area.

So what’s next in Human eXperiences?

I hope to find more time to dive into many of these areas and also to write posts about other UX related topics. Until then, thanks for reading my blog!

Human eXperiences

Human eXperience is a publication about user interfaces and user eXperience, design and life.

Marko Mattila

Written by

I'm a father, husband, product manager at Zippie, snowboarder, mountain biker, runner, blogger and everyday experience junkie. I love good UX!

Human eXperiences

Human eXperience is a publication about user interfaces and user eXperience, design and life.

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