Mitsubishi recently showed off a new concept car interior featuring wraparound displays, a yoke rather than a steering wheel, and buttons that appear or disappear depending on use context.
This last is getting some well-deserved heat. As one commenter summarized (accurately),
Variable controls and data are an insanely bad idea for a car. Insanely bad.
When driving, you want 100% consistency in your inputs and outputs. You want the same control to do the same thing every time. You want to look in the same place for the same data every time. This is because you don't have time to analyze in those moments when you MUST do something by reflex. Such moments occur all time time when driving.
As if we don't have enough distractions when driving, we need to design distractions INTO the driving experience.
It's a concept car though so the features may be for display versions only but probably won't make it into the actual cars for sale.
Posted by: Ford Orange County | 04/16/2012 at 07:49 AM