How We Can Improve Automotive Design Through User Experience

"Kyle D." (kyledblog) 05/07/2016 at 21:35 • Filed to: User Experience, UX

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Do automotive design teams truly consider the driver when approaching the design table today? Obviously all do to some degree, but most come up short by quite a lot. It might also be the case that it isn’t directly their fault though.

When I describe the process of designing for the driver, I’m not writing about designing the next track day car. Most people aren’t car enthusiasts; however, most people do care about their cars to some degree, even if the only thing that they say really matters to them is reliability. For those who might identify with that last statement, I have a bit of news. You probably care about more than you think.

The process of design goes far beyond the mechanics and the interior. Every bit of a car needs to communicate and interact with the next to create one homogeneous object. That is no easy task. Those who forget to consider the driver, the catalyst of all of the interaction taking place, will find themselves with a mediocre machine at best.

User experience rejects the notion that users should compensate and work to meet the machine. Rather user experience aims to meet a user, in this case the driver, at his or her level to eliminate the need for compromise. Let’s take a look at meeting the driver at her level.

Where Do I Put My Pocketbook?

According to the University of Michigan, women surpassed men in the number of drivers on the road in the United States in 2012. Well over 100 million women drive on American roads each year. That’s a staggering number when I realized that the simple needs of many women have yet to be met in automotive design.

My mother has complained that most cars do not accommodate for a pocketbook or other types of bags that need to be close to the driver. I agree. Although !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , automatic transmissions still account for the overwhelming majority of cars found on American roads. These cars have a problem that Jaguar and Chrysler have already noticed. The stick used to change gears in an automatic car is honestly just wasting space.

Jaguar and Chrysler have moved to a dial that changes gears electronically. For the person who only changes gears at the very beginning and very end of a drive, this is ideal. The extra space was used to place controls, like seat heaters, in a more accessible space. Perhaps, this space can just be used to enlarge the compartments adjacent to the cup holders, as the floor is just too dangerous of a place to put a pocketbook, or anything for that matter. Nevertheless, how are car designers supposed to know who wants what in their cars?

Current Research Tactics Don’t Hold All The Answers

You’ve probably been bombarded with surveys online asking you to rate a purchasing experience or a service. Some surveys deal with the quality of their employees from the customer’s perspective, but others focus on the quality of the actual product.

Previously, a car was the brain-child of an engineering team. The customer’s only say was in sales figures. For some automotive manufacturers, this may still be the case. Today, customer feedback is arbitrarily considered by some design teams to be some holy entity. If the customers get everything that they asked for, we’ll certainly beat out our competition. While customer input is vital, an absolutist view will put innovation on hold and allow competition to excel.

Customers provide insight. If surveys are crafted carefully, they can provide fantastic information pertaining to the user experience. The problem is when professionals start treating the customers’ suggestions as to how to fix the problem as gospel. Conducting proper research on fixing the identified problems is just as important as the initial research that identifies them in the first place. Engineers can make some absolutely astonishing things happen, but nothing will get fixed for the soccer mom or the young physician’s assistant if the engineers aren’t supplied with an adequate research team.

What’s The Solution?

The first rule of user experience is that nothing is ever perfect. Outside trends in society affect users, something we can see with the evolution of smartphone compatibility with cars and just about everything else. Users are always changing. Cars need to change to meet their drivers.

The first step is discovering who the driver is. This can be done by analyzing customer data for the previous model in the case of a continuing car, such as the Toyota Camry or the Mazda Miata, both equally loved by car enthusiasts. Using this data to design a car that will be better than the previous model is important. This can improve two special categories of sales that make the people at the top of the automotive food chain with lots of money very happy people - retention and conquest sales.

Retaining customers means getting a Toyota Camry owner to buy another Camry or at least another Toyota. Conquest sales are when owners of one brand shift to another, such as a Nissan Altima owner replacing his car with that Toyota Camry. Since both have very similar specs at very similar prices, selling one over the other to someone who doesn’t care about what’s under the hood means selling the experience of owning that vehicle, be it a Camry or a Miata.

Marketing departments do a great job of showing how owning their particular model can provide you with some wonderful memories and thrills that entice you to believe that this particular car is the car for you. User experience professionals give you that same feeling when you’re behind the wheel... if they’ve done their job correctly.

Again, that revolves around knowing who one is designing for. What challenges and problems does this person face? How can we solve these problems? How do we present these solutions for this user specifically?

Constantly harping on these questions is how we arrive at hatchbacks with foot sensors for when you’re carrying groceries. It’s how we arrive at navigation systems that learn your route to work and give you traffic updates without you actually entering your destination. Forgetting to address these questions is how we end up with !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , resulting in many crashes and injuries.

Steve in Manhattan > Kyle D. 05/07/2016 at 21:43

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I do not understand the dial-shifter automatic. The Jaguar J-Gate was fine. The conventional floor shifter is fine. Even a column shift on some cars is fine. But I’m supposed to wait for a knob to rise out of the center console? One more fucking thing to break.

Kyle D. > Steve in Manhattan 05/07/2016 at 21:46

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I totally get where you’re coming from. I’m just emphasizing the saved space that your typical driver will appreciate for other functions.

TheD0k_2many toys 2little time > Kyle D. 05/07/2016 at 21:46

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User experience is best with this

Kyle D. > TheD0k_2many toys 2little time 05/07/2016 at 21:49

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I look forward very much to the day I can drive a gated shifter. That being said, most people couldn’t care less. People who want them buy them from the companies that make them, which is a number that is quickly declining.

TheD0k_2many toys 2little time > Kyle D. 05/07/2016 at 21:50

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I know which sucks. If everyone drove stick there would be less texting and less distracted driving i think

Kyle D. > TheD0k_2many toys 2little time 05/07/2016 at 21:55

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It’s just a thought, but I think getting people more engaged should begin with the steering. The average new car for the middle class feels too detached from the road. These cars might feel a bit more luxurious than they did a decade ago, but they certainly don’t feel nearly as engaging.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Kyle D. 05/07/2016 at 21:57

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Great article! :D

My bird IS the word > Kyle D. 05/07/2016 at 21:57

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Good writeup. Relevant to me

TheD0k_2many toys 2little time > Kyle D. 05/07/2016 at 22:04

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yes cars have turned into appliances now days.

BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind > Kyle D. 05/07/2016 at 22:22

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You know what solves the “problem” with the shifter taking up too much space?

A column shifter. Which all cars should have. Mic drop.

Urambo Tauro > Steve in Manhattan 05/07/2016 at 22:34

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I don’t hate the concept of a shifter dial, but I totally agree that Jaguar jumped the shark by deciding to motorize it. I wonder what the procedure is for getting the car into neutral when there’s no power?

MonkeePuzzle > Kyle D. 05/07/2016 at 22:37

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A: the auto-shift dial/knob is an elegant, intuitive, ans space saving concept more cars should have. the standard automatics stick is a HUGEwaste of valuable real estate. esspecially vertically, it is constantly in the way.

B: the first gen focus had the least well designed interior of a car I’ve ever seen. all the standard controls, but seemingly thrown at random and seen where they’ll stick. nothing was in an intuitive location

Steve in Manhattan > Urambo Tauro 05/07/2016 at 23:13

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That’s a good point - battery dies and you need to push the car? Sometimes the old ways are the best ways. I’d start on crank windows, but then I’d just sound cranky.

Steve in Manhattan > TheD0k_2many toys 2little time 05/07/2016 at 23:20

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Vorsprung durch Technik!

Well, except the diesels.

boxrocket > Kyle D. 05/07/2016 at 23:47

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Mazda’s new MY2016+ models have this figured out. My CX-5 GT was/is immediately intuitive. My sole criticism from a driver’s standpoint is that only the driver’s window is automatic up/down IIRC - not even the moon-roof - same as my 2003 Mazda6 S, and the automatic gear selector is a bit too easy to nudge [accidentally] into and out of manual mode, and, like my 6, I wish the steering wheel-mounted cruise control buttons were on the left, and multimedia/phone controls on the right.

Kyle D. > My bird IS the word 05/08/2016 at 00:27

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Thank you very much!

Kyle D. > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 05/08/2016 at 00:27

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Thank you!!

boxrocket > boxrocket 05/08/2016 at 00:48

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change “sole” to “minor” and pluralize criticism. Wrote while mostly asleep.

crowmolly > Kyle D. 05/08/2016 at 08:54

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Good article!

In addition to the survey-based quant research there’s a lot of qualitative research that happens. Customer summits (at convention centers), interviews, special test-drive events, etc.

The rub is that some of the qual research requires things to be further along in the production process. Customer feedback can offer up small changes but the manufacturer is not going to do something major like go back and re-tool the fenders if people think they are ugly or reprogram the entertainment system if it is not intuitive.