by Gil Rosen
Still under the influence of the 2006 Usability Day, I want to make a case in point about the importance of usability and how it effects us throughout our life. Last week my car broke down and it got temporarily replaced with a Mazda. Below you can see two photos of the car’s dashboard - during the day and night.
As you can notice, the Mazda designers thought an all red panel would make it look really cool. If the color luminescent blue is taken by the Germans then “lets use red”. The result may look nice (if you are into red) but from a usability standpoint - pure hell!. In my case, new car & unfamiliar buttons, this was impossible:
1. I want to turn the volume up - its the round red button
2. I want to manually change channel - its the round red button
3. I want to turn up the heat - its the round red button. I want to turn up the heat just a tad- turn towards the red light …no indication when to stop (button rotates forever), Turn heat heat down - turn towards the red light…you get the point.
4. I want change to preset station - its the red button again. Which one? Guess and find out.
5. Change to CD - that’s right…. its the red button
Wherever you look, whatever you want to do, RED RED RED….all cluttered nice and cosy like one big happy family.
The problem which made it worse is the fact that I wear glasses for night driving. This means that anything I look at below the ‘frame line’ I see fuzzy - unless of course I tilt my head down, which you don’t want to do while driving.
Here is a short run of what I would expect:
1. Make use of conventional graphics / icons and make them big enough to comprehend with a quick glance
2. Use different colors to indicate different functions (the classic blue to red to indicate moving from cold to hot air)
3. BIG FONT!
4. Make some kind of hierarchy decision - highlight what is important and don’t give every bottom the same level of visibility. After all, I change channels WAY MORE than set the clock –> why is the time setting button the closest to me?
Cars, websites or other digital applications…its all the same - hierarchy, core and context, create flows, think of the real life scenarios…make it simple, let users test…let users test….
What perplexes me is that a huge car manufacturer like Mazda can produce such a result. Didn’t they give anyone other then themselves a chance to test night driving?? I bet my money that I’m not unique and that more than 5 out of 10 people would say the same.
Bottom line - Mazda’s red dash is a usability RED hell.
Gil Rosen
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My car, for example, is a model of excellent ergonomics(VW Golf, BTW: for sale to the highest bidder): all the ventilation control dials are of a different size so you always know which one it is you have grabbed blind. Very thoughtful..
As to Fatso’s comment concerning those mysterious initial that have popped up on modern radios - they’re all to do with the RDS (Radio Data Sysytem). PTY= Program Type: in countries where the RDS is fully implemented (eg. UK) you can tell the radio to look for a station of a certain type, like NEWS or ROCK etc.
TP = Traffic Program: This means your radio will (if you want it to) automatically switch to a traffic report, even on another station.
AF = Alternate frequency: Many radio stations have different frequencies for different regions of the country and this function automatically switches from one to the other as you drive along.
These functions do not always work, depending on how developed the RDS is where you live and so sometimes all those buttons seem like they don’t do much…
Alas an educated car expert amongst Degardeners readers….thanks Yaya 
perhaps you should turn on a light and read what the buttons say, and even so, its not hard to see any of the controls and what they do.
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Yeah, this drives me crazy as well.
11.20.06 @ 12:38 pmEver tried understanding what the buttons on the radio mean? TP? AF? PTY? And that’s on every car radio in every car I’ve seen in a couple of years…