In my days at TomTom we were keen to innovate and bring new experiences to in-car navigation. However, preventing driver distraction was always first and foremost in our minds, carefully crafting the location and appearance of key information so that it was easily understandable at a glance.
To this end, other factors such as the physical surfaces of the TomTom device itself were also very much considered. If the plastic used in the screen was too reflective then it would act almost like a mirror on a sunny day. The driver might see an echo of their own frustrated face rather than the navigation instructions. The use of matt surfaces also meant that direct sunlight should not bounce off the device and into the eye of the driver. I wish the guys at Renault had thought of that when putting together their latest Clio. To my horror, strong sunshine from behind my rented Clio reflected off the chrome speedometer surround, temporarily blinding me in the process. I had to take my hand away from the wheel and place it in front of the shining surround in order to prevent this hazardous distraction. The chrome sure looks nice but a more sensible approach would have been to, for example, use a mesh effect on the surround in order to disperse the light. Other than this life threatening UX fail, the little Clio was a delight. OK that might be an overly dramatic statement but safety should come first.
3 Comments
Patrick McCabe
8/12/2014 04:53:44
This is hilarious. And dangerous. Seriously. I guess you have to drive it in a country where the sun does not shine ... or only at night. Next time, you should hire a more premium product where they actually think before they put something into production :)
Reply
redmond
7/1/2015 03:18:05
my clio is the base model. No fancy touch screen. However, the radio is so basic that I struggle to quickly find the volume knob, it's so small. I take my eyes off the road to do so. Surely the volume button should be a big round dial in the middle of the radio!!!
Reply
Anicka Bankova
18/5/2015 05:11:25
Rented a Renault Captur, it's the higher version of the Clio. This chrome thing does not appear there. They must have read your article. There is a big round knob in the centre of the radio. Get this, it's for changing radio stations and not the volume! I cannot tell you the amount of times I've used this incorrectly.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
WelcomeI'm Frank Gaine. Strategist, Designer, Manager, Founder, Educator. Archives
April 2022
|