Cellphones nowadays are getting more functional and at the same time more useable having easy-to-use buttons and tweaks. This is where Ford has drawn its inspiration in designing dashboards of its new cars making them more useable and at the same time minimizing all the hassles while driving the car. In this design, Ford has collaborated with Ideo in order to give all the cars UI consistency.
Ideo, the original maker of the ‘Apple mouse’, provided some advice sought by Ford about giving their cars a standard layout that instead of creating their own inventions, they would rather adopt iPod and TV remote identical input devices.
According to Gizmodo.com via NY Times, here are the changes made by Ford on all its cars:
“One is the five-point controller - four directional arrows with a central button - on the steering wheel. Used on many electronic gadgets, it had roots in the points of the compass. Five-point controllers on the steering wheel are easily operated with the thumb, which lets drivers keep their eyes on the road.
A central eight-inch screen is organized around four corners and four colors: yellow-orange for the phone, green for navigation, blue for climate control and red for entertainment. There are, mercifully, large knobs for volume and fan speed.
You can see how much cellphone UI influenced Ford and Ideo in the prototype (the white and blue dashboard) and how much of that eventually trickled into the production model (the black dashboard). I think the changes that Ford made are absolutely welcome as car dashboards have been terrible from a technological standpoint for a very long time.”
Photo credit: Gizmodo
No comments:
Post a Comment