I recently listened to this brilliant TED talk. "3 ways good design makes you happy" by Don Norman. It gave me even more reasons to be opinionated about our new car's interior systems.
We recently ugraded from a 2004 Honda CR-V to a 2014 Honda CR-V. Driving a faithful but very aged car, I was expecting a minor space age experience. I was able to connect my phone via USB or Bluetooth to listen to music, take/make phone calls but my excitement ended there. The back camera component that I was looking forward to use let me down.
Here is why:
The back camera gives you a nice look of what is behind you, so you do not drive over an animal, motorcycle, bicycle, and most importantly a small child. However, it does NOT tell you how close you are other than the horizontal lines that you see on the screen and things are MUCH closer than they look on this screen. It feels like virtual un-reality. John keeps telling me that I should read the manual and understand the line logic better, but I believe that good design should be intuitive and should make me happy...
Once I was in my inquisitive mode, I have found other things that I thought should have been designed better. For example, the display screen that shows the time and music info. It is embedded in a little tunnel. When music is playing and its info is diplayed, the time is shown at the very bottom. When you are sitting at the back or at an angle in the front, it is not possible to see this time. The screen is slanted downwards in this tunnel.
I will not even get in to the user interaction part of the technology offerings. The icons that they have chosen for the phone connection setup and usability are not clear. The software works like vintage cellphone platforms where you had to click in several times to find a function.
Overall, there is no space age in 2014 Honda CR-V. It is a good ride, though!
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