2011 Ford Edge. (Ford)
After testing prototype controls, the design team proposed layouts. (Photos: Ford)
To design its new dash, Ford used simple mockups that could be tried in a wide variety of configurations.
Look inside the 2011 Ford Fiesta and you will see dashboard controls that have been modeled after the keypad of a cellphone. In some ways, that makes perfect sense: Ford's market research suggested that young buyers were more attached to their mobile phones than to their means of mobility.
The automaker, recognizing the challenge of keeping its vehicles' controls and instruments up to date, began in 2006 to establish a set of design principles for its automotive interfaces, aiming to improve what it called the cabin experience.
Elements of the design
A five-point controller is shown on the 2011 Lincoln MKX. (Ford)
- The Ford dashboard design takes a fresh look at placement and organization but acknowledges that tried and true does exist. "Some conventions are worth respecting and don't need to be reinvented," says Jennifer Brace.
- For example, rather than develop a proprietary controller like the multifunction knob of BMW's iDrive, Ford chose familiar input devices similar to those of TV remote controls and iPods.
- One is the five-point controller -- four directional arrows with a central button -- on the steering wheel. It's used on many electronic gadgets and is easily operated with the thumb, which lets drivers keep their eyes on the road.
- A central 8-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 large knobs for volume and fan speed.
- Information and controls for the car are on a screen to the left of the speedometer, while those for the driver (including the climate control, audio system and navigation unit) are on the right.
- The system is intended to be flexible for the designers. The Mustang version could look sportier, while the Lincoln version -- offered on the 2011 MKX -- included sliders, a presumably more elegant and upmarket mode of touch control.
The company sought advice from Ideo, a design consultancy known for developing the original Apple computer mouse and shaping interfaces for Palm.
"We wanted to get outside the bubble," says Jennifer Brace, a user-interface design engineer at Ford.
The Ideo team included a wide swath of people in its market research and interviews -- not just seasoned drivers, but also airplane pilots and ATM users.
"We found we learned the most not from the average driver, but from the extreme cases," says Iain Roberts, who led the team working with Ford. "We want to get to the ends of the bell curve."
Some teenagers, Brace says, had no idea what the tachometer was or why it was there. Ford had not seriously considered getting rid of it.
Ideo also went to extreme experts, Roberts says. One was an audio tinkerer pioneering the use of MP3-format music in cars. These types of users had addressed many of the interface issues that concerned Ford, developing their own ways to combine audio, video and other entertainment streams.
"They were early adopters of technology who put 15-inch screens on the console and huge disk drives in the trunk," Roberts says.
Ideo teams quickly mocked up ideas to test them on drivers, often using little more than sticky notes, cardboard and modeling clay.
The rules for design drawn from the research were so fundamental as to border on cliché: Be attentive. Be approachable. Be clear. Be connected.
And as important: Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
"When you have an 8-inch touch screen, you think of all the things you can do," Roberts says. "But then you remember that people have to drive while doing it."
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