Comment by cubicle67 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cubicle67 | Hacker News Reader

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Normally I enjoy this sort of thing, but this I'm not taking to. As commented by others, it looks like it was designed by someone who drives very little

First up, the speedo is not only about the number, but also the position of the needle. I don't need to know if I'm doing 110 or 111, but the position of the needle will tell me at a very quick glance if I'm venturing towards 120 or slowing to 90

Second - I thought we'd decided adjusting volume by anything other than a physical turning dial was a poor way to do it about 10 years ago.

Then there's other odd things like 83% oil - what sort of use is a figure like that? Is that good or bad? Oil pressure is what I need to know, and even then a simple binary ok/not ok is sufficient

Possibly the main problem is that there's not really much wrong with displays as they are. I can see my speed and rate of acceleration, rpm, warning lights etc at a glance. I can dim them to my liking. And, importantly, anyone else driving one of my vehicles can very quickly acclimatise themselves and feel confident driving it. With the way things are currently, there's really only two things I need to figure out when I hop into a car i haven't driven before - which side of the steering column the indicators are on, and where the headlight switch is

To your two points: you'll see that there is a blue (sometimes yellow?) ring around the number that presumably serves the same purpose as the speedometer needle – position & movement at a glance. And the volume is controlled by a physical turning dial (in the shot with the "hard buttons" label).

Yes, you might be right about the volume. I was looking at the buttons here [1] but the volume one looked more like a round push button than a dial. I guess it could be a dial

As to the ring around the number, well I'm more confused going back and looking at it again. Sometimes, like [2] it's a single colour, and others, like [3] it's divided into multiple segments. 12/14mph is slow, so I'd expect to see the ring extend not as far as it does. I'd expect it to extend that far around for speeds like 70mph

Another thought - the little mpg/regen graph is prominent but largely useless. However, if speed and acceleration were added it could be a very useful tool in working out which driving conditions give best economy

[1] http://www.minimallyminimal.com/storage/post-images/doko/d13...

[2] http://www.minimallyminimal.com/storage/post-images/doko/f07...

[3] http://www.minimallyminimal.com/storage/post-images/doko/d10...

I also had problems with the speedo ring. The number is more informative, but analogue gauges are faster to read and interpret, which is important when driving. I'd prefer a design which emphasised the gauge and deemphasised the number. I'm also not a big fan of putting primary driving information at a sideways angle from the driver.

Interesting point from ye olde days when they had banks of gauges, such as you might find measuring pressure in a power plant: the gauges were generally calibrated such that the 'normal' value had the needle pointing straight up. That way you can have an entire bank of gauges monitored with little more than a glance - a needle out of alignment is quickly obvious. By comparison, if they were number readouts, you'd need to individually focus on each one.

> I don't need to know if I'm doing 110 or 111, but the position of the needle will tell me at a very quick glance if I'm venturing towards 120 or slowing to 90

You're not the first to say this here, and it honestly has me surprised. My Civic did away with the needle entirely, and has a numeric digital display. I have not even once missed it. Acceleration is something your body can easily gauge, velocity is not.

If you're at 110 kph and you can't tell whether you're slowing down or speeding up, we have significant physiological differences.

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