Do car designers understand UX?
This is getting to be a real issue, with "cruise control" transitioning to a future of autonomous vehicles. What the heck is ACTIVE lane assist, anyway?
This particular issue has been burning up my brainwaves lately. I had a 2018 Range Rover Sport, which finally pissed me off so much I turned it in for a 2020 Toyota 4Runner TRD Pro. I still own a 2021 Audi RS7, but am wondering whether I really want to keep it. I rent cars from time to time, most recently a 2020 Ford Escape Hybrid in Idaho & Montana. Each of these cars have what might be referred to as advanced features that use sensors to improve the driving experience. I’m sure that’s the way the manufacturers would like to think of it.
Some of those sensors started showing up several years ago. For instance, I first had a water sensor in one of my cars at least 10 years ago, which promised to turn the windshield wipers on when needed. It didn’t work very well. Now the same sensors tend to work pretty well, although my San Francisco RS7 still struggles to understand what dampness from fog means.
A more recent sensor is the one that automatically dims brights. My Santa Fe Range Rover would dim the brights because of reflective signs. Sometimes it would be slow to dim the brights for an oncoming car, which meant the other driver would flash their brights to remind me to dim mine. This is a most interesting example of what happens when cars with no sensors (and drivers that don’t know about them) meet cars with sensors.
I abandoned my Range Rover for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that it didn’t start when I needed to get to the airport. That was the straw that broke that car’s back. The aspect that just annoyed the crap out of me, though, was that it would dim the brights below what appeared to be a variable speed around 25 mph. Sometimes less, sometimes more, although the difference was not apparent to me. I took to calling that British User Experience.
But the one “feature” that scares me and concerns me about the future of autonomous driving is what Audi calls “active lane assistance”. This RS7 is my second; the first was a 2016. I loved that car and kept it through my entire lease; it was fun to drive, slow or fast. I drove it without interference from the car.
I thought it was the best car I had ever had, so when the lease was up, I traded it in for the newest RS7, a 2021, which became available earlier this year. My new RS7 has this thing called “active lane assistance”. When the car comes close to a lane marker on either side, it actively pushes the steering toward the middle of the lane. The first time this happened, my heart started pounding because I didn’t know what was happening. Going 60 miles an hour through the Robin Williams Tunnel and coming out into twists and turns: You really don’t want your car to start steering! Indeed, there is no user feedback (except a small icon under the speedometer which I found much later; do you want to look away at the dashboard in that situation?).
I thought there was something wrong with the car. I did some research at home, discovered that Audi has had this feature for a number of years and has been gradually “improving”. Indeed, my 2016 had an early version of this which would light up a digital lane-marker icon on the dashboard. Bulletin boards indicate that, in the interim, the feature has become more aggressive, moving from lane assistance to active lane assistance, but could be turned off. I am not the only one who finds this feature annoying, if not disturbing. I have not managed to find a way to turn it off or modify how aggressive it is in my 2021 RS7. I think that maybe, in the 2021 model cars, Audi has decided that it works well enough to make it the default with no ability to turn it off. (The dealer also told me they can’t turn it off.)
I have driven my new RS7 enough in San Francisco and in the countryside, both on highways and on country roads that I’ve had enough time with it to think I might want to get a different car. This is a sport car which I bought to be able to drive myself, not to have it tell me how to drive. This attitude raises all sort of questions about the future of autonomous driving!
But one thought occurs to me: Does Audi use different sensors in different cars, cars designed for different audiences? I didn’t buy the Audi RS6 sedan or Q3 SUV; I bought what is considered one of the fastest production sports cars. Sensors are computer chips and need to be produced at scale, meaning that Audi must design these assistance features for all of their cars to get that scale.
This active assistance needs a lot of sensors! The steering wheel has them to know if I have my hands on the wheel. (Both Ford Escape & Audi RS7 take about 15 seconds to tell you to put your hands back on wheel if you take them off.) The steering mechanism has them to provide that active assistance. The car has cameras to see the lane markers and sensors to see how close they are. The car also has a camera to read speed limit signs and report that to the driver. And many many more in the engine and in the rest of the car.
My recent experience with the Ford Escape was much better. It gently pushed the steering wheel; I ended up letting it decide to keep the car in the lane, rather than fighting it. Am I a bad driver? Is the Audi a bad car? Who gets to decide how close to a lane marker the car is and how much force the steering wheel should exert? Audi clearly wants you to keep the car in the middle of the lane; Ford seems more relaxed. Is that German User Experience vs American User Experience?
Cars are themselves complex systems; the roads we drive them on are a different and possibly more complex system. The cars don’t communicate with each other or with the roads. The people don’t communicate with each other, much less play well with their cars. Insert computer algorithms in between any of those interactions, and the complexity of the system soars.
I get the sneaking suspicion that all these smarts won’t work until every car and every person has them, until there are no “dumb” cars left (leaving aside the question of dumb drivers) and until the technology has been deployed for at least 20+ years so the industry can iterate on improvements, regardless of which country or culture the designers grew up with.
My bottom line: I love my 2020 Toyota 4Runner TRD Pro because it doesn’t pretend to be smarter than me… The speed display is analog. I can’t connect my iPhone with Bluetooth, but can with cable. I have to lock the doors before I close them. I even bought the 10-year warranty, since these cars are reported to last forever. But! It still beeps inexplicably and won’t allow me to turn the brights on below 20mph. Why? Is that Japanese User Experience?