This is the LCD info display in the dashboard of my mom’s 2002 Toyota Avalon. (Please excuse the blurry iPhone photo.)
During my last visit, I think I spent too much time in the car, because that display really started to bug me. I just cannot for the life of me imagine a designer could look at it and think, “Yep, that’s finished. Put it into production!” Maybe no designers were involved or empowered, but that display makes no sense to me. Here’s a clearer recreation:
NOTHING in it aligns with anything else! It’s like someone just dropped things in and pushed them around until they filled up the space, leaving them tantalizingly close to lined-up, but not quite. Why on earth isn’t the temperature either left- or right-aligned with the clock? And why is the date so enormous, but yet not the same size as the time? And after dedicating so much space to the date (which only changes once a day, after all), five other features are jammed into the bottom right corner, and then not right-aligned with the date. Looking at all these odd gaps and edges makes my brain itch.
And on top of all that, the odometer is in a teensy tiny, non-backlit LCD area below this large display, which means, among other things, that you can’t read it at night. (My mom really hates that.)
So I decided to take a take a crack at fixing the large LCD display layout. This is not a true redesign. I’m giving Toyota the benefit of the doubt on the relative importance of items (except the date). Also, it doesn’t seem fair to say, “Use a better screen technology!” which would allow me to do things very differently. Not that a drastic redesign isn’t called for—as you can see here the whole dash really needs (and has probably since gotten) a ground-up rethinking. I just wanted to try to work within my understanding of the original designer’s constraints—technology, size, and (mostly) data—and bring some order to it. Here is my take:
I aligned the elements as best I could. I made the date significantly smaller and added in the odometer. This meant removing a few of the display toggle options, but I felt this was a reasonable trade-off for the increase in odometer usability and general cleanliness. Also, following Tufte’s principle of maximizing data-ink, I removed the heavy outline around the compass.
I’m sure it’s not perfect—I only worked on it for one evening. But at least it doesn’t make my brain itch.
Do you have more suggestions? A better solution? Or do you love the original? Let me know!
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice work, Sarah! I like how you removed the unnecessary emphasis around direction. But I might de-emphasize it even more… I’d swap it with temperature to make temperature bigger. Of course, I live in Minnesota, where we have weather, not L.A. : )
Also, direction is conceptually related to odometer, range, etc. that are all measures of distance. But I could be overthinking it. I’ve never done THAT before. : )
Looks great. More information *and* easier to read at a glance.
Thanks, Fred. Yeah, I thought about that, and I agree with you that direction is related nicely to that other info. However, your direction does change all the time as you drive, so I thought maybe that made sense to have prominent placement.
Also, I didn’t have time or resources to do a bunch of research, so I wanted to leave the content hierarchy pretty much the way it was in the original, basically assuming Toyota had a good reason for setting it up that way in the first place. Except for the date, which I KNOW can’t be that important.
Good research and a true redesign would probably completely rethink/restructure/remove this entire panel.
Thanks, Giles!
Nice work. Poor alignment is one of my biggest design pet peeves as well. I think i’d change one other thing – if you had to have an outline around the compass direction indicator, you could make it an illuminated compass rose with an arrow to reinforce the idea of current direction (north at top).
OOh, I like that idea, AJ!
Like it. Sloopy alignment bugs me, too. I don’t think I’ve noticed or driven in a car with a compass indicator like this. Was it useful while driving?
It wasn’t so useful to me on this last trip because I only drove places that I already knew. I have found it useful before, but only when I’m totally lost or turned around. I do sort of suspect there might have been no user research behind its prominence—maybe someone at Toyota just thought it was a cool feature, or something that might differentiate it during a sale.
I can’t be arsed to try right now, buy maybe the original layout has some geometric properties after all – not that that would change the ugliness and obvious carelessness one bit but… Well it looks kind of like there is a V-shape around the compass, framed by the other elements. Although admittedly rather shoddily implemented and probably not properly angled. OK I give up, it does suck. One day, these will be either OLEDs or e-paper, and design woes like these will be a think of the past. I’d hack mine to always remind me of birthdays.
Good on ya! They should hire you. After you give me more than #aaa on the comment form, that is.