Comments on: Scratching an Alignment Itch

By: Berthold

Berthold — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:08:21 +0000

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.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:14:39 +0000

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.

By: Linda

Linda — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:51:44 +0000

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?

By: Sarah

Sarah — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:42:16 +0000

OOh, I like that idea, AJ!

By: AJ Kandy

AJ Kandy — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:25:26 +0000

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).

By: Sarah

Sarah — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:20:04 +0000

Thanks, Giles!

By: Sarah

Sarah — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:18:29 +0000

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.

By: Giles Colborne

Giles Colborne — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:17:34 +0000

Looks great. More information *and* easier to read at a glance.

By: Fred Beecher

Fred Beecher — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:03:22 +0000

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. : )