Chapter 9: 14 Samara-Hardware Prototyping a Driving Simulator

Overview

Turkka Keinonen

Behind the cafeteria counter stands an inconspicuous entrance that leads to a long corridor. It is locked; this corridor is evidently inaccessible to outsiders. Several doors appear at intervals along its length, one of which leads to a stairwell. It, too, is locked, unmarked, nondescript. If you were looking for it, you'd be hard-pressed to recognize it. Enter it, and a flight of stairs leads you down to the windowless underground floors of the Research Center. The third locked door (counting from the cafeteria) opens into a basement passage that quickly turns into a small lobbylike space. On the right-hand wall is a steel door with an alarm. The door reads TeleRing, a mobile phone retailer. It's a bluff. It has nothing to do with TeleRing.

Two men from the Research Center are wandering around the Tattarisuo junkyard. Snow still hides some of the cars late into spring. The men open the doors of the cars when they can or just peer in through the windows. A dark blue Audi 100, probably a 1994, is in good condition considering its location, but it doesn't interest the men for long. A red Ford Sierra is quickly bypassed. So it goes, one car after another. The men had already passed the white Samara-a Russian-made family sedan-but they return. The left front fender is mangled, but the dashboard and seats are in good shape. The interior is austere, practical. The radio works. One man points out details in the dashboard and speaks rapidly. The other is skeptical, but after a while begins nodding his head. The two edge past a German shepherd guarding the office and step inside. 'One-quarter of the white Samara,' they say, 'delivered.'

Representatives of a leading carmaker are giving guests a tour of the product development department. After a glance at the mandatory organizational charts, they set out for the research facilities to look at laboratory equipment. A shiny new car just off the line has been parked in the lab. A closer look reveals that someone has replaced the instrument panel with a display terminal, and the controls are connected to a computer but not to the engine or transmission. This vehicle's cockpit faces a large screen on which a projected image of a flat highway in a rural landscape wavers. Loudspeakers are everywhere. There are no wires in sight. The racks and tables have been built of aluminum profiles. The space has that new-car smell. You can't help but notice that the guests are half-smiling, thinking about the basement back home in the lab.

Electronics play an ever-more-significant role in automobiles. New premium cars are equipped with diverse systems for music, radio, navigation, communication, and traffic information. Similar systems will show up in ordinary family cars soon, and to some extent they already have. The systems can be purchased and installed as separate aftermarket equipment, but the integration and factory installation of the systems is a growing trend.

Many of these car systems are rather complex from the usability angle, and combining several applications into one centralized user interface further complicates the matter. The automobile is a challenging environment in terms of ergonomics and usability, because its electronic devices are used by the person driving the car. Some manufacturers have restricted usage of car computers or navigator settings such that their features are functional only when the car is stationary, but in general car systems are intended for use in traffic. Drivers thus have to divide their attention between operating the car and the electronic systems inside it.

During the late 1990s no one gave much thought to what the user interface for an automotive electronics system would look like when all the subsystems under development, and those already partially or completely realized, were integrated. Car manufacturers mastered the driving part of their products, but electronics were bought directly from the equipment manufacturers. Each vendor focused only on its own limited area of expertise-the audio system, the navigator, the phone. Meanwhile, studies were under way to determine the traffic safety risks posed by these devices, particularly the phone, and authorities in different countries were imposing regulations that targeted individual features or functions. Prohibitions to using mobile phones while driving-without hands-free equipment or, in some cases, at all-were enacted.

What such regulations failed to acknowledge was that in many countries people spend long periods of time in their cars. Traffic is congested and moves slowly. Drivers want to take advantage of this time by getting a part of their work done or at least by entertaining themselves. They try to do as many of the same or similar types of things in their vehicles as they do elsewhere. For this reason the car's systems must seamlessly integrate with the information and communications technology they use in their offices, at home, or on the street.

For several years at the end of the millennium, a lot was happening at once in in-car communications; a variety of systems were being integrated for the first time, safety regulations were tightening, and drivers started to require improved compatibility between automotive, desktop, and handheld products.



Mobile Usability(c) How Nokia Changed the Face of the Mobile Phone
Mobile Usability: How Nokia Changed the Face of the Mobile Phone
ISBN: 0071385142
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 142

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