Questions tagged [cars]
The cars tag has no usage guidance.
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What's the maxium safe time that a user can be looking at the controls in a car rather than the road?
And how should that be taken into account with the design of touch screen controls in the vehicle ?
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Why use a discrete representation for continuous quantities?
Is there any reason to use a discrete representation (like number of stars) for continuous quantities (like a progress bar)? This is assuming we don't want to show an exact number. (Yes I understand ...
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How do you stop people driving modern cars in daylight, in fog, without the lights on?
Modern cars increasingly have automatic lights.
So users assume that the car is going to turn the lights on for them.
However in daylight in fog the automatic system doesn't work (as its not dark ...
- 11.3k
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Why many car manufacturers still use gearstick / gearshift for automatic transmissions? [closed]
Why gear selectors for automatic transmission are still made in form of the gear stick for manual transmissions?
Isn't this useless waste of space?
There are at least two other possibilities (both ...
- 159
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Why are car keys and house keys different?
When inserting a car key into the ignition, I am able to do so quickly and easily, without having to carefully line up the key with the keyhole. I can do this despite the fact that the keyhole is ...
- 234
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Why my car does not allow me to turn engine on/off without going to parking
When I moved to US and switched to automatic a single most difficult thing for me to used to was that I need to move to parking before switching engine on/off.
In Europe every time there was a huge ...
- 121
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Why is the R in front of the D gear in cars (and vice versa)?
Most (or all) cars that have an automatic transmission have the reverse gear in front of the drive (forward) gear (and vice versa). What was the reasoning behind putting reverse (R) in the front and ...
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Why do most car radios have 6 preset buttons?
When looking at modern car radios, it's obvious that the vast majority of these has 6 buttons for pre-set radio stations.
Why?
Why not less, why not more?
It was very tempting to add the tag radio-...
- 1,305
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Should the steering wheel of car be on right or left? [closed]
What is the user experience of steering wheels placement based on?
I recently visited US and they have steering wheel on the left whereas back in asian countries we usually have it on the right.
What ...
- 401
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Why do car doors have an almost-closed state?
In every car I've ever seen, if you don't close the door with sufficient force, the door gets into a weird semi-closed state. This state is invisible, which is why cars have various indicators and ...
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Why do trunks for cars typically open upwards?
The other day I saw a car where the trunk's door opened sideways like the other car doors, instead of upwards like they usually do. That got me thinking; why does the door for a car's trunk usually ...
- 155
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Steering Wheel: A Better Alternative? [closed]
In my opinion steering wheels for automobiles are a bad UX. They seem to be a control that are here for legacy reasons only and were not thought out in the context of new age technology. What would be ...
- 15.4k
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Why are HUDs not used more in cars? [closed]
In military and civil aviation, I’ve been told, head-up displays (HUD) are rather common nowadays. The technology is not that expensive anymore. Is there a user experience reason for HUDs not being ...
- 2,518
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Why do speedometers (in the US, at least) go so high? [closed]
Typically one doesn't drive much faster than 80 MPH. Even in an emergency passing situation, it would be extremely rare to drive more than 100 MPH. In fact, as far as I know many cars have governors ...
- 514
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Flight Passenger Experience: 1 window per seat row
Airlines use differently sized seats and arrange them at different distances, of course, even if we look just at Economy class, but since windows are so small – probably due to technical constraints – ...
- 2,518
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Automative Turbo activation
I am currently developing an interface for the car control screen, in this screen so far I have to implement such a indicator to give back the response of the turbo status. This status carrying ...
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Why do some cars only have a physical lock on the driver side?
I have a car (tsx) and I realize that sometimes I will need to use the physical key instead of the electronic key fob to unlock my car. Such as if there is something wrong with the electronics or my ...
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What's the optimal seat arrangement for a self-driving car?
Take your average mid-sized sedan layout (though this is the view of an SUV, it should illustrate the idea for anyone who has never been in a car before.):
You have a driver's seat and a passenger's ...
- 290
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Touchscreens in car consoles
Last week this video about a new interface for touchscreens in cars popped up and created a reasonable buzz, maybe you've seen it already. I just got to watching it and it got me thinking about the ...
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Why do some cars have the fuel door on the passenger's side?
Many cars, such as the BMW M3 pictured below, have their fuel door on the passenger's side of the car.
I do not understand the reasoning behind placing the fuel door opposite the driver; placing it ...
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Is it a good idea to set a different signal for performing a u-turn?
For a long time, I wondered why is there not a separate indication to signify a u-turn, e.g. the rear lights would have two segments for flickering lights - one spaced on top of the other - as to ...
- 233
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Why electric car windows can be automatic for driver's window and manual for others?
I'm European and I don't understand the logic behind electric car windows commands.
In a lot of cars, a driver can fully open the electric window on his side with a single push. But if he wants to ...
- 3,134
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Dangerous situations and ease of use for satnavs
A satnav is a device that people are often tempted to use while actually driving, which is a dangerous thing to do as they are distracted from driving while operating it.
Should the interaction ...
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How to stop car lights being left on
The lights in cars can be a very frustrating experience for users. Most of us who drive have left our lights on and quite a few of us will have come to our cars to find them completely unusable for ...
- 7,868
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Dark screens in cars
I am a designer just preparing an app for the "in car" area.
Normally we have a bunch of colors to use and we usually use dark colors on a light background. Now our client came up with some question ...
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How can the mode of a car's transmission be made more clear?
In a car, if you press the accelerator it can do one of three things:
make the car go forward.
make the car go backward.
not move the car at all.
The result depends on what gear the car is in, but ...
- 7,436
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User testing for car interfaces
Users often interact with car head unit displays while driving. Typical usability tests are designed assuming that the user is not driving while performing a usability test. Are there any good methods ...
- 4,174
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Why is a manual transmission so complicated? [closed]
While driving I noticed that the gearbox is complicated for a first time users. I find it hard to tell which gear my car is in while driving.
Is there a reason for this design, and is there a better ...
- 1,850
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Why do most dashboards use capital words?
Most car manufacturers seem to use ALL CAPS for the interiors's buttons and switches, at least when they are not using symbols. Example:
They even use capitals for things that are not even controls, ...
- 17.6k