cts | Volt a Day | The Screens September 18, 2010

This will be the first of a series of posts.

The Chevy Volt include two seven inch screens. There is one past the steering wheel, where you are used to looking for your speedometer, and one as part of the "stack" of devices in the center of the console. One of the things that is fantastic about this is that the "interface" for the car is now in software. If you like a big set of digital numbers for your speedometer, they could do that. If you are more retro and want the dial with the sweeping hand, that could be an option.

It also means that all of these decisions can be critiqued. GM should really bring in Jakob Nielsen to explain why round gauges can be read more quickly than numbers, and which colors will most easily highlight information.

The image above gives me four pieces of information: outside temperature, the time, and the energy "efficiency" of both my driving style and the climate setting. Is it the best presentation of this group of information? Hardly, but every masterpiece has to start with a first draft. I think we're probably looking at the fifth or sixth draft.

Since there are "buttons" on the screen it is a page that will show up on the touchscreen in the stack in the center of the console. So the driver has selected this page to get some information. I hope the two balls change color. If "green" means that we are doing well, that's great (although 50% efficiency for the climate settings doesn't seem like it should be green). So a really quick glance at the screen (highway driving) tells us the balls are green. Great. Then if we are at a stop light, we can see in more details that the ring is more than two thirds full. And if we want real accuracy there's a two digit number there to read.

Could we get a steady ramp of color from bright green to deep red that corresponded to the percentage? And then we could also have the temperature on a vertical scale on the right, with a marker for where we have set the thermostat inside the car. Knowing that separation might be key to changing the setting a little.

Another wonderful thing about have this be the instrumentation for the car is not just customization, but revision. If a year from now there is a better design, your dealer can simply upgrade your software and you have all the new gauges.