The classical way of developing car HMI systems
The first challenge we frequently encounter in our daily work with automotive development teams is overcoming compartmentalized thinking and planning of features and information: At many OEMs, the design of infotainment system elements is still siloed – one team is taking care of the entertainment part, one of the car- and system-settings, one of the navigation, etc. In addition, communication and alignment between these teams appears to be limited to a design framework level to ensure consistency of use, but does not aim to maintain or develop cross-domain functionality. For some contracts, we are explicitly asked to focus solely on solutions serving one of these function areas and to actively disregard any results that are cross-functional. Currently, this division of development is mirrored in most car human-machine-interfaces (HMIs), which benefits users by making it very easy to learn how to use the system and to find the most relevant functions quickly and without much distraction.
However, as a consequence, we can already see the downside of this way of developing interfaces with connected functions provided in the cars we drive today. As soon as a feature is difficult to attribute to one of the traditional system areas, it finds itself in sections named “connected services,” “additional services” or similar – despite its functional nature not having anything in common with other features in this category. A usual sign of this divided feature landscape is the location of an online weather or restaurant rating app in such a limbo-category. In many instances, these sections also only consist of literal lists of apps and functions, making it extremely cumbersome for users to locate a feature by scanning the lengthy list for anything relevant, often without knowing if the function they are looking for is actually provided in their car or what the OEM has decided to call it.
This traditional way of developing car infotainment systems has so far been of minor relevance to the way users experience their cars. These connected features still only play a minor role in most users’ list of requirements and are overshadowed by the need for quick access to standard navigation and media functions. However, this is all going to change with the self-driving car.