I like the start button, have used it on the track and street and enjoy the uniqueness of it all.

all of us are intitled to our opinions on the car and it's layout/features...i would like to see some changes that will not happen and have changed/improved a few things on my car, we can all change stuff if we want to.

i have seen right here someone who put a great looking NAV system in the dash, large wings, huge exaust systems, turbos and superchargers, etc....so what....i don't have to like 100% of what honda put out and neither does anyone else...and nobody has to agree on what is cool or not cool about mods....

all that being said i find it odd that anyone would buy this car the way it is and bitch about its features right off???? then again each to his or her own, after all the poster did buy one. then again some folks just like to pick at scabs till they bleed for fun.

 

A volume knob would suck, the volume is just fine. The mode button is alright, but doesn't need to be so big. The inability to move backwards tracks on a cd is kind of crappy though.

 

[QUOTE=st_rage,May 17 2007, 06:15 PM]My definition:

I consider a race car to be designed for one thing: to win races.

 

RED MX5: I can only assume you are talking about a different dave right? I don't recall deleting anything or replying to you.

Is my memory that bad already? lol

 

Hey Everyone!

Maybe I can shed some new light on this ergonomics thing. I've done some MMI (Man Machine Interface) design, and UI (User Interface) design, and I've had to deal with this kind of thing in real world product design.

One thing nobody here seems to realize is that no UI or MMI will EVER suit everyone who has to use it. This thread reminds me of designing a UI/MMI for TAWC (Tactical Air Warfare Center). There is a lab in Georgia, and a lab in Florida, and between the two labs they frequently disagree on what they really want or need. If you design for one of the labs the people in the other lab aren't happy, and you can never get them to agree. No matter what kind of system, the UI/MMI is what people see, and it is what defines the way the system works, from the users perspective. If one of the labs doesn't like the UI/MMI then they don't like the entire system, so UI/MMI design has to find a way to do the impossible and please everyone.

This IS possible, and some day we will probably see it done in our cars, but we just aren't there yet. What I use to do for TAWC was design the UI/MMI so that it was totally user configurable and parameter driven, and I'd add tools to make it easy to set up any kind of UI/MMI the end user wanted. Everybody got exactly what they wanted, and when they decided they wanted a change they could make it easily.

Some day we will see more of this in our cars, but that day isn't here yet, so no UI or MMI is ever going to please everyone.

Honda put everything at the drivers fingertips and it all works pretty darn well. As a UI/MMI designer myself, I think they did a damn good job, and as a sports car nut I think they did a GREAT job, but I know too much about UI/MMI and people to expect everyone to think that it's perfect.

LOL, maybe that doesn't shed any light on the issue at all, but if all any of you get out of it is that no UI/MMI will please everyone, then maybe these disagreements will make more sense to everyone, and go away.

 

Here's the text of the e-mail notification I received ...

Who knows?

 

Ha ha, this is funny. You deleted your post and I just put it back up.
If you want me to delete it again I will.

 

Uhhh.. that post was posted on page 6, and it's still the 3rd post from the bottom of the thread (edit: err bottom of page 6 make that). It wasn't a reply to you, nor was it deleted.

It was in fact in reply to vtec9 who said any car that is raced is a race car.

I guess you got that e-mail a wee bit after I posted it eh?

 

Redmx5,

Thanks for making a well considered and thought out post rather than the "u suxxor, start buttons are teh kewl" that seems to be floating around.

I agree that a UI can't satisfy everyone, but the fact that the controls are a mirror image tells me that UI concerns were shelved for aesthetics. I see that almost everywhere else on the car the aethetic and functional seem so go hand-in-hand, so this exception surprised me.

 

LOL, that's pretty funny. I looked all through the recent posts and couldn't find the darn thing.
I guess the e-mail notification did arrive a long time after you made the post.

My bad.