Dear Elon:
PLEASE go to your chief U/I designer's office, turn his desk so it's facing the window, have the blinds removed so the sun shines on his computer screen. Then put glasses on his head that give him the equivalent of 20/40 vision (the minimum to legally drive). Sit him down in front of his U/I design to read the screens and tell you the following:
1) What time is it? In what time zone?
2) What is the current rated range?
3) How many miles remaining to your destination? To your next turn?
4) How many miles of range will you have in reserve when you get there?
5) What is the current outside temperature and how will it affect your range reserve?
6) What is the state of the heating/AC system and how is it affecting your range?
7) Can you skip the nearest SC and make it to the next one at your current state of charge?
8) What speed can you maintain to get to your destination with a buffer of 30 miles? 15 miles?
These are the questions we ask ourselves when we take long trips in the Tesla. We do it every 15 minutes or so. Please encourage your designer to consider how these displays are used in real-life scenarios, and test how easy it is to see and read them in real-life conditions.
Ask your designer why it was so painfully difficult to gather all this information in one's head in version 6 U/I, and then ask him why it is in fact more difficult to do so in V7. Why is he so determined to waste the three critical resources available to him as a U/I designer, those being: 1) screen acreage; 2) color and contrast; 3) organization of information.
Let's consider how these resources are used in the current design.
In the center of the primary display we have large swaths of tasteful gray screen containing nothing, surrounding an exciting analog speedometer and power display which in turn surround a digital speedometer and a nice midget car. The analog speedo and power displays are all colorful and contrasty, but since the labelling is at such low contrast that it's almost impossible to read on a sunny day, and the MPH doesn't even have 5MPH tick marks, these are largely useless. Entertaining, yes. Distracting even, since they are the highest contrast and most colorful things on the screen. But useless. The car icon in the exact center of your field of view is also large, colorful and high contrast. Also useless. (Even more useless if you happen to have a red car which hides the brake lights). The car icon is actively hostile at night, since the big bright blob of headlights distracts attention from the speed display. (I recognize this paragraph is irrelevant for Autopilot-capable cars, but this is after all the "Classic Model S" thread.)
The only useful thing in the center of the screen is the digital speedometer, which takes up maybe 10% of that center area. So 90% of the most crucial screen real estate available in the car, the part where the drivers attention goes when it's not on the road, seems to be dedicated to distracting the driver rather than informing him/her.
In the V6 U/I design, at least some of the important information was available easily on the main display: range in the center and highly visible, time of day on the bottom (but small font, difficult to read). Now in V7, range is relegated to the bottom line. Time is only visible on the 17" display (on the far right far away from the driver), the font is too small for those with less than average visual acuity, made worse by the decision to cram a passenger airbag status message underneath.
Meanwhile, the rest of the important information remains scattered to the far corners of the earth.
* Miles to destination? Time to destination? These are at the bottom of the map display in an unreadable font size at low contrast.
* Heating/AC status? No longer visible without bringing up climate page.
* Miles of reserve range at destination? You would think the energy page would be able to show that. But it ignores the display selection for miles range vs. percent charge. Multiply by 2.65 in your head (YMMV).
* Effect of the heat/AC on range? No way to tell.
* Effect of the outside temperature on range? No way to tell.
* Effect of speed on range? Well, I suppose you can change speed, then go to the energy page and wait 10 minutes for the estimated charge at destination to change.
Misuse of screen acreage is pervasive in the U/I.
* The analog clock widget wastes a third of the screen to show two numbers: time and temperature.
* The energy widget uses a third of the screen to paint a colorful graph, but shows only one marginally useful result: Wh/mi, not even the far more useful number: estimated range at this average energy usage.
* The energy page on the 17" needs two sub-pages to deliver only three numbers: average Wh/mi, estimated range, and predicted percent charge at destination.
* The media page has large buttons to select songs from USB or Bluetooth devices, but can't be bothered to wrap the names of long songs to two or three lines in the ample space available.
Might we ask that the energy widget be scrapped and replaced with a text-only "energy status" widget containing the following:
* Battery rated range and percent charge
* Trip miles and time to destination
* Estimated rated miles and percent charge at destination (taking into account altitude, temperature, weather, A/C)
* Outside and inside temperature
* Range reduction because of temperature and A/C usage
* Current time (including time zone), date, and altitude MSL
* All relevant numbers to be color coded yellow, red as they become problematic.
While we're at it, let's make the tire pressure widget more useful:
* Remove the car icon entirely from the speedo screen, transfer all functionality to the widget (it's a bigger area, and can be turned off when annoying)
* Add tire temperatures
* Add lock status (show whether door handles are retracted)
* Show seat belt warnings even when car is "OFF" so driver can inform passengers
* Show all potentially unsafe items: doors, trunks, charge port, pano roof, mirrors
* Any out-of-tolerance conditions color coded yellow or red.
Now we visit the energy page on the 17" display. We can use this to examine scenarios by turning it interactive. Graph for us energy usage and range at destination if:
* Speed were 5/10mph over/under posted speed
* AC/heat were set to a different temperature or turned off
* Road conditions were dry/wet/raining/snowing
* Outside temperature was XXX
I'd like to get your design team in a room with 20 or 30 Tesla owners to talk about how these features are actually used, and about the relative value of usefulness vs. aesthetics.
Based on what I want and don't want from my car that seems like the best solution. I have posted about my reasons way too often and am actually planning to step away from the forum for a while since the hostility that I'm getting for voicing what I think about the UI (and Tesla) and my dis-interest in the new "features" is making it less fun to spend time here. It's the third time that I'm walking away from TMC. This should sound familiar to you, wk057.
