Driver Display Competitive Analysis

Volvo XC90 (2019 Early)

Flat

Needle w/ trail

none (fuel)

Tesla Instrument Binnacle V10

Flat

No dial, displays speed as a number only

symbol in bottom left

Tesla Model S

Skeumorphic

Needle connected to outer coloured ring

symbol inside the center dial

Hyundai Ioniq

Mix of skeumorphism and flat

Outside markings or needle

Only displayed if the user chooses to display it (in a separate mdoe that must be manually displayed, not set as the default)

Hyundai Sonata

Flat

Needle

• Monochromatic, but utilizes various shades to show visual hierarchy

• Gear options are de-emphasized and placed towards the side

• Dial needle leaves a ‘trail’ behind it as it moves, to emphasize

• The dial gives the impression that there are not as many ticks present (at a glance, you only see ticks for every 10 km/h)

• Side placement of warning symbols and indicators may be appropriate

• Gear options are a less important element for the driver to see - we may also reduce the emphasis of the gear options

• Infoprmation displayed includes…

  • car's position on the road

  • surrounding traffic

  • lane markings

  • Speed

  • local speed limit (car has forward-facing cameras that read road signs)

• The display is customizable - the left and right sections of the screen can be changed to show either a navigation map, media controls or graphs of recent electrical usage

• Interface also shows the position of nearby vehicles and whether they are bikes, cars or trucks (not particularly useful but pretty cool)

• Overall design is very flat and there are numerous elements present, which have been sized accordingly to ensure there is enough space between elements for better scanability

• Is a dial needed?

• Battery symbol is placed in the bottom left of the screen as one of the smaller elements, which is accompanied by the range and not the percentage - the range would be more valuable to our drivers over the percentages

• Gear options are once again de-emphasized

• Can serve as inspiration if we ever introduce any graphics in the future, but not for MS XIV

• The content of the centre dial changes depending on whether the car is in motion or not:

  • Driving → center circle displays speed, power meter, charge level, estimated range, and active gear

  • Parked → center circle displays estimated range and status of doors

  • Charging → instrument panel displays charging information

• Can control the media player, handle calls and enable/disable voice control using buttons on the steering wheel

• Overall design is more skeumorphic, which is typically done to mimic the controls you would see in the real world (a basic principle fo HMI design)

• Dial design is slightly confusing because the left and right sides show different information, but when focusing on just the speed, it’s easy to see where the needle is pointing - design of the speedometer may be a source of inspiration for us (specifically the needle/indicator that points to the speed, as well as the usage of either blue or orange)

• May possibly investigate the benefits of a skeumorphic or neumorphic design - however, I have read many articles about accessibility issues and cognitive overload

• Instrument cluster controls found on the steering wheel

• All errors would populate the empty spaces inside and around the dials of the left side of the instrument cluster

• Utilizes a brighter blue to highlight various aspects and add dimension to the display while red is used to highlight the reverse gear shfit, and dangerous areas within the dials

• the use of blue gradients may add a nice touch to the visual design of our display

• While the accents are nice, we will want to limit how much we use for our purposes so as to not distract the driver (our display is also significantly smaller)