UX Is a Chasm Many Will Not Cross

I'm fresh from a short Winter break - a quick jump to the alpine slopes for a snowboarding session. There and back more than 2000 kilometers on the road in my friend's new Subaru Forester. The all-new Forester is IMHO the most perfect machine on wheels, especially the DIT turbo engine coupled with the CVT gear-less gearbox is a wonderful combination. It is the first auto transmission I've driven, which has virtually with no lag.

And in the center of this wonderful package sits the all-new Harman Kardon multimedia console, which is - simply speaking - awful. The Forester is MY2013 and so is the console. But the GUI on it looks like an old 2003 passive-matrix no name phone. Poor resolution (in the retina days this one seems to be 240x160) and completely crappy graphics with no particular navigation logic. A button here and a button there, having nothing in common with today's standard set by the leading phone/tablet operating systems. And I'm not even touching things like kinetics or responsiveness, which are - simply said - not present at all.

Clearly Harman has lost it. They probably thought "it was just a GUI after all", so "we would make it, no problem". And this is the first and the only thing I would throw away after buying this car. It simply spoils the experience.

I'd say this exhibit is symptomatic. Most of the AV and multimedia companies are "hardware" companies. So are car manufacturers. So are washing machine, water kettle, espresso and even TV manufacturers. They focus on electronics and the low level software, allocating probably less the 5% of their R&D budgets to UX. While in iOS or Android or Windows the figure is ten times higher or even more. What is more, they all think they can do it or it is not important or customers would not care.

UX design is as hard or even harder for almost every player in the all connected world of the Internet of Things. UX is harder and more expensive than energy harvesting or smart communications. Because it is so widely multidisciplinary and requires a special mindset of considering graphic designers and interaction designers equal members of the team with RF and PCB designers. Otherwise the final product will simply not be accepted by the market.