The IC3 Blue Train - A little journal about design, marketing, sales and other matters

Sehr geherrter Herr Doktor ,

In a previous posting - Do Car Manufacturers Understand IT? – I praised the first automobile I owned, a 1959 VW Beetle, for its reliability and for its friendly simplicity. But, in this posting, I also complained about the complexity and ineffectiveness of your Audi A6 user interface (rental of a recent car in June 2005): a very frustrating user experience.

Last week I rented one of your latest VW Golf at Geneva Airport. I was quite impressed by the power and smoothness of the 1.9-liter Diesel engine, by the comfort of the car and, compared with the luxurious Audi, by the simplicity of the car audio system.

The problem occurred when I stopped to refill on the way back to Geneva, Thanks heaven, my tank was still half full, but I wanted to avoid paying the rental company the extortionate price they charge for fuel. So, here I am, at a busy motorway petrol station, facing the little door over the petrol tank opening. No notch to suggest where to pull; no symbol to indicate where to push. I sit back in the car, analyse every switch, button and symbol on the dashboard, look around the handbrake lever, around the light switches under the roof, under the dashboard above the pedals: nothing.

So, I have to resort to reading the blooming manual. That’s where the nightmare worsens. The ‘manual’ is a 5-centimeter thick binder containing about three different books of which titles don’t give a clear indication of what they contain. And, guess what – I know, it’s not your fault – the whole schmear is in German! My mother tongue is French and, when I rent a car in Geneva, I expect the whole customer experience to be in French. But, I still remember quite a bit of German since I studied engineering at the ETH in Zurich. So, I dive into the 900 grams of documentation with confidence and scan the three contents lists and indexes: no indication on how to open the little door.

Since I still have enough fuel to reach the airport, I give up looking for the solution and drop the Golf at Europcar, resigned to paying for the extra petrol cost. The Europcar attendant doesn’t know where the magic button can be found but, after asking around, he shows me a little lever at the back of the storage space of the driver’s door! Why did your designers hide the blooming thing that way?

Back home, I find out that I’m not alone and read with interest a posting from Jeffrey Veen and the many comments it sparked off. Without delving further into the design failure analysis (isn’t placing a button/lever on the dashboard next to the fuel gauge the simplest solution?), I’d like to suggest here a simple way to improve your cars’ usability (and to minimise the impact of design errors): summarize all key instructions on how to operate the car in a one-page document blending clear pictures or drawings with succinct text; produce one version per language; laminate the sheets and sell them in bulk to rental companies so that a Geneva-based car would contain four such cards: French, German, Italian, English.

Please contact me if you need help on this matter or on preaching the virtues of simplicity to your designer teams..

Hochachtungsvoll ,

Henri Aebischer