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

Why such exhibitionism?

In Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles ( 1992, Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing) , Don Norman uses the word ‘expression’ as ‘sign that conveys intention’; this aspect of design is obviously very important. But automobile lights are also expressing the character of a vehicle: elegance, aggressiveness, coolness, speed, comfort, etc.  I think that, years ago, the lights were fairly well integrated within the overall look of the cars. Today, they seem to stand out as new fins and, unfortunately, in many cases, as badly as a wart on a smooth face .

In ‘How the Cadillac Got its Fins’ (HarperBusiness, 1994), Jack Mingo explains briefly how General Motors invented the tailfins under the direction of their rather cynical chief designer Harley Earl. Their objective was to entice customers to buy the latest model by making last year’s cars obsolescent. Fins emerged in 1948, peaked in 1959 and disappeared in the early 1960s. Raymond Loewy called such cars “jukeboxes on wheels”. While I admit that tailfins are rather OTT -over the top- (like my excess of links to Wikipedia;-), I’d plead their case because they give the automobiles a definite character and help to differentiate a make from another.

 It’s interesting to note that, later, car wings and rear spoilers appeared, for valid reasons, on very fast sports cars and for showing off on most other cars. Today, they are increasingly used, as horizontal fins, by customisation fans. Maybe vertical tailfins will make a comeback, like bellbottom jeans and other similar niceties!

Back to head- and rear-lights: why are they so ugly? Look at this sick eye with two atrophied pupils. Without picking on them in particular, surf to other bad examples from Landrover, Lexus and Toyota. Yet, by contrast, the Alfa Romeo designers show how the smaller size of each single light can be leveraged to create a new style that  reinforces the overall elegance of the car.

What’s the purpose of showing all the bits behind the protection glass? I’d say that designers haven fallen in love with the latest, Xenon-based technology and feel compelled to expose its innards. I can’t think of any other example, past and present, where automobile technology is exhibited for no practical reason. Beyond cars, I remember having seen special models of laptop computers and mobile phones with a transparent plastic case. Otherwise, only the Dyson vacuum cleaners come to my mind. But, in most cases, the innards of everyday things are hidden, aren’t they?

In Audio Branding I suggest that companies of all sizes should use sound as third branding dimension, in addition to traditional visual and verbal identities. The sound dimension can take the form of a simple jingle (e.g. Intel) or of a more complete/complex musical composition. I think it can be very powerful if correctly designed and executed.

Today I had a personal and enlightening experience of the power of music. My mother-in-law passed away last night in her sleep and, while my wife and her brother were driving to her home, I composed a short email to all friends & family. I was OK until I started to write about our common passion for 1940s’ jazz bands, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and so on, while listening to that music on iTunes. At that point, tears came to my eyes and I couldn’t see my keyboard’s keys anymore. Wow! And one of my good friends wrote back immediately to tell me that he was greatly touched by my mentioning of Glenn Miller and of VE Day. 

Well-known scientists such as Don Norman have recently understood how important emotions are to everyday life and to the design of products and services. Shouldn’t businesses follow suit and use music as differentiating factor in branding (beyond playing anything but Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on their telephone system) and as a powerful way to ‘connect’ with their customers?

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

When more can be less

The weather forecast on the respectable BBC TV news has become rather extravagant, confusing and, ultimately, quite useless. Unless I concentrate hard on what the presenter says and on where the camera ‘flies’ over the giant slanted map of the UK, I can’t figure out what the weather is going to be where I live, in the next twelve hours.

The main problem is that they are trying to cram too much information in a few minutes and through two competing channels. First, there is the voice of the dedicated show person (the Beeb seems to employ an army of them - 50 names on their website) whose challenge is to tell us what the weather will be, in the next five days (the prowess of supercomputing), in England (East, Midlands, North East, North West, South, South West, South East), Northern Ireland, Scotland (North and South), Wales and Channel Islands, and who tries to avoid repetitions and boredom through flowery language and various gesticulations (many Brits have problems synchronising their hands with what they say).

Then there is the supermap of UK, a typical example, in my opinion, of technology misuse. One sees a slanted map of the country, without relief, where the land is sad brown (we have a drought South of London but it’s not yet a desert). Some areas are shaded (darker brown); I’m still trying to figure out what that means (cloudy weather?); and rain is shown as blue areas, as if it creates immediate lakes - here's how it looks like. The camera moves over that map and zooms into specific regions as the presenter tells you at the speed of a bullet train what the weather has been (the only sure thing) and what it will be, in that part of UK, today, tomorrow, the day after, day four and day five. Any normal member of the TV audience is overwhelmed and numb after 34 seconds.

Don’t laugh! This ‘progress’ may reach your favourite TV station soon. The solution? I would simplify and focus. In national news, summarise the main trends and ‘cut’ the country in three main areas or less (e.g. West, North and South). In regional news, delve into details without mentioning other regions, and talk about today, tomorrow and longer-term trends. Also, revise the supermap and its symbolism with a sharp eye, and from the audience’s point-of-view. Maybe a challenge for Edward Tufte.

Auntie Beeb, we still think you’re one of the best. Don’t listen to too many technology freaks, geeks and junkies.

Speed is not necessarily the best solution

'Blue Train' is a wink and a tribute to The ClueTrain Manifesto - click the link for a Cluetrain journey if you've never enjoyed that experience.

Trains are part of my genes. My grandfather used to drive such an engine for the Swiss Federal Railways

In the 1920s, the Blue Train (le Train Bleu) crossed France from Calais to the Italian border with more comfort and in barely more time than the combination of Eurostar and TGV achieve today (to cross Paris, the Train Bleu’s passengers stayed in the same carriage while, today, you have to schlep your luggage by taxi or metro from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon) - - - My point here is simply that today’s top speed is not necessarily a panacea.

That's also why I called my marketing manifesto The Blue Train Manifesto