the evils of design
anet's blog

20051026 Wednesday October 26, 2005

getting out of the car... Untitled

People get into car just fine.

[evil laugh]

The door has several controls on it. Window go up and down controls. Knobby thing that locks and unlocks. [A picture will get added soon.]

But where the **** is the door handle? Remember the car is black, ALL black. Yes, even the interior. And, mostly importantly, the door handle.

Product design amusement then occurs. The door handle is just not obvious.

First, the handle is down lower on the door such that even with a smaller person in the seat, the handle is hidden down next to their leg. Its below where they expect to find it from a visual line-of-sight perspective.

Second, the door handle is integrated into the door panel design. There is a 'bar' (for holding on to when the driver accelerates) and a sort of bench to lay your arm onto when holding onto the bar. Under the bench and to one end of a carpeted area that is really a compartment, there is a square of plastic with lines on it. Thats the handle. Nice clean design. Few affordances.

8 of 10 times with a new 'user', I have to point out the handle. Then I have to tell them to pull on it.

( Oct 26 2005, 04:33:19 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Trackback URL: http://blogs.sun.com/anetsblog/entry/getting_out_of_the_car
Comments:

Post a Comment:

Name:
E-Mail:
URL:

Your Comment:

HTML Syntax: NOT allowed

Archives
Links
Referrers
www.flickr.com
anet26's photos More of anet26's photos