Categories
advocacy usability

Great use of UX: too-close signs on cars

5 years as an iOS developer has pushed me to understand and improve my product/physical/functional design skills. Especially “industrial” design – problems and solutions.

Here’s a great one I saw the other day: combining a Snellen Chart with Stopping Distances, i.e.:

Screen Shot 2014-04-26 at 15.24.14 + dg_070645

Existing (bad) solutions

The status quo on driving “too close for safety” is provocative, antagonistic. Have a look at a search for eBay: “too close bumper sticker”:

Screen Shot 2014-04-26 at 15.57.35

There’s a couple of major problems with this:

  1. It’s wrong. If you’re stationary, 6 feet behind the vehicle, you can read it – but you’re definitely NOT too close.
  2. It’s combative and offensive. It appeals to the anger and frustration of the driver in front – when we’re trying to modify the behaviour of the driver behind. Offending people who you’re trying to convince to change … is generally unsuccessful.

But combining the charts above, we get…

Net result

A plate you attach to your vehicle that informs the viewer how much too close/far they are right now, using a dynamic scale:

Screen Shot 2014-04-26 at 15.26.36

I couldn’t get a close enough photo to show it clearly, so here’s my redrawing of what the plate looked like:

too-close-am-vector