Add a virtual smart highway to the dashboard

I really like the Dutch smart highway design; if you haven't seen it yet, you really should check it out.  Of all the concept proposals, I'm quite partial to the dynamic paint concept, which is supposed to alert drivers to the condition of the road surface, particularly freezing conditions, by changing color and pattern based on the temperature. My (sadly totaled) BMW used to alert me when the temperature was below 37F, but the audible warning was a bit on the annoying side.  The smart highway system addresses this issue in a much more pleasing way.

The smart highway is a very aesthetic vision of what the future could be, although it's a future that is likely only applicable to small, dense countries (ahem... Netherlands) or limited urban areas. Here in Houston, I'd settle for many of the potholes being fixed -- I think it's even become one of the top election season topics -- so smart infrastructure likely isn't right around the corner.

Dutch Smart Highway concept for temperature sensitive, dynamic paint.  Credit Studio Roosegaarde & Heijmans.

But seriously, why wait? In v7.0, the instrument panel in now a virtual road, complete with lanes and virtual traffic. In my second suggestion, I advocated upgrading this virtual smart road to display more noticeable blind spot warnings in the neighboring lanes (or shoulder as the case may be), but really there's no reason not to update the main lane to show advisory conditions.  I'd envision this working in much the same vein as the dynamic paint: turning the lane 'icy' or displaying snowflakes if the temperature is appropriately cold.

Just a quick concept sketch.  The snow probably needs a bit more contrast and colorization to have the right pop, but it's a start.  Snowflakes are from Obsidian Dawn

One significant advantage of a virtual display is that it can incorporate dynamics from the car (traction control) in the display.  Using dynamics, it would be possible not just to change the size or shape of the snowflakes based on the temperature as in the dynamic paint example, but these snowflakes could be made red or such when slippage is detected. When combined with a source of weather radar data, such as suggested in the adding weather data to maps, this display could also warn of rain slicked surfaces.

Here the snow turns yellow and red to indicate that the car's traction control system has detected some slippage.  As with the previous sketch, this one could use a bit more contrast for emphasis.  Snowflakes are from Obsidian Dawn.

At some point in the future, I'll try to get a rain sketch uploaded and may continue to play with the visuals to make them more interesting.  I think the main point gets across, though.

New widgets for the dashboard

Version 7 introduced new widgets to the main dashboard; some are incredibly useful (tire pressure monitoring) and others are rather useless (analog clock).  Regardless of my perceived utility, it is nice having more widget options.  This is not because I think more is better -- I absolutely do not -- but having options and configurability is part of the Tesla magic.  On that note, I've decided to mock up a few more widgets that I would like to see added.

Compass with Elevation

One major missing widget is a compass widget. This suggestion came from my mom who missed the compass embedded in the mirror of her Lexus. Yes, there is the little compass at the corner of the map on the main infotainment screen, but it is both rather small and hard to read; having it on the dash would be nice, principally as a curiosity thing.  Hey, it's no worse than an analog clock!

As I was thinking about a compass widget, I realized that it would be really cool to combine the compass with elevation.  This data could be easily obtained using a digital elevation map downloaded over the cellular network, at least for wherever a Tesla is likely to venture.

My quick mockup for a concept compass widget with elevation.  Yes, I know I didn't fake the perspective of the photo; it's a quick concept sketch.

Highway Message Board

I may be way off base here, but I think it would be quite nice to have a widget that displays the contents of the highway dynamic message boards since these messages are sometimes difficult to catch while dealing with traffic. Once you pass one, you occasionally wonder what kind of potentially pertinent information you just missed. I'm not sure about the logistics or availability of the data, but it doesn't seem too hard.

Nimitz Freeway near the port and bridge, Oakland, October 15, 2005. CC BY-NC-ND Michael Patrick

Example dashboard widget displaying location aware, highway messages

Add weather data

My last post was weather related, so I think I'll extend that topic at least a little bit longer by suggesting that the main map screen should have an option for weather overlays such as radar and watches / warnings. 

Yes, I almost always have my cell on me, so I could look up the data using any number of apps (Storm by Weather Underground is my favorite for radar), but using the cell is either extra work or a dangerous distraction depending on the circumstances.  I suspect that is exactly the reason Toyota included weather radar in their Entune system, although I find their interface and graphics rather clunky.  On the 17” display it could be much more useful and elegant.

One may ask if weather data is truly necessary in a car mapping application. I’d typically answer “no”, but for long distance travel, I could see it being rather useful to plan one's route or day. 

A pedestrian usage of the weather data would simply be knowing how long a storm might last or whether or not it’s worthwhile stopping at a particular supercharger.

If weather data were included in map routing or charger selection, this could be a impressive capability for making travel much easier and safer.  Commercial flights detour around thunderstorms for a reason -- safety and comfort -- and there is no reason why that same logic cannot or should not be extended to ground travel as well.  This is especially true of some of the intense downpours that occur here in Texas.

Another bonus would be choosing which route and superchargers to utilize.  As the supercharger network densifies, this should become more viable.  For example, on the SF to LA route, one will soon have very viable options to either utilize 101 or I-5.  Part of the preference for choosing one path over the other may involve weather predictions and whether or not the superchargers are covered.

For example, one of the supercharger's I utilize most, Columbus TX, is uncovered and receives about 44in of rain a year -- more than Seattle! If it were raining and I had sufficient battery remaining, I might consider running straight home rather than picking up a little more cushion.  In CA, I might have the option of skipping an uncovered supercharger in favor of a covered one.

Automatically close a vented roof if rain is detected

The sun has finally returned to Houston now that the remanent of Patricia has passed, and that has me thinking about skylights.  I absolutely love the things and have plenty of them at home, so naturally the Tesla had to be equipped with the panoramic roof.  It's awesome by the way, especially for the rear seat passengers.  Anyway, many new skylights are vented and automatically close when they detect rain, so why do I have to manually close the vented roof when the car has all of the necessary rain sensing hardware?  It's not hard to close the roof using the app, but it's still effort and I still have to notice that it's raining.

Suggestion: add an option to automatically close the vented roof if rain is detected while the vehicle is in park.  

I'm sure there are some safety issues I haven't fully considered, such as tiny fingers getting wedged in the roof, but I'm that can be mitigated by (1) using the weight sensors in the front seats and (2) detecting resistance while closing the roof.  For example, if weight is detected in either front seat, then maybe an alert should be displayed on the main infotainment screen rather than automatically closing the roof.  Also, don't leave little ones or pets unattended.  Ever.

EDIT (10.28.2015): I tried closing the roof the other day using the app.  The car closed it without complaint, so I see no reason why I can't easily have an automatic rain sensing roof.  Clearly the car already has the appropriate safety systems or it just isn't as big of a concern as I thought.

Add support for passenger profiles

Like many, my parents taught me to drive using the family car.  Although it was not that long ago, it was certainly enough years back that our car did not have driver profiles (seat position, mirrors, etc.), and as such one had to manually set your seat and mirrors for each subsequent driver.  As Tony Fadell discussed in his TED talk "The first secret of design is ... noticing", this was just the way things were, and we accepted that as such.

Flash forward several year. I finally had a car that was really mine and it came with 3 memory settings, although by this time it didn't really matter all that much since I was the only one who ever drove the car.  By this time the family car had also been updated and it too had driver profiles.  Sadly it only had 2, meaning that when I would drive the car, I still had to revert to the old manual way of doing things.  Needless to say, not having that extra profile did discourage me from driving that car.

A few more years and an intervening natural disaster introduces the Tesla.  The Tesla interface is another evolution from both of the previous memory systems, both because it can store more profiles -- road trip profile anyone? -- but also because the profiles are now named rather than indexed.  No longer do I have to remember what number I was using.  Laugh now, but once you get used to having a name rather than an index, you'll agree: it's a far more sane system.

With the increased ability of the Tesla system and the introduction of the named profiles for the driver though, I've wondered why there is no such saved profile system for the passenger side as well.   Are all passengers somehow anonymous strangers? At least in my personal experience, the set of passengers is all that expansive; it's mainly the same combination of family and friends with a few guests sprinkled in for good measure.  This set could easily be stored by the system, provided that the passenger seat were connected to the central system.

At least in our family, the roles of driver and passenger are rather fluid, so although it's extremely simply to go from passenger to driver by just touching your name, the reverse is less pleasant: you have to go back to the old way and reset your own seat position.  Passenger profiles would eliminate this asymmetry.  Although perhaps unnecessary, it may also be desirable to allow the profiles to be imported from the driver side in case set

While passenger profiles aren't always necessary, since many people drive alone a significant fraction of the time, the system can easily display / hide an option to use a passenger profile based on whether or not the passenger side airbag is ON.  When the system detects someone sitting in the passenger seat, it can display a little icon at the top indicating that passenger profiles can be used.

The main interface for adding, saving, and selecting a passenger profile can be as buried in the main system as the Cold Weather package menu or charging settings.  One would like convenient, but does not necessarily need immediate access to said profiles.

Clean up the cold weather menu

So maybe it was a bout of wishful thinking since the highs for the past week have been around 90F (~32C), but I decided to play with the neglected Cold Weather menu to see if anything has changed in v7.0.  I can't really say it has, but two little things bothered me me none-the-less:

First, there is this little button in the lower left corner titled "ALL OFF".  While I can imagine a good use for this button, it's display is a bit curious since I didn't have a single heated element activated.  Please hide the "ALL OFF" button or change it to "ALL ON" when no elements are active.

Second, why are my heated seat controls black but my steering wheel and windshield wiper heaters white?  Maybe I'm completely off base here, but could the buttons please all be a the same color?  The subtle outline for the seats also seems a bit distracting and unnecessary, but I could be very, very wrong.

Add a geo-fenced menu for charging

Sunday is almost always errand and grocery day around here, which means access to free L2 changing.  With the Tesla's range, do I really need free L2 changing?  No.  But will I take it and the EV-only parking spot? Yes.

For those who are about to claim that I'm taking a spot from a Leaf or someone else with a much smaller battery, no, I'm not.  Here in Houston the chargers practically have tumbleweeds crossing them -- if we had tumbleweeds here to blow across them.  I figure that I'm actually encouraging more spots by frequenting the places which do have them and by showing them that the chargers are appreciated, but that's for another post and discussion...

One issue with using non-Tesla chargers (and even with using my home charger many times) is that you have to either go to Controls > Open Charge port or Lightening Bolt (charge short cut) > Open Charge Port to open the charge port before you can insert the charger.  This isn't difficult, mind you, but it doesn't feel magical either.  Since I generally charge at the same spots, it would be nice to have the Lightening Bolt (charge short cut) behave like the Homelink shortcut: when I get close to a charging location I've used before and put the car in park, then a shortcut should appear so that I can just tap "Open Charge Port" and continue on my way.  Simple.  Small magic moments.

Blind sport warning is too subtle

I'm certainly a fan of driving safety and accident avoidance technology.  The best accident is assuredly the one you never have.

Our new Tesla has far more sensors and assistive technologies than any car we've ever owned.  While I love the minimalistic design of the interior and interface, unfortunately, when it comes to the blind spot warnings, the interface is just far too subtle.

Both friends and family have stated that they would really like the blind spot warning to be embedded in the mirror like many other makes, which is a suggestion with which I completely agree, although retrofitting existing vehicles, as Mr. Musk has previous commented on, is often impossible.  I do believe, however, that it is possible to communicate this alert very well using the dash, but it has to be very noticeable.

I would really like to see the blind spot warning / side collision warning rendered as a color / pattern in the neighboring lane, as illustrated below.  When if may be dangerous to enter a lane, that lane should be colored and patterned accordingly.  Now, I’m not an expert on what would make a good design, but I would start with a fading yellow with a blind spot warning symbol for the condition where entering a lane may be possible yet more caution is advised.  For the case where a collision is near eminent, the lane should be marked as a bright flashing red and white combination (although the video only has red because I wanted to get it done in a hurry). Flashing the alert is important in order to call attention to the severity of the issue since motion is easily detected even in the peripheral vision of the driver and does not rely on color vision.  Any alert that you are going to crash the car needs too be unmistakable and extremely visible to all.

I'll try to develop better renderings in the future.  This was about as good as I could do in 5 min without using PS.

My rather crudely drawn warning indicating that it may be unsafe to enter the right lane.  For the safety conscience, the car was in park and I was not driving when the base photo was taken.

Updated quick, crude sketch demonstrating a flashing warning to the driver that it is unsafe to enter the left lane and that corrective action should be taken.

Now, let's look at how it is actually implemented in the car to see how much suggestion compares with the existing designs.  I'll start with the older system since I'm a bit more familiar with it and have actually seen it in action (I was not driving).

Version 6.2

In this version of the software, if the car detects another car or object in your blind spot, the system shows you a single white line under the main speedometer / energy meter widget (as seen in the lower right in the image I yanked from the manual).  If you happen to get too close to that object, or another car, then the double red lines (lower right) appear, an audible cue is sounded, and the steering wheel vibrates.

Blind spot warning in v6.2 from the Tesla Model S Release Notes (© 2015 Tesla Motors)

This sounds like it has all bases covered -- visual, audial, and tactile -- so what's wrong?  First, it's quite a mental step to go from abstract line to "blind spot".  Second, and most importantly, you have to notice that the lines are even present.  This involves both looking at the dash instead of the road and noticing that this little line has appeared.  While aesthetic it's quite demanding of the driver for something so important.

Let's focus a bit more on those double red lines.  Surely that dire warning is noticeable right?  Well... not really.  It's not as noticeable as you might expect when you're changing lanes, which of course is when you're likely to get this warning.  First, the tactile sensation can easily be confused or ignored. I don't have first hand knowledge of the tactile feel, but I assume that the driver mistook it for the lane departure vibration.  This is easy to do because (1) the vibrations can be triggered by things other than lane departures, such as seams in the concrete and (2) if you don't follow best practice and use your turn signals, then every lane changes causes a drift warning.  Second, the audible cue requires the driver to notice and mentally connect that to the warning (and not something else), and that's only if you even have the ability to hear it.  And finally, those two little red lines require the same mental cognition as the single white line above.

By the time one parses through all of that visual information, assuming one even notices the dash given that they are supposed to be checking the emanating, maybe the rear view camera, listening to the audible alarm, feeling the vibrating steering wheel, etc. it feels like the most relevant information -- that your rear passenger side is about to collide with another vehicle -- is completely lost.  This is a real shame.

In short, while the basic concept is very good: combine audio, visual, and tactile sensations, I'm not sure that the details are quite right.  Each of the cues is just too subtle, especially the visual indicators, and fusing them during a "rare" event might lead to confusion or other driver error.

Version 7.0

While I definitely like the more minimalistic and modern approach of v7.0, as far as the blind spot warning is concerned, the visual indication may even be worse than v6.2!  This is precisely because v7.0 tries to give you more information in the form of flowing lines emanating from the ultrasonic sensors.  Visually it's a very aesthetic representation, but it feels as if aesthetics and subtle elegance have trumped the real goal: safety.

Blind spot warning in v7.0 from the Tesla Model S Release Notes Notes (© 2015 Tesla Motors)

In the visual for v7.0 notice how much visual clutter you have to parse to understand the warning.  Is it referring to the yellow front left sensor?  Maybe I'm too close to the black car in front of me?  No?  Is it the other white lines?  Oh, dang, I know it's that tiny red sliver in the back right!

But wait!  The story of how v7.0 is worse than v6.2 is not over yet.  Oh, no.  Sadly it gets much worse.  For you see, that tiny red sliver in the rear right of the car warning you of danger only does you any good if you can actually see red. What if you are among the ~8.5% of people who don't have normal trichromatic color vision?  (See color blindness on Wikipedia for details)

I am just going to give some quick examples of what the warning looks like for people with the two most common forms of red-green color blindness as well as for people without color vision entirely.  See if you can spot the important alert, which should be just behind the left bumper.

This is approximately what the blind spot warning would look like to someone with Deuteranopia.

This is approximately what the blind spot warning would look like to someone with Protanopia. 

This is approximately what the blind spot warning would look like to someone without color vision entirely.

With all three of these images, notice that not only has the red hot spot disappeared, but that in many cases if could be difficult, if not impossible, for a driver to quickly discern whether or not the warning was due to the lines emanating from the front right or rear left.

I can already hear the critics commenting that you can tell where the warning is by context and that if you are driving defensively, then it really doesn't matter because the driver would stay put until all of the warning lines have disappeared.

All of that may well be true, but this isn't a win-lose proposition.  Designing for wide range of people, who all have different abilities or needs, generally makes the final result more understandable and useable for all, not less.  There is a fine line between being too distracting and being visible enough, but I suspect that a good compromise can be reached; sadly it just isn't the design present in v7.0.

I still love my Tesla though.

Automatic parallel parking is awesome; now I need it to un-park itself

This morning after the long run at Kenyan Way, I had some spare time to play with the Tesla and since the Rice Military neighborhood in Houston is so crowded (at least as far as neighborhoods in Houston are concerned), this was the prefect time and place to trial the new parallel parking feature in v7.0.

The parallel parking feature is truly amazing.  One cruises slowly alongside parked cars until a little grey “P” shows up on the dash.  Simply slide the car into reverse and the automatic parallel parking dialog shows up on the main infotainment display asking if you want the car to park itself.  The answer is yes, you really do want the car to do it for you: it’s almost assuredly better than you are.

The car then proceeds to slide itself both elegantly and slightly scarily into the designated parking spot.  The first few times I used it (had to test it), there’s definitely a bit of apprehension, since if you’ve driven the car, you know that beast is really WIDE and the auto parking system takes a steep angle and gets quite close to the car in front.  Trust the system though — it maneuvered the car into the slot without so much as a finger or foot (unlike the earlier, but still very cool Lexus system) — and placed with car within a few inches of the curb.  It then even closed the gap between the car in front of the space and me.  At the very end, the car even unlocks the doors for you.  Now that’s service.

In a car loaded with cool features, amazing acceleration and handling, and more, this has to be one of my new favorite tricks.  Part of that is likely my apprehension with parallel parking such a large car and part of that is that this feature is very well thought out, down to the little details.

I really have just two suggestions (thus far) with automatic parallel parking:

1) When the car was last automatically parked, offer to automatically un-park the car.  Seriously, I really would like an auto un-park.  The car did such a great job parking that it was harder for me, with my decidedly less skillful hand at the wheel, to get the car out of the parking space than it was for the car to get into it.  At the very least, I'd like to have an option for how close the car should be the end of the space so that it's easier for me to get out of it.

2) With the rear view camera activated, use augmented reality to show the target parking location.  Although the dash indicates whether or not you can automatically park the car, it wasn’t entirely clear to me where the car would end up.  I guess as I get more comfortable with the feature, that intuition will develop, but in the meantime, AR would be cool.

From impressions to blog

We just celebrated 3 months with our +Tesla  and have loved every minute of it -- it really is an amazing car.  Even so, I just can't seem to help myself: from day 1 I've been collecting a slew of thoughts about improvements both to the car itself and the surrounding ecosystem.  Since Elon Musk tweeted about what people would improvements people wanted to see, I finally decided to publicly release my list.

Since I intend for this list to continually grow and evolve, I'm going to try to use the Blogger platform with tags.  This is my first foray onto Blogger (rather than building my own platform) so we'll see how it goes.  If it becomes a horrible, chaotic mess I might have to find a different solution.

While I'm setting expectations, I'd like to quickly frame what I will and what I will (likely) not be suggesting.  While I, and everyone else, would love for the car to be cheaper, have more range, drive itself, etc.  I'm sure many people are already hard at work on all of those.  Further, I'm neither a mechanical engineer nor a battery alchemist -- I'm a design conscious computer scientist -- so I'm going to focus my list on what likely are all the little things that are either software or design based that bother me.

So, without much more ado, here are my thoughts (and poorly rendered artistic impressions).  Don't judge the art -- I'm not an a professional artist for a reason.