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I'm a UX designer and I've taken delivery of an XC40 Recharge two months ago, and I've never felt dumber in my life. Don't get me wrong, the car is absolutely

I'm a UX designer and I've taken delivery of an XC40 Recharge two months ago, and I've never felt dumber in my life. Don't get me wrong, the car is absolutely wonderful, but the UX is so badly designed it makes me question myself. For starters, I have absolutely no clue how to use the lights, fans and wipers. Just last Saturday, a design oversight (and idiocy from my part) caused me to reverse into another car parked behind me, I reversed to leave the parking spot, then instead of switching to D, I forgot it on R all while the rearview camera is showing red lines. For a car equipped with driving assists (collision avoidance and line assists), it shouldn't have let me reverse any more as it was seeing a clear obstacle behind me or at least make me double check by beeping the rearview camera, it only beeps for 5 seconds when it sees an obstacle then stops, same for the open door and seatbelts. There is also the odometer, there are 3 different odometers in the car and all of them are showing different values, one with a TM next to it, another one with this symbol Ø and a third one in the "Driver performance" tab. So which one is the real distance and what's the difference? Only the norse gods know. Also, the charge and fuel left gauges adapt to your driving by going up or down instead of showing you the real amount of fuel/charge left. And it already nearly left me stranded on the highway with 5km left of fuel. This car is amazing but there are a lot of design oversights when it comes to UX.

mwint 5y ago
I’m having a hard time understanding how “I forgot to change gears and then hit the gas” can be classed a UX problem. Sounds like PEBKAC.
- lacogubik 5y ago
  I think what they are implying is that car with so many safety features should be able to handle this situation. Volvo has lot of "collision avoidance" safety features, so one would expect that they could handle this as well. This is common feature in other cars - I rented mazda few years back and it did automatically stop when I almost reversed into another car.
  - salawat 5y ago
    At that point, the driver really is to blame though. Manufacturer's job is to make things affordably; not to save himanity from themselves despite the ongoing insistance by governments that somehow the industrial sector should take on the onus for technically enforcing whatever measures that some bureaucrat sets their sights on today. This mentality that the car should make up for fundamental defects in safe driving is horrifying.
    - Fatnino 5y ago
      And yet, airbags are a thing.
    - lacogubik 5y ago
      > the driver really is to blame though Yes, I know I'm responsible. I do not want/need car/manufacturer to be responsible, I just want technology to help where it could. > Manufacturer's job is to make things affordably This maybe is your opinion, but that's not how it works. There is plenty of manufacturer's who manufacture things which are not affordable and plenty of people buy it. Pretty much any industry has luxury segment which also tends to be most profitable > This mentality that the car should make up for fundamental defects in safe driving is horrifying Humans are imperfect. Stress, distractions, tiredness etc could make anyone to make mistake, even yourself. Why would adding safety features be horrifying?
    - NoSorryCannot 5y ago
      Horrifying? People always have made and always will make mistakes and we've been using technology to avoid accidents or minimize the consequences of them for a long time. Technology preventing accidents is not horrifying. The trouble of regulatory bureaucracy or liability is adjacent but separate.
      - chakintosh 5y ago
        Exactly, not sure what OP is on about. This Volvo like I said, is absolutely wonderful on the road, and the safety features it's got even in the base model are a godsend and make the car feel like it has a mind of its own, in a good way. It saved my butt from so many accidents that I never even noticed, it sees danger before it even happens, it's amazing. So my point from the beginning was, if a car is capable of detecting/anticipating and dealing with danger at 100Kmh, it sure as hell should be able to prevent dumbass me from reversing into another car by mistake.
- _fat_santa 5y ago
  It's really a hardware/ergonomics problem. The gear selector in these vehicles goes back to it's original position after you select a gear. One major problem with these new shifters is that it's very easy to select the wrong gear. Likely what happened is the driver was trying to go into reverse but pressed a little to hard on the gear shifter and caused it to go into drive instead. These shift-by-wire shifters have been the biggest step back in automotive design in my opinion. Used to you can hop in, shift gears and you can tell which gear you are by where the shifter is (or can at least tell if you are in D or R), with these new shifters there's no way to get that sort of feedback so you are there having to carefully select a gear every single time. I rented a Jaguar that had the same thing and it took me a few tries to get the thing to go into reverse because you had to hit it just right or else it would go into P.
  - Too 5y ago
    Driven many cars with these “click” type shifters, including recent Volvos, thought I would hate it before trying but after one drive it’s actually very convenient and never saw it as a hazard. You can’t press too hard to accidentally go the wrong direction. Up is R and down is D. Distinguishing up from down is very easy. Changing direction can only be done at standstill. Pressing too many times does nothing, except toggle D and B, that have same behavior from intent at parking point of view. What might happen though is you thought you were in N but are actually in gear, as you accidentally clicked twice instead of once. But if you want to go N you should really just press P instead.
- rsync 5y ago
  "I’m having a hard time understanding how “I forgot to change gears and then hit the gas” can be classed a UX problem. Sounds like PEBKAC." On the one hand, it is easy to point to this as user error and you're not wrong. But older cars have a significant tactile difference in operating different systems in the car. Shifting a gear is very, very different physically than pushing the button for your hazards. Your body moves in very different and operates these controls very differently. This distinction was made clear to me years ago when we bought a 2013 Mercedes wagon - the physical action to: shift to park, turn the car on, turn the radio on were all nearly identical - just a button press. In fact, the buttons themselves were almost identical. So, although I never actually did this, there were a number of times when I got relatively overloaded, cognitively, and I pressed the power off on the radio in an attempt to shift to park. Or I pressed the park button a second time in an attempt to turn the car off. I believe that different subsystems in the car - especially life safety / critical driving systems - should have vastly different controls that force different physical interactions.
  - multiplegeorges 5y ago
    > I believe that different subsystems in the car - especially life safety / critical driving systems - should have vastly different controls that force different physical interactions. Absolutely. For example, in a manual VW/Audi, you have to push the stick down, then way over into R. It's one of the nicest feeling gestures, makes your intent extremely clear, and is impossible to do by accident.
  - chopin 5y ago
    > I believe that different subsystems in the car - especially life safety / critical driving systems - should have vastly different controls that force different physical interactions. Airplane cockpits are designed like this, for obvious reasons.
- fragmede 5y ago
  If there were zero UX feedback as to which gear the car is in, it seems entirely possible for the problem to be the software and not pebkac. In a thread discussing that the manufacturer's UX is horrible, blaming the user seems out of place. Of course the user bares some level of responsibility but the UX of a vehicle clearly affects drivability of a car. Eg BMW's widely derided iDrive UI.
rjsw 5y ago
The odometer problem is really strange. I have done some work with Volvo and they used to take a lot of care over preserving odometer readings across any repair work done on the car electronics.
tpxl 5y ago
> Ø or ⌀ is sometimes also used as a symbol for average value, particularly in German-speaking countries. ("Average" in German is Durchschnitt, directly translated as cut-through.) From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98 My 2002 VW has the same and it means average over multiple trips. TM probably means this trip? You may have distance of the current trip and average consumption of the current trip (eg 40km, 6.3l/100km), then the last few trips with a combined average for those (eg 1500km, 5.4l/100km).
- iso8859-1 5y ago
  It's not necessarily typeset the same as the letter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diameter#Encodings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diameter#Encodings
jbl 5y ago
Re the odometers, in my 2018 Volvo and my Wife's 2019 XC40. They are all accurate, but for different purposes. 1. The standard "life of the car" odometer is permanently on the left gauge, top reading 2. There is one (two?) manually resettable trip odometers 3. There is an auto-resetting trip odometer - it resets when the car has been off for four hours. You can configure which of the second two are displayed by going to in-dash "app" menu and selecting what you want in the "Trip" tab. On my car, this configures the lower displays on the left and right gauges. Update Re: your high beams - It sounds like you have them on auto. There's a spring loaded ring on the left-hand stalk that engages auto vs. manual high beam. Twist it and the light-with-an-A sign on your dash should change to a normal light symbol. You can then use the twist knob with detents to select parking light vs. low beam and whether you want auto-on or manual on. High beams are engaged by pushing the lever (or you can pull to flash).
- chakintosh 5y ago
  It's quite telling the fact I needed a 3 paragraph reply from a user on HN to explain to me how to use the odometers and lights in my car. I had a Tucson before this Volvo and it was just so intuitive and easy to use. It's something that needs to be standardized, they are tools that no car would be street legal without and thus, should have identical interactions no matter the manufacturer.
  - QuarterReptile 5y ago
    OTOH, maybe the other problem is that you're buying cars too frequently to be willing to study the manual. There are plenty of times when ergonomics and feature discoverability are at odds, and I heavily prioritize ergonomics when I'm driving a large, lethal object at super-human speeds.
  - scraptor 5y ago
    I'm confident you could have found all the information contained in those paragraphs in the manual if you had read it instead of complaining on HN.
    - 5y ago
klyrs 5y ago
> it shouldn't have let me reverse any more as it was seeing a clear obstacle behind me or at least make me double check by beeping My backup camera frequently loses its shit because it gets obstructed by rain or snow, or sometimes paint on the ground fakes it out. If the only sensor is a camera, that must not override the driver. Beeping is fine. I might feel differently about lidar. On that topic, though... I really wish backup cameras had some sort of wiper.
- chakintosh 5y ago
  I honestly don't think my volvo bases its rear detection on the camera itself, pretty sure it's the sensors because on the camera it tells you in segments exactly how far each obstacle is and doing that using video + ML would be overkill for a simple feature that could use lidar.
SyzygistSix 5y ago
I find this hilarious, especially since they brag about having "Google inside", which already sounded more like a confirmation to me of a dystopian timeline rather than a feature.

mwint 5y ago

I’m having a hard time understanding how “I forgot to change gears and then hit the gas” can be classed a UX problem. Sounds like PEBKAC.

lacogubik 5y ago
I think what they are implying is that car with so many safety features should be able to handle this situation. Volvo has lot of "collision avoidance" safety features, so one would expect that they could handle this as well. This is common feature in other cars - I rented mazda few years back and it did automatically stop when I almost reversed into another car.
- salawat 5y ago
  At that point, the driver really is to blame though. Manufacturer's job is to make things affordably; not to save himanity from themselves despite the ongoing insistance by governments that somehow the industrial sector should take on the onus for technically enforcing whatever measures that some bureaucrat sets their sights on today. This mentality that the car should make up for fundamental defects in safe driving is horrifying.
  - Fatnino 5y ago
    And yet, airbags are a thing.
  - lacogubik 5y ago
    > the driver really is to blame though Yes, I know I'm responsible. I do not want/need car/manufacturer to be responsible, I just want technology to help where it could. > Manufacturer's job is to make things affordably This maybe is your opinion, but that's not how it works. There is plenty of manufacturer's who manufacture things which are not affordable and plenty of people buy it. Pretty much any industry has luxury segment which also tends to be most profitable > This mentality that the car should make up for fundamental defects in safe driving is horrifying Humans are imperfect. Stress, distractions, tiredness etc could make anyone to make mistake, even yourself. Why would adding safety features be horrifying?
  - NoSorryCannot 5y ago
    Horrifying? People always have made and always will make mistakes and we've been using technology to avoid accidents or minimize the consequences of them for a long time. Technology preventing accidents is not horrifying. The trouble of regulatory bureaucracy or liability is adjacent but separate.
    - chakintosh 5y ago
      Exactly, not sure what OP is on about. This Volvo like I said, is absolutely wonderful on the road, and the safety features it's got even in the base model are a godsend and make the car feel like it has a mind of its own, in a good way. It saved my butt from so many accidents that I never even noticed, it sees danger before it even happens, it's amazing. So my point from the beginning was, if a car is capable of detecting/anticipating and dealing with danger at 100Kmh, it sure as hell should be able to prevent dumbass me from reversing into another car by mistake.
_fat_santa 5y ago
It's really a hardware/ergonomics problem. The gear selector in these vehicles goes back to it's original position after you select a gear. One major problem with these new shifters is that it's very easy to select the wrong gear. Likely what happened is the driver was trying to go into reverse but pressed a little to hard on the gear shifter and caused it to go into drive instead. These shift-by-wire shifters have been the biggest step back in automotive design in my opinion. Used to you can hop in, shift gears and you can tell which gear you are by where the shifter is (or can at least tell if you are in D or R), with these new shifters there's no way to get that sort of feedback so you are there having to carefully select a gear every single time. I rented a Jaguar that had the same thing and it took me a few tries to get the thing to go into reverse because you had to hit it just right or else it would go into P.
- Too 5y ago
  Driven many cars with these “click” type shifters, including recent Volvos, thought I would hate it before trying but after one drive it’s actually very convenient and never saw it as a hazard. You can’t press too hard to accidentally go the wrong direction. Up is R and down is D. Distinguishing up from down is very easy. Changing direction can only be done at standstill. Pressing too many times does nothing, except toggle D and B, that have same behavior from intent at parking point of view. What might happen though is you thought you were in N but are actually in gear, as you accidentally clicked twice instead of once. But if you want to go N you should really just press P instead.
rsync 5y ago
"I’m having a hard time understanding how “I forgot to change gears and then hit the gas” can be classed a UX problem. Sounds like PEBKAC." On the one hand, it is easy to point to this as user error and you're not wrong. But older cars have a significant tactile difference in operating different systems in the car. Shifting a gear is very, very different physically than pushing the button for your hazards. Your body moves in very different and operates these controls very differently. This distinction was made clear to me years ago when we bought a 2013 Mercedes wagon - the physical action to: shift to park, turn the car on, turn the radio on were all nearly identical - just a button press. In fact, the buttons themselves were almost identical. So, although I never actually did this, there were a number of times when I got relatively overloaded, cognitively, and I pressed the power off on the radio in an attempt to shift to park. Or I pressed the park button a second time in an attempt to turn the car off. I believe that different subsystems in the car - especially life safety / critical driving systems - should have vastly different controls that force different physical interactions.
- multiplegeorges 5y ago
  > I believe that different subsystems in the car - especially life safety / critical driving systems - should have vastly different controls that force different physical interactions. Absolutely. For example, in a manual VW/Audi, you have to push the stick down, then way over into R. It's one of the nicest feeling gestures, makes your intent extremely clear, and is impossible to do by accident.
- chopin 5y ago
  > I believe that different subsystems in the car - especially life safety / critical driving systems - should have vastly different controls that force different physical interactions. Airplane cockpits are designed like this, for obvious reasons.
fragmede 5y ago
If there were zero UX feedback as to which gear the car is in, it seems entirely possible for the problem to be the software and not pebkac. In a thread discussing that the manufacturer's UX is horrible, blaming the user seems out of place. Of course the user bares some level of responsibility but the UX of a vehicle clearly affects drivability of a car. Eg BMW's widely derided iDrive UI.

rjsw 5y ago

The odometer problem is really strange. I have done some work with Volvo and they used to take a lot of care over preserving odometer readings across any repair work done on the car electronics.

tpxl 5y ago

> Ø or ⌀ is sometimes also used as a symbol for average value, particularly in German-speaking countries. ("Average" in German is Durchschnitt, directly translated as cut-through.) From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98 My 2002 VW has the same and it means average over multiple trips. TM probably means this trip? You may have distance of the current trip and average consumption of the current trip (eg 40km, 6.3l/100km), then the last few trips with a combined average for those (eg 1500km, 5.4l/100km).

iso8859-1 5y ago
It's not necessarily typeset the same as the letter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diameter#Encodings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diameter#Encodings

jbl 5y ago

Re the odometers, in my 2018 Volvo and my Wife's 2019 XC40. They are all accurate, but for different purposes. 1. The standard "life of the car" odometer is permanently on the left gauge, top reading 2. There is one (two?) manually resettable trip odometers 3. There is an auto-resetting trip odometer - it resets when the car has been off for four hours. You can configure which of the second two are displayed by going to in-dash "app" menu and selecting what you want in the "Trip" tab. On my car, this configures the lower displays on the left and right gauges. Update Re: your high beams - It sounds like you have them on auto. There's a spring loaded ring on the left-hand stalk that engages auto vs. manual high beam. Twist it and the light-with-an-A sign on your dash should change to a normal light symbol. You can then use the twist knob with detents to select parking light vs. low beam and whether you want auto-on or manual on. High beams are engaged by pushing the lever (or you can pull to flash).

chakintosh 5y ago
It's quite telling the fact I needed a 3 paragraph reply from a user on HN to explain to me how to use the odometers and lights in my car. I had a Tucson before this Volvo and it was just so intuitive and easy to use. It's something that needs to be standardized, they are tools that no car would be street legal without and thus, should have identical interactions no matter the manufacturer.
- QuarterReptile 5y ago
  OTOH, maybe the other problem is that you're buying cars too frequently to be willing to study the manual. There are plenty of times when ergonomics and feature discoverability are at odds, and I heavily prioritize ergonomics when I'm driving a large, lethal object at super-human speeds.
- scraptor 5y ago
  I'm confident you could have found all the information contained in those paragraphs in the manual if you had read it instead of complaining on HN.
  - 5y ago

klyrs 5y ago

> it shouldn't have let me reverse any more as it was seeing a clear obstacle behind me or at least make me double check by beeping My backup camera frequently loses its shit because it gets obstructed by rain or snow, or sometimes paint on the ground fakes it out. If the only sensor is a camera, that must not override the driver. Beeping is fine. I might feel differently about lidar. On that topic, though... I really wish backup cameras had some sort of wiper.

chakintosh 5y ago
I honestly don't think my volvo bases its rear detection on the camera itself, pretty sure it's the sensors because on the camera it tells you in segments exactly how far each obstacle is and doing that using video + ML would be overkill for a simple feature that could use lidar.

SyzygistSix 5y ago

I find this hilarious, especially since they brag about having "Google inside", which already sounded more like a confirmation to me of a dystopian timeline rather than a feature.