In-car tech leaving motorists behind
A couple of days ago, I dropped my car into the local dealership to have some repair work done. The company very kindly lent me a courtesy car to use while my vehicle was in the garage. It was eight years younger than my car so, naturally, it had quite a lot of extra tech installed.
The basics were pretty much the same though: a central touchscreen to display information, radio stations, a Bluetooth function to add or remove a selected phone to play my own music and a reverse camera. But the car itself is bigger, fancier, includes that tech which stops you straying over the line in the centre of the road. You get the picture.
Both cars are electric, so the basics of driving are very similar although as the new car was less familiar, it was slightly more awkward for me. Same went for things like the temperature controls.
Familiarity is an important factor here, of course, but the fact is I found the new car quite an awkward driving experience. True, it has a much greater range than my vehicle which meant the prospect of “range anxiety” was much diminished but I came away from my first drive firmly of the belief that I would much prefer to keep my existing car if I could increase the range rather than swap it for a new one.
By a happy coincidence, my unease with the newer car coincided with the publication of the results of the J.D. Power Tech Experience Index Study which suggested people might be starting to become “overwhelmed with technology features that don’t solve a problem, don’t work, are difficult to use or are just too limited in functionality”.
While new AI-based technologies, like smart climate control, were popular with owners who had used it, the study found that recognition technologies such as facial recognition, fingerprint reader and interior gesture controls had fallen out of favour because “they unsuccessfully try to solve a problem that owners didn’t know they had”. Passenger display screens were also considered “not necessary” by drivers, although I wonder if that might be for an ulterior motive, such as not wanting the passenger to be able to switch off and enjoy themselves while the driver is doing all the work.
That phrase though – “unsuccessfully try to solve a problem that owners didn’t know they had” – struck a bit of a chord with me. It’s like there’s a theme running through technology in general where functionality becomes synonymous not with making something easier to do or use but with adding ‘improved’ or ‘enhanced’ functions because you can. And the thing is, just because you can do something, that doesn’t mean people will want it.
Sometimes, technology appears guilty of providing functions in search of a use. And sometimes the use never comes. Or it just isn’t that useful after all.
Which would be fine apart from the amount of time and effort wasted in developing that functionality, promoting it, supporting it, trying to make it useful. Sometimes, instead of thinking “isn’t it cool this technology can do this”, it might be better thinking “how does this technology make something people do all the time better”? And “better” in this case is what the technology does for them, not what it does for itself.
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