Navdy: Think Garmin 2.0

I love the concept of apple carplay and the other in dash UI for cars, however, maybe the solution was right in front of us, but had the wrong software.  Why limit your UX while driving to hardware that came off the car manufacturing lot.  Meet Navdy: 

A modular heads up display, that allows you to use motions to interact with your digital lifestyle ( phone ) through maps, texts, and phone calls.  Gone are the days of reaching over to your dashboard mounted phone, and waiting for that new car with bluetooth display integration.  Garmins and Tom Tom’s were great, but they were single serving. Todays techie needs a screen above the dashboard that is easy to use and gives them instant access without having to be hard to navigate through its menu / interactions. 

Navdy is cool, but the more interesting observation is that these technologies have been around, but have not caught on due to price or the interactions were too broad to begin with. Leap Motion which has some amazing UX, never really solved a pain point.  Navigating your computer never really made sense, but navigating your phone while driving has always been an issue.  So much that many of us have already received tickets for driving and using our phones or just aside that policy was created to stop people from texting and driving.   

Will this catch on? I am not sure.  Is it better then anything else out there right now – yep.  I think the HUD will start to catch up, but I also wonder if there is a cultural problem still in place.  Maybe we should not be multitasking while driving at all? Its a mute point, but with that logic we should not have radio or bluetooth tech at all.   The other question is how much hardware do you need from a car, or should technology always be an add on accessory? Maybe that makes more sense. Cars are replaced every 7 years or so, where phones roll over every 2 years or so.  Maybe technology for cars should be modular and outsourced? 

Either way, it will be interesting to see how Navdy takes off.  Curious to see how the gestures work in real life, and how the resolution of the screen works and if there are any other criticisms that come to play once it starts being used by real people.  Kudos to the Navdy team for being disruptive AND creating something that is self contained and plug and play.   

 

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Google Moves Forward with Modular Smartphone

Project Ara is coming soon, and dev kits have been released.  I am very excited to see the modular and flexible systems of software and UI move info hardware for easy customization.

Why doesn’t my phone know it’s in my car ?

I love hands free, but apparently my iphone doesn’t know its in my car.  It seamlessly can answer calls, or play music through my cars speakers, but thats about it.  Everything else is just about it being mounted on my dash.

Why doesn’t the UI of my phone change when its connected to my car via bluetooth?

Let me first say that I love apple products.  However, as a driver, this most recent iOs update made is very hard to perform basic functions while driving. I am not talking about using Siri or playing a game, I am specifically talking about how the button to hang up the phone went from 2 inches rectangular to 1/4 inch circular.  Thats a big difference while you are driving.  I expect for the UI of my phone to become simpler and bigger while I am driving.   I do agree that is looks better, and is more cohesive, but that is not the point I am making here. I am talking about usability of a smart device during certain types of activities.

Ui elements – smaller buttons

 

Phones need to become more contextual to meet our needs.  Context doesn’t have to be magical, however connected devices should give clues to a phone about how it could work and behave.

My phone is beautiful, but I am waiting for the utility of it to catch up to my expectations.