How the design of a BMW Motorcycle affects your App

http://www.rypple.com/blog/2009/08/14/turn-signals/

by jsatok • 17 years ago

33 56 17 years ago

I've never understood why there's no standard position for the indicator stalk on cars - some are on the left of the steering wheel, some on the right...

TallGuyShort• 17 years ago

I imagine it's now a problem of personal preference. I've mainly driven Toyota's, and so there standard controls are second nature to me. If I drive a Chevy, for instance, I get confused about cruise control, etc... So brands tend to remain the same so their customer's feel comfortable staying with them.

jacquesm9• 17 years ago

Funny, I have driven quite a few cars, even right hand drive ones and they all had the indicator stalk on the left hand side.

What brands have the indicator stalk on the right ?

I've seen different arrangements for the wipers and the headlight switches though (sometimes on the stalk, sometimes on the dash, left & right).

xelfer• 17 years ago

Almost every single car in Australia (besides exotic/rarer european imports) has it on the right. From personal experience, my father had a ferrari which had it on the left, my brother had a Smart car which had it on the left, but everything else I've driven (20+ cars) had it on the right (all right hand drive cars).

yangyang• 17 years ago

A friend's Hyundai had the indicator stalk on the left, this was several years ago though.

jgrahamc• 17 years ago

When I first moved to the US I had this sudden fear that I was going to be unable to drive a US manual car because I figured that since the steering wheel was on the opposite side of the car, that the pedals would have been reversed.

Thank goodness they are exactly the same, but I do wonder how that piece of standardization came about.

hybygvuy• 17 years ago

Gradually! Some classic Jaguars had the pedals switched - including the famous one in the Inspector Morse TV series which led to a few accidents on set.

Porsche also made some race cars with the accelerator on the left to make it quicker to do 'Le Mans starts' - where the driver must run to the car and start it.

JimmyL3• 17 years ago

I would think that it's standardized nationally by whatever body approves cars for sale - as in I've never seen a car without the indicator stalk on the left in Canada, aside from a Saleen import I saw once. For this one, I suspect it falls under an import exemption, in the same way you can get right-hand drive cars here with some special paperwork.

jacquesm9• 17 years ago

What a load of bull. Pardon my French.

That's just a contrived hook, and it's wrong on top of that.

If you're driving a bike you'll know this: 2/3rds of your brake power comes from the front wheel, if you're in a turn and you need your front wheel brake that badly you are in big trouble. Most likely you'll end up on the pavement.

Turning and braking are done separately, and during emergency evasive maneuvers (the lorry pulling out) signaling is the least of your worries.

The sequence normally is:

- check your lanes

- indicate your turn

- wait for a bit to get the rest of the traffic to notice your turn signal

- meanwhile, reduce speed and shift down if appropriate

- make your move

So what if one bike brand does it different than others ? Bike users - unlike web visitors - are adaptable creatures, they know their bikes inside out.

wuj38884• 17 years ago

I think you may have missed the point.

Under normal circumstances, one should not brake and turn. But neither should cage drivers turn left in front of you. Or merge into your lane. Or run yellow lights. This stuff happens on the road, and this why so many riders get hurt.

To think that the normal sequence of events is the only one worth designing for is naive.

The post was about how to consider the human context when designing, and used the bike as an example. Any design decision that could delay a rider's reaction time to the primary brake is a bad idea, regardless of how familiar you are with your bike or how adaptable you may be.

jacquesm9• 17 years ago

Sure, but there is no proof that the design of the bike really is worse, just his personal preference.

When designing websites there is a good case to be made for sticking to the familiar (unless you want to make a point) but to use motor cycle design (especially BMW, one of the most renowned bike brands on the planet with a lot more design credit than the author) as an example is poorly chosen.

The whole idea is that you have the thumb of your right hand pretty much in that spot anyway, so no reaction time is lost, rather the opposite, you don't have to make that awkward reset motion with your left hand in order to switch off the blinkers after having made a right hand turn.

This is more convenient, not less convenient.

10ren2• 17 years ago

- check your lanes

- indicate your turn while your hand is off the brake lever, the Mack truck ahead of you suddenly stops.

But I'll give you this: the main objection to it is the emotional "not rightness of it", rather than the factual likelihood * severity of the scenario. I bet the blogger is still riding that bike.

gamache4• 17 years ago

I wrote this comment for the blog but I am unsure that it posted correctly there:

BMW Motorrad is similar to Apple in many ways:

* Both were early players in their respective markets. Moreso than many other manufacturers, they have a lot of history to draw from.

* Both are known for their design and sense of style. A BMW motorcycle, like an Apple device, is almost instantly recognizable once you know the visual cues of each.

* Both are premium products at premium prices, designed against disposability. A BMW motorcycle and an Apple computer will typically outlast 2-3 of the average competitor's products, while costing about 1.5x as much.

* Both have absolutely rabid followings, winning the kind of fanaticism you can only produce by decades of selling beautiful products that perform beautifully.

The BMW turn signals map closely to the Apple 1-button mouse. Is it the most functional design? Nah. But the customers barely care. The design is functional enough, and it conjures the brand very effectively.

Here, both BMW and Apple "missed" the waves of standardization to user controls; their controls were always good enough from the start, however, and since the users didn't make a stink about it, both highly successful manufacturers left well enough alone.

Looking from our vantage point in the present, sure, someone moving to a BMW or Apple interface will notice a few differences (or, in your words, it will be "inconsistent with virtually every other"). But when you look at it from the point in time at which these interfaces were designed, both were groundbreaking and best-of-breed. Macs had a mouse when their closest competitors would draw some text like "C:>" and drool at you. BMW had foot-shift and hand-clutch when their closest competitors had suicide-shift and clutch pedals. It took another 40 or 50 years for motorcycles to agree upon right-hand throttle, even.

Personally, I don't buy the left-brain/right-brain argument you put forth, and I consider the danger pretty low because turn signals get the absolutely lowest priority when I am riding and need to react to emerging situations (that's pretty-talk for "when the dude in the F-150 aims at me suddenly"). I ride a Honda and I am pleased with the left-thumb directional controls, but I bet I could get used to a BMW pretty quickly.... and any donations to test this theory are gratefully accepted. But in any case, I think you need to see some more of the history behind the controls before you can use them as a UI teaching tool.

jacquesm9• 17 years ago

I doubt the author of the post ever rode a bike, much less a BMW.

Any biker worth their salt could ride either model and with little preference at that. My last bike (in a long dark past) was a Honda, with the left hand thumb arrangement, I can easily see why the BMW arrangement might be a little bit more convenient but so little that it really doesn't matter.

And if you're busy with your signals while doing emergency evasive maneuvers I hope you have your health insurance paid up.

wuj38884• 17 years ago

The post mentions which bike he rides - a BMW.

Something else to consider - many of the newer BMW designs have moved to the 'standard' approach. Why make the move, given the 'brand' value already mentioned and the history behind the design?

3 reasons come instantly to mind - consistency, human physiology and safety. :-)

wuj38884• 17 years ago

I agree with most of what you're saying here, particularly the historical roots of the design and the post does acknowledge the importance of the interface the BMW Motorrad brand.

But I think you make a false assumption about the potential order of operations - I'm not worried about signaling a lane change when I'm in the middle of an emergency, I'm worried about the emergency occurring when I'm in the middle of signaling a lane change. :-)

gamache4• 17 years ago

If you're not already covering the brake, there is no penalty due to putting the turn signal there. In my opinion, adding a linked-braking system to the pedal would do more to improve rider safety than moving the turn signal controls.

alex_c2• 17 years ago

> A BMW motorcycle and an Apple computer will typically outlast 2-3 of the average competitor's products, while costing about 1.5x as much.

Wait, what?

For me it's hard to think of a company with more disposable products than Apple's.

"Oh, you have an OLD generation iPod? I see... Well, that's OK, it still plays songs..."

The built-in obsolescence is of a different kind, but it's as strong as any other company's.

gamache4• 17 years ago

I got nine straight years out of my Mac SE/30, five from my (used) PowerBook G3 Lombard and five from my iBook G4. Also my second generation iPod works fine (aside from a dead battery which was mostly my fault) and my 4th(?)-gen iPod is in ship-shape. In fact, every Apple product I own aside from a refurb Airport Express will work if you plug it in -- that's two IIe's, a IIc, two SE/30's, a Quadra 840AV, a Lombard, a Pismo, two iBook G4's, an iMac G4, the aforementioned iPods, an Airport Extreme, an iPhone 3G, a unibody MacBook, and a MacBook Pro.

In my 21 years of Mac usage, I simply do not share your experience.

sound2man• 17 years ago

"* Both are premium products at premium prices, designed against disposability. A BMW motorcycle and an Apple computer will typically outlast 2-3 of the average competitor's products, while costing about 1.5x as much."

I disagree with this. While the design of the a macbook is nicer than any other laptop I can think of, I had to replace the motherboard, optical drive, wrist rest, LCD panel, trackpad, and webcam before it was three years old. Granted I did use it extensively, but I don't think that my usage would have destroyed a Dell latitude or Lenovo Thinkpad any quicker. In fact, I am expecting my current Dell E6500 to last longer than may macbook did.

k4st• 17 years ago

My original macbookpro is still alive and well and withstood very heavy use. Granted, I needed to replace the battery a few times, originally because mine was within the serial # range of defective batteries, but each time those changes were covered by my warranty. The computer is now almost four years old.

I suspect that you can find someone with an anecdote describing a perfectly functioning mac and one that exploded. The same such anecdotes likely also exist for people running Thinkpads, Latitudes, et al.

tjogin• 17 years ago

I'm sure you realize that whatever happened to your particular machine is not necessarily indicative of all machines from the same manufacturer.

gommm• 17 years ago

When it come to anecdotes... I've got a powerbook and an ibook both still alive and kicking after close to 5 years and apart from the battery that I had to replace, they haven't had any problems (despite using them a lot)...

On the other hand my 2 years old macbook is starting to make some strange sound (the fan probably needs to be changed)...

I think that anecdotes are only that and in my experience once you have a problem with a laptop it's usually going to be more than one problem...

JimmyL3• 17 years ago

One of my favorite design-of-everyday-things examples is tiller-controlled outboard motors, like the one seen at http://bit.ly/3Aftns, and in particular, the ones where the forward/reverse control is integrated into the tiller (as opposed to a separate shifting lever).

With those engines, there's a very direct connection between the user's movements (moving the tiller) and the way the boat moves in response. It's not immediately obvious, but it becomes natural once you create a mental model around it - in the same way that using a turn signal on a car isn't immediately obvious (why does moving a swingarm down equate with going left?).

The real part I like, however, comes with reversing. As opposed to having to explicitly shift gears, simply turn the throttle in the opposite direction as you do to accelerate. Counter-clockwise to accelerate, clockwise to slow down, and keep turning it clockwise (through a safety stop) and you'll end up going backwards, which you can consider the extreme manifestation of slowing down (you have slowed so much you have negative forward velocity).

__david__• 17 years ago

> ... using a turn signal on a car isn't immediately obvious (why does moving a swingarm down equate with going left?).

Odd, when I learned to drive I found this immediately obvious the first time I actually turned using a signal...

The indicator is on the left side, so if I'm making a left hand turn then my hand is moving down--the same way that the signal moves to signal left. In fact, if you are holding the wheel in the right place and extend your fingers while you are turning then your hand clicks the indicator correctly without you having to think at all. I think that, aside from the steering wheel, it's one of the most intuitive things on the car.

wuj38884• 17 years ago

Interesting example! Especially because the steering element of these motors is so counter intuitive - you push left to go right and vice versa :-)

I agree with you about the direct connection between the user's movements and the speed, but the direction of the twist required to go forward/backward is fairly arbitrary (it seems), so it must be learned rather than 'intuited'.

JimmyL3• 17 years ago

The steering element is, I find, initially counter-intuitive. But my first time driving one of these boats I looked at the engine, saw how it moved where the thrust "pointed", and then it became entirely intuitive - I just needed to build the right model for how the high-level system worked, in order to get an intuitive feeling for the lower-level details.

As for the throttle, you're quite right - the twist direction to go forwards is arbitrary, but the rotating all the way in the opposite direction to reverse (which is what I wanted to highlight) makes much more intuitive sense to me than throttling down to zero, moving a lever, and then throttling back up again.

hs• 17 years ago

when i ride a motorcycle, i rarely use turn sign ... i literally use my head to turn

i don't even use the mirrors because turning my head eliminates blind spots

car and bike riders here understand (and accustomed to) what it means when an object in front of them slows down while its rider's helmet turn to left/right

but of course it's not safe :( so maybe a better solution is a bike with accelerometer built in (like in iPhone) so the sign flashes whenever i tilt my bike accordingly

lallysingh• 17 years ago

If the sign flashes when you're already turning, it's pretty much too late, don'tyathink? At that point an observer may think that you're signalling a second turn.

shrikant2• 17 years ago

Amen, dude. http://shr1k.blogspot.com/2009/07/open-letter-to-motorists.h...

sharkey• 17 years ago

BEEP! Oh, sorry, just trying to readjust to Honda controls ...

Anyway, I never found 3. to be a problem on my R100GS (w/ early K-style controls) but I think there's another really important point here: supporting those three buttons requires a whole mess of relays, latches and so on, in a black box the size of a couple of packs of cigs, hidden away under the tank. If it fails, like mine did, there's no way to do a roadside repair. It's a black box, literally.

Whereas the standard setup has one simple mechanical switch and one flasher can and not many wires. Its very simple to diagnose and you can get a new flasher can anywhere for $5.

The appropriate BMW slogan: "Why simple, when complicated works?"

bmwbud• 17 years ago

Very amusing discussion. In particular regarding front wheel braking. You guys really have a sense of humor.

jasongullickson• 17 years ago

Maybe this is an oversimplification, but I think the point of the article is "if you're going to do something in a non-standard way, there should be a reason", and the author didn't see an obvious reason for BMW's deviation.

As a motorcyclist I don't see an immediate, obvious advantage to the BMW approach vs. the standard approach but like most things on motorcycles, you may need to actually use it before it makes sense to you.

So it looks like I now have an excuse to spend some time riding Beemers...

nessence• 17 years ago

There's a significant problem with the theories behind this post. You have to engage the clutch to break hard or you're going to stall the bike. In fact, many times, acceleration will get you out of as many problems as breaking. Horn is more important to me anyways - they should all be WAY louder.

A better option is an auto-canceling turn signal which I'm sure too expensive, for now. Until then, for either design, the suck is going to depend on finger/thumb size.

How the design of a BMW Motorcycle affects your App

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