Ferrari Digital Instrument Cluster
Automotive HMI
The Challenge
Design Ferrari’s new in-vehicle digital dashboard that’ll deliver a better driving experience in the future generation of company’s mild-hybrid Sports and GT cars.
The Outcome
The quintessential Ferrari experience established on the future proof modular and scalable design architecture delivered by an efficient interaction strategy along with the sporty yet elegant interface.
It's a beautiful sunny morning and the conditions are perfect for you to set some blazing fast laps in your Ferrari.
You get in the car, play your favorite music using the car’s instrument cluster to which your phone was automatically connected when you got in and head to a race track that’s an hour away from your home.
Upon arrival at the track, you begin with setting up the car in 'Track' mode which transforms the instrument cluster to show all the performance parameters you need on track wrapped in clean and beautiful racy graphics. That's exciting!
You hit the throttle and lap after lap push even harder, brake later, shift gears quicker and use the harvested electrical energy often to get that extra boost from the onboard battery power which results in faster sector times as you can see pinned on the instrument cluster. It's pure adrenaline. You change the vehicle setup on the instrument cluster and go for more laps and at the end you discover that perfect setup.
While you are stopped to save the new setup for the next round, the instrument cluster shows your buddy called up while you were setting the laps. You call back from to accept the invitation for a lunch and head to the meeting place by following the directions as shown on the instrument cluster.
This seamless experience that involves some parallel interactions with the car instrument cluster and dynamically responding graphical user interface came to life as a result of the partnership between Ferrari and the design agency I was working at.
It all began as part of Ferrari's soon to come alive first ever mild-hybrid super car. Getting electrical energy onboard was something special for the company, it was the beginning of a new era. As a part of this special project, the company had decided make some significant changes to the vehicle electronics and a part of the effort was to install a full color LCD instrument cluster in all of the future mild-hybrid Sport and GT cars.
The main idea behind upgrading to the new full LCD instrument cluster was to make the vehicle electrical system more energy efficient and prepare for the future in terms of vehicle infotainment experience.
The positive side effect of the full LCD instrument cluster was the ability to reconfigure it to show different information as and when needed. This meant increased complexity in terms of interaction between drives and the system. That’s the reason the client decided to turn to the experts in the field of human-computer interaction to design the best system possible. The partnership was established between Ferrari and the agency I was working.
After initial discussions and brainstorming about why we want to this redesign, we decided that new design would be a based on the modular and scalable architecture that’s suited for all of the future mild-hybrid for all electric cars the company would produce.
Before we set off to the work, the client made it clear that the new design must reflect the company DNA, the most relevant part of which is:
“Tradition and innovation are melded each and every day to fuel the Ferrari legend. We are driven by our passion for both the road and the track. The challenge we relish most is to set ambitious targets and guarantee our clients' complete satisfaction.”
Working as an agency consultant on the project, I had to deliver:
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The production level monochromatic interactive UI prototypes
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Detailed design specifications
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Full information architecture
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The project report that explains every aspect of the design
The final graphic design was to be done by the designers at Ferrari, so no details were needed from that point of view.
Before beginning the formal research I made an important decision which was not focusing on only individual bits and pieces of the design but instead focus on the holistic experience of driving and interacting with the car. This helped us, the fellow user researcher and me, extract the every detail of the activities that drivers of these cars perform not only while driving the car but also before and after it. We also tried to understand some emotional aspects of driving and owning the such a unique piece of engineering, how the drivers think of while they are away from the car when they think about their drive and the car as well. This additional information would be extremely useful in case we end up designing the connected experience.
One of the important findings from our research was that…
…every time drivers hit the race track and get ready to race by turning the race mode on, they would expect the car to transform into something special delivering something extra compared to what it does normally on the regular sport mode.
This discovery would later take full advantage of the reconfigurable LCD and redefine the driving experience forever.
This client was in complete agreement with our research findings and liked the idea of focusing on designing the holistic experience instead of a static product. However, I was told by the client to concentrate on the scope of the project and not get distracted by the possible connected experience because that’s not something the company is ready to build in the near future.
I also did a research on of few of the most popular Ferrari models of all time and tried to find some patterns and reasons behind the instrument cluster design on those models. Those models being so successful, I wanted to not miss anything that was done right which brought in the success. This would help me tremendously when I work on user interface of the new design.
My study showed that the balance between form and function is fundamental to the Ferrari’s design philosophy.
The design of F430 and F12 Berlinetta clusters clearly showed that unlike other top brands in the industry who play safe with old gauges to maintain their brand identity, Ferrari was not at all afraid of taking advantage of the advancements in non-mechanical technology to create the best driver experience.
The final part of the research was to understand the new hardware and what all information will be displayed on it. I worked with Ferrari’s test drivers and engineers to get insights on how a driver uses information on the instrument cluster to maximize their performance and how the new electrical system is set to take performance driving to the next level.
Findings from the interviews with the existing Ferrari owners also revealed that the buying Ferrari is an emotional investment for them and they expect nothing but the best from it. Be it a day on track, or on route to a dinner at a fine restaurant in busy traffic, the owners expect the car to behave accordingly. Their expectations were also shaped by the experience they get from some other products, like computers, smartphones, etc they use in their regular life. This was an important discovery as far as the interaction design of the new instrument cluster was concerned.
Our research unveiled that in the larger picture, the drivers go through four major unique phases of the experience which are:
- before driving
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while driving in sport mode
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while driving in race mode
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after driving
So, in order to design that best holistic experience we must focus on the these four phases independently and also collectively with a special attention to the transitions between these phases. This work would would help us build a concrete conceptual of the experience that’ll bring in certainty in the experience and drive a consistent user behavior.
The study of the different driving situations, driver behaviors in those situations and the possible impact of new hardware on the driver behavior gave birth to a solid information architecture that’ll take full advantage of the new hardware.
The information architecture is soul of the new instrument cluster. It's designed to be simple and efficient to interact with while driving and easy to personalize, if needed. It's also scalable from the engineering point of view so that features could be added or removed easily based on the vehicle.
In the new design, the instrument cluster would change its appearance and the displayed information based on the mode the car is being driven in. The information appear and disappear dynamically as and when needed. The interactions would be more inline with drivers mental models and they’ll required far less cognitive load. The new system would appear to be far more intelligent that the existing system in a way that it would help drivers take the best decisions in the moment so that they focus more on driving and getting most out of it and worry less about everything else.
In order to deliver a pure driving experience, the idea was to design an interface and the interactions to complement the activity of driving instead of demanding attention by interfering between the driver and driving.
Several options were conceptualized, some concepts were prototyped and tested before finalizing couple of options. A concept that got special interest from the client was the one where the UI would transform itself to show the information in completely different way when the car is set into the race mode. The hight level layout of the UI would stay same but the tachometer form factor would change to create more space to accommodate the large amount of information that drivers need while racing.
In the new design, the instrument cluster would show different information and show different dialogs that’ll ask user to do certain things during each of transition phase. For example, as soon the car is set in race mode, the system would silence the music and phone ask the user to setup the car for the race. During the race, after every lap, the system would show user the information on the performance that’ll help the driver make improvements, and once the race is over the system would show the best performance and car setup during that performance and ask user to save it as favorite for the later use.
Single rotary jog dial was available to operate the entire system as opposed to the two separate controllers to operate two displays on the older systems. This hardware change defined most of the interaction patterns in the design by bringing in the perfect balance between flexibility and constraints of usability.
On the UI, I had retained some bits from the existing design but tweaked it to take advantage of the new hardware. Consequently, we discovered some problems with the redesigned tachometer. As the needle was replaced by a progress ring, it made reading tachometer a little difficult for drivers. The length of the needle from the center to the edge of the tachometer would provide a longer area for drivers to estimate the rev counts by fixing their eyes on any point along the path and determining the angle of the needle. As oppose to this, reading progress ring was more difficult due its circular path which is not as easy for human eyes to track as the straight needle. This problem was solved by adding subtle offset path that's thick enough to be tracked easily by human eye. This fix completed the design and made it ready for further graphic refinement.
The sporty geometric typeface was an element that was retained from the older design because it suited the character of the Ferrari cars. Large type sizes supplemented by sufficient white space for gear and speed indicators means the most important information is easier to glance at, graphics with a minor corner radius was also easier on eyes.
Ultimately, the final design didn't just reflect the nature of and the character of the brand but also set a new standard for instrument cluster experience for performance driving. If you already own a Ferrari and excitingly looking forward for the much needed upgrade then as soon as you get into one of those cars with this instrument cluster, you immediately realize that you are in a different and better Ferrari. Or if you are about make an entry into the Ferrari owners club, this instrument cluster will give you a glimpse of the type of sophisticated machinery your are about to acquire. The design was much appreciated by the client and is now is production as part of the several mild-hybrid electric vehicles on sale offered by the company.
12.3" Colour Non-Touch LCD
7-Way Rotary Jog Dial
Embedded software
Global Market
2014
1 User Researcher
2 Interaction Designers
Lead interaction designer
Sketch, Adobe Illustrator, OmniGraffle