While sitting in the backseat of a sport utility vehicle in 2007 with two distracted kids and a dog, General Motors engineer Cody Hansen learned about the realities of center console usage. Hansen, along on the ride as an observer, watched a 40-ish mother of two struggle with her car's aftermarket navigation and radio system -- pushing repeatedly on the touch display, tapping harder when it didn't work, and hunting through menus to find the right screen.
"Why does it have to be so hard to go from one screen to the next?" the exasperated driver demanded. "Why is it so hard to go from my iPod to my nav?"
Four years later, Hansen and the rest of the 40 engineers and designers behind Cadillac's new CUE (Cadillac User Experience) have an answer to those questions: It shouldn't be that hard. After hundreds of hours of observing users, and thousands more hours debating among themselves, the technical team has rolled out a product that GM executives believe is the next big thing in telematics. The CUE -- a center stack that works like a smartphone -- combines entertainment and information data from up to ten Bluetooth devices, USBs, and MP3 players with a user interface that can be easily appreciated, even by a dyed-in-the-wool Luddite.
Engineer Mike Hichme (left) and designer Stuart Norris (right): GM's design and engineering teams colocated in an effort to understand the customer's needs and choose the right technologies to support those needs.
"What the smartphone did for the cellphone, CUE is going to do for the infotainment space," says Micky Bly, engineering executive director for GM.
Clearly, GM engineers are proud of the new technology, having referred to it as "dramatic," "holistic," and "magical" at a recent press conference in San Diego. But what makes CUE different to other center console systems -- inside and outside GM -- is the team's penchant for using customers to help with the innovation. In the course of designing CUE, GM engineers traveled to California, Texas, Boston, and Chicago to ride with more than 120 users of navigation and radio consoles.
They went on sales calls, travelled with real estate agents showing homes, and even joined drivers who were on vacation. They sat in backseats with families and watched husbands and wives argue over infotainment intricacies. And in the end, they walked away with a better understanding of how drivers use infotainment.
"A lot of our design solutions were directly related to what we saw in the field," Hansen says.
The idea for CUE grew out of internal marketing discussions early in 2007. During the discussions, GM executives pointed out that Cadillac's competitors were a step ahead on offering specialized infotainment consoles. BMW had its well-known iDrive; Mercedes-Benz had its Comand; and Audi, its MMI. Yet, GM saw the infotainment space as one it wanted to grow into.
Yes, Ann, it's ironic that the outdoorsy vehicles that seemed so much cooler than our parents' luxury cars have become luxury cars themselves. And with little time spent doing outdoorsy activities. Now the argument I hear for SUVs is that in a collision the driver and passengers are much safer in an SUV.
When it comes down to it, the SUV is just another city-based luxury car that guzzles gas.
Rob, I'm right up there at that north end along with you. So far, none of my friends have shifted to SUVs, which makes me happy, since they are such gas guzzlers. If SUVs have become the new luxury vehicles for seniors, then they're not much different from the ones our parents drove, except for some obvious differences in appearance. It's too bad that luxury vehicles, where innovation often is implemented, as Chuck points out, have to be so consistently unsustainable in terms of fuel consumption.
I agree, many of us at the north end are not interested in luxury vehicles in the older sense of those cars. But I see a lot of people my age (boomer) have shifted to SUVs over the past decade or so. SUVs seem to have become the luxury vehilces of the boomers. In weight, size and gas consumption, they exceed the luxurty vehiles of the WWII generation.
Chuck, the north end of the technology-inventing generation turned 60 recently, so although it's a small group at that end, the shift has already happened. I wonder iwhether they will want to buy luxury vehicles at all. Many of my contemporaries are not at all interested. I'm sure not.
You raise a good point, Ann. If, as you suggest, the technology-inventing generation is getting old enough to buy luxury cars, than that should be good news for the rest of us who can't afford high-end vehicles. Luxury cars are a great place for technology to start out, because it gives the automakers a chance to build up economies of scale before they offer the technology to entry-level drivers.
What a concept indeed! I think it's too bad that this commonsense aftermarket research is associated only with luxury vehicles, not with the ones that most of us drive.
Regarding Cadillac's audience and their knowledge, or not, of technology, that's already changing as the technology inventing generation gets old enough to buy these cars.
The automakers could stop proliferation of electronics in a heartbeat if they really wanted, but they sell cars through features and the features require more electronic control. Given the state of the automotive market, no one's going to volunteer to build a car with less features. They're so busy competing for a smaller pie that they end up offering capabilities that bring phones, music and Internet into the vehicle, even though they know these features are distracting to drivers.
In an earlier column, Chuck discussed the rampant proliferation of electronics in modern automobiles. We're soon going to be at a tipping point where it will no longer be a question of whether consumers (used to be known as drivers) will be able to restrain themselves from being distracted by all the on-board telematics/electronics/information systems. And that's not to even mention McDonalds, the kids watching DVDs in the back, and texting while talking while driving. The logical endpoint of this is either autonomous vehicles (leave the driving to us, literally speaking) or IVHS. I don't believe autonomous cars will be viable for quite a while, DARPA and Google notwithstanding. (Even if they worked reliably, there are too many liability issues.) I do believe that Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems need to be revived. A great infrastructure project -- job creation -- and a way to keep cars moving efficiently on the highway while ensuring lives are saved.
I agree with you, Radioguy, that it's sad for a common sense process to be viewed as innovative. Maybe the reson for this is that the process must be carried out very carefully, lest the engineers come back with little to show for it. The challenge is taking the feedback and converting it to design ideas and technologies and, unfortunately, that's a tricky process. Executives take a dim view view of it when such efforts don't work and engineers are too often hesitant to suggest a costly methodology that offers no guarantees.
Using almost 200 light-emitting diodes in the front and back of the new 2014 CTS, Cadillac designers are showing how LEDs can change the character of a vehicle.
We recently posted an online slideshow called, “18 People You Didn’t Know Were Engineers.” Within hours of its publication, readers began to suggest names of other luminaries -- astronauts, politicians, athletes and actors -- who were educated or had worked as engineers.
In yet another sign that hydrogen is creeping into the consciousness of global automotive designers, sports car maker Aston Martin plans to run a hydrogen-fueled vehicle in a 24-hour Grand Touring race later this month.
One of the ugly truths of engineering is that life has a price. Cars, buildings, power plants, and industrial machinery can always be made safer for a cost, but manufacturers are at the mercy of the market.
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