Showing posts with label iDrive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iDrive. Show all posts
iRing, sorry that's Bull Ring!
Sunday, May 2, 2010
For last three weeks I am Birmingham, UK. A demand of popular culture, when we move to a new city, we have to visit the shopping malls before the museums :) So I did the same and I end up in Bull Ring. This shopping centre has a very distinctive architecture; shopping mall is not limited by roads or anything else instead, it became a part of environment. Some part of the Bull Ring is under the road some part is over the road. Actually it is a bit confusing, when you first visit you cannot realize where you are and you will start thinking, did I visit this part. It is a very nicely designed and a bit confusing shopping mall. Until you get use to it, you might get lost or never visit some of it parts.
When I was confused in Bull Ring, I remembered the time I got confused in BMW’s first generation iDrive interface. Actually it was suppose to help drive to access menus and settings very easily without any confusion but you have to be either ten years old or you have to have a master degree of engineering. If you cannot satisfy these two criteria, you will not able to use iDrive. So BMW realized the pointless iDrive technology and revised many times. Now, it is more usable and less confusing. But why BMW waited for such a long time to understand their mistake.This is the same with designing a building, it might look very nice and unique but when you wish to use it, it may not be as exciting as you imagined. Actually, making a revision in a building is much much harder than making a revision in a software.
BMW and Bullring Websites
Expensive and Useless
Friday, February 19, 2010
When you say these two words; expensive and useless, I remember one thing in automotive industry! BMW's iDrive technology. In 2001, BMW invented a minimalist design of controlling menus with one knob. Look great, sounds great and totally useless in reality unless you are twelve. Hopefully, BMW made some revision and iDrive became more usable but still useless :)Recently, I saw a watch from Bell&Ross. 18 years old French watch manufacturer which loves to introduce bigger and bigger watches every season. Now they have introduced a net watch called "Radar". Time is shown like a radar screeen, sound innovative but totally useless! In order to understand the time, you have to spent five minutes and read the user manual several times.
Bell&Ross and BMW share one thing in common; they are very innovative but their products time-to-time useless!
Pictures are from;
BMW Website
Bell&Ross Website
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