The Rise of the Scroll Wheel
It turned out that my car had some worn down connections and was leaking oil, a problem that could be fixed easily and at modest expense. It wasnÂ’t quite done when I made it back to the dealer, and I was unable to read my book in the waiting room over the blaring Olympics, so I walked around the showroom floor for a while. I hadnÂ’t spent time in an auto showroom in several years, although it was a favorite pastime for my father and me when I was younger. My dealer sells several types of cars, including BMWs (which have a separate showroom). I spent a few minutes sitting inside each of them, but they were so consistent with one another and with every other BMW I have been in that there was little thrill to it. However, in the corner of the room there was a video monitor with a wheel attached to it. The wheel resembled an upscale version of the paddle which was sold with some Ataris.
As it turns out, its function was to demonstrate BMWÂ’s new iDrive system. With a name like that, you might think that it has something to do with driving. However, the point of iDrive is to control everything in your car except driving. (I suppose the argument could be made that every function in a car is related to driving in some way, because driving is the function of the car. This would make the name more vague than inaccurate.) While you are driving you can use iDrive to control the stereo, climate control, navigation system and your cellular phone. And you can control it all by placing one hand on one wheel. There is an obvious similarity to the much ballyhooed iPod scroll wheel, and indeed both provide the user with an easy way to control a sophisticated device with one hand. However, the iPod is build to allow users to use varying speeds to rapidly navigate among a large amount of music. The BMW wheel is designed to be easy to use while driving, and to provide a universal user interface into all of the vehicleÂ’s systems. And it does a remarkable job.
When I was studying software engineering, I took a great class in user interface designed, where the professor explained how pleased the user interface community was at the rise of the web, because it gave them something to study other than how users interacted with Windows-like GUIs. I am sure that at this point they are equally tired of studying how users interact with websites. One of the problems of trying to study user interfaces is that the good ones are designed to be similar to ones that you have seen before, so you rarely have anything new to write about. Perhaps the rise of sophisticated embedded devices is driving a resurgence in the field.
When you put your hand on the iDrive controller, there are seven things you can do. You can spin the wheel clockwise and counterclockwise, move it in four directions like a ‘T’ controller for a game console, and press down on it. Furthermore, the controller adjusts the feel of its turn based on the options it is controlling. So if you are selecting between six menu items it will have exactly six notches you can turn to, and you cannot turn it beyond the top or bottom one. But if you are tuning the radio, it lets you turn freely. It takes a little while to get used to the idioms of the new interface. In particular, it is hard to know when you want to twist the controller right rather than pushing it in the right direction. But once you use it for a few minutes, you are able to fluidly control a complex set of features without taking a hand off the wheel of having to more than glance at a screen. It simply feels like a natural part of a car.
I seem to be in the minority opinion on this matter, as the iDrive has been poorly received by auto enthusiasts. It seems like they also value consistency in their controls, and see the iDrive as needlessly complex. They may be correct first version may lack refinement and is needlessly complex. But I am still amazed at what I saw. Much like Apple did with the iPod, BMW took a set of tasks that people perform in a complex and piecemeal way and unified it into an elegant system. It is good to know that German engineering has made it to the digital age.