Colby,
By: Seth Taylor
Tags: UX, UI, Feedback

Colby,

Congrats on requesting feedback. It’s such a great way to learn. Take the following feedback and throw them in the trash if your user research tells you other insights.

Overall, great visual exercise. Much of the information could be hidden during the ride and re-presented when the rider has stopped (which country you’re in, whether it’s am or pm, bluetooth connectivity, the path you’ve already traveled etc) I’d recommend reducing the amount of information on the display so that the rider can quickly see the most relevant driving information. This design seems more geared towards interesting and fun data to view after the ride than helpful during the ride.

Large Numbers

The largest numbers are the current gear and the km/h. I think it makes sense to constantly display the speed because that’s something that almost always needs to be checked, but not the current gear since experienced drivers can almost always feel which gear (with vibrations, speed, sound) on the motor bike is in.

Road route view

Would it help to zoom in to immediately relevant road information? The historical information of road travel seems superfluous since it won’t affect your upcoming driving decisions and the eye is attracted with the green color to the part of the road that is no longer relevant to the driver.

Brake info

The percentage of back and front brake power is interesting but not helpful in assisting the driver during driving. I can’t imagine the driver checking for percentages of braking while braking since braking is frequently to avoid obstacles or yielding to traffic signals. Again, this info is intriguing after the ride but not worth encumbering the visuals of the ride. An exception to this may be to instantly notify the driver to unlock the brakes if they seize, if this is the case, the alert needs to be a high-contrast visual alert instead of a gradual ramping of color or gradual scale growth.

Bluetooth icon

It’s only relevant during the pairing process. Remove it.

Power of the perimeter

With HUD, the perimeters regions are your friends and your enemies. Placing information on the perimeter carries the viewers eyes away from their “what” regions to their “where” regions. This is dangerous since the driver needs to keep their “what” fovea vision focused on the most important task of vehicle control and obstacle avoidance. Peripheral “where” vision should be used to convey user place in a 3D environment. If for any reason you feel it absolutely necessary to carry the eyes to the where regions of the field of view, do it very briefly with dedicated real estate that is easy to understand in an instant. Do not crowd it with similar information that would require the driver to cognitively separate similar looking charts. For example, don’t put horizontal bars close to other horizontal bars unless they need to be compared.

Fonts

Use fonts that are easier to scan. Currently, the all caps with overly squared proportions are too thin for HUD purposes. I suggest some SSm (Screen Smart) fonts that have well constructed letterforms, larger counters and easily discernible letter forms that would contrast better with a wider variety of backgrounds.

Charts

Nice job on not relying too much on reading text to understand the gist of the data (in the tachometer, throttle, fuel gauge and temperature). A good chart/graph can quickly convey the bulk of the info without reading the text.