Effective multimedia design relies, in part, on an acute understanding of what takes place when a person interacts with a screen. The ideal is to achieve an intuitive interface so the user experience is as natural and effortless as possible.
In the main, our work in multimedia for the autoshow relates to exhibits about vehicles. However, on occasion, it has been applied to the vehicles themselves.
For example, the Detroit Autoshow 2005 featured the Mercury Meta One concept car, for which we designed a multimedia installation providing a taste of future in-car technology.
Three monitors were set within the vehicle dashboard. A touch-screen between front seat passenger and driver controlled the driver's information display, navigation display, entertainment console and safety system display on these monitors.
The presentation - which could also be accessed through a stand-alone interactive display positioned outside the vehicle - showed how all those functions could be customised in an instant, one day.
The performance of the multimedia installation was such that the potential of the software for use in Mercury production vehicles was placed under immediate review.
Our experience with Jaguar provides even more rewarding evidence of the calibre of Imagination interface design, which can be appreciated for real in the new Jaguar XK. Coupe.
Some years ago, our multimedia team struck up a dialogue with Jaguar ergonomic experts, undertaking a critique of the in-car interface in the Jaguar S-Type.
In time, this relationship resulted in us being invited to enter a three-way pitch to design the driver interface for the new generation Jaguar XK in 2003. We won.
The outcome of the project, developed over an extended time frame, was launched in the Jaguar XK concept vehicle presented at the Detroit Autoshow in 2005. It has subsequently entered production and met with high praise, particularly from a widely respected UK motoring magazine.
‘It's a touch-screen job and it's a revelation. Jag's London-based design consultants Imagination were involved in the design of the screen's logic and graphics and it shows. The counter-intuitive BMW iDrive and the Byzantine ‘Benz COMAND systems look, in comparison, like they were designed by car guys on a PC running a very early Windows OS. Which they probably were. The Jag/Imagination system looks like it was designed on a Mac by a cool information graphics graduate on a huge retainer. Which it almost certainly was.'
Top Gear magazine
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