Paul Aldighieri has your back.
When some fancy smancy product or electronic engineer at Ford is all ready to introduce yet another electronic and/or infotainment element to your vehicle, Paul is your advocate, your man in the design trenches, who will ensure that the new feature makes sense for us humans to use and enjoy, and that our brains don't get too overheated when trying to figure out how this new gadget works.
The Windsor native is an ergonomics engineer, a professor in Human Factors, and a member of Ford's Global Human Machine Interface (HMI) team. This morning he's sitting across from me, at a table in a Toronto hotel room, for a short interview. This evening he will be the keynote speaker at the Canadian Universities Technology Conference, hosted by Ryerson University.
The theme of the conference is how people interact with technology — something the HMI team has been examining for the last four years, as it developed MyFord and MyLincoln, the automaker's new way of connecting the driver to all the vehicle's information and entertainment features.
"Before 2006 we were still designing traditional instrument clusters and centre stacks, and updating them as the new generations required them," notes Paul.
"In 2006, Derek Kuzuk (VP, Global Product Design), was looking at what was coming, this onslaught of information possibilities. He determined that we had to do something differently, to help people manage information in a car. He told us to come up with ‘a mouse.’ What the mouse did for the computing industry, that's what he wanted for the car — that was the assignment… Wow, what an assignment."
MyLincoln debuted on the 2011 Lincoln MKX, while MyFord debuted on the 2011 Ford Edge and Focus. Check our earlier reports for more details on these systems, but, basically, they do away with traditional joysticks and rotary dials, and use five-way controllers on the steering wheel, LED touch screens, and voice commands.
The HMI team that Kuzuk formed was the first cross-functional team to work on this aspect of the vehicle. It consisted of Paul Aldighieri (Human Factors), a product designer, an ergonomics engineer, and an electronics engineers. The team worked closely with an outside supplier, IDEO, a well-known firm specialized in product research.
One of the key elements of the solution, according to Paul, was to "leverage the familiar." This entailed grouping features into "four core activities… activities that have been part of motoring for decades." They include navigation, phone, entertainment, and climate — each has their own corner of the big screen.
"Now, when another new technology comes along, say Internet radio, we won't create an internet corner, we'll put it in the entertainment corner. It's just another source."
When some fancy smancy product or electronic engineer at Ford is all ready to introduce yet another electronic and/or infotainment element to your vehicle, Paul is your advocate, your man in the design trenches, who will ensure that the new feature makes sense for us humans to use and enjoy, and that our brains don't get too overheated when trying to figure out how this new gadget works.
The Windsor native is an ergonomics engineer, a professor in Human Factors, and a member of Ford's Global Human Machine Interface (HMI) team. This morning he's sitting across from me, at a table in a Toronto hotel room, for a short interview. This evening he will be the keynote speaker at the Canadian Universities Technology Conference, hosted by Ryerson University.
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| Paul Aldighieri (Photo: Mike Goetz/Auto123.com) |
The theme of the conference is how people interact with technology — something the HMI team has been examining for the last four years, as it developed MyFord and MyLincoln, the automaker's new way of connecting the driver to all the vehicle's information and entertainment features.
"Before 2006 we were still designing traditional instrument clusters and centre stacks, and updating them as the new generations required them," notes Paul.
"In 2006, Derek Kuzuk (VP, Global Product Design), was looking at what was coming, this onslaught of information possibilities. He determined that we had to do something differently, to help people manage information in a car. He told us to come up with ‘a mouse.’ What the mouse did for the computing industry, that's what he wanted for the car — that was the assignment… Wow, what an assignment."
MyLincoln debuted on the 2011 Lincoln MKX, while MyFord debuted on the 2011 Ford Edge and Focus. Check our earlier reports for more details on these systems, but, basically, they do away with traditional joysticks and rotary dials, and use five-way controllers on the steering wheel, LED touch screens, and voice commands.
The HMI team that Kuzuk formed was the first cross-functional team to work on this aspect of the vehicle. It consisted of Paul Aldighieri (Human Factors), a product designer, an ergonomics engineer, and an electronics engineers. The team worked closely with an outside supplier, IDEO, a well-known firm specialized in product research.
One of the key elements of the solution, according to Paul, was to "leverage the familiar." This entailed grouping features into "four core activities… activities that have been part of motoring for decades." They include navigation, phone, entertainment, and climate — each has their own corner of the big screen.
"Now, when another new technology comes along, say Internet radio, we won't create an internet corner, we'll put it in the entertainment corner. It's just another source."