99% Invisible - 99% Invisible-37- The Steering Wheel

Episode Date: September 29, 2011

If I asked you to close your eyes and mimic the action of using one of the simple human interfaces of everyday life, you could probably do it. Without having a button to push, you could close your eyes and … Continue reading →

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No problem. Without having a button to push, you could close your eyes and pretend to push a button. And that action would accurately reflect the action of pushing a real button, same with flipping a switch, or turning a door knob. If you close your eyes and fake the movement, it would sync up with its real world use. Now if I asked you to do the same thing with a car's steering wheel, you'd think you'd be able to describe steering accurately and mime the correct movements with your hands in the air.

But you'd be wrong, so wrong. You'd probably kill a bunch of imaginary people. But don't just take my word for it. Yeah, but I was Steve, I'm not even in fact a engineer. His full name is Dr. Steve Kloat. He just introduced himself as Steve. He's a casual guy. And what was your research on?

What's your main research you've done? And that's Tristan Cook and Thomas Nelson is also in the room there asking questions of Steve. Tristan and Tom run this awesome blog called Humans and Design. My interests are in drive-to behavior. So here's the exercise. Put your hands up and grip an imaginary steering wheel. Ten and two. No, I want you to mine the action of changing lanes to the right. So every try it. Alright, if you're like most people, and according to Steve's research, we're talking the vast majority of people. You turn your imaginary wheel 45 degrees to the right or so, and then back to the center.

And that's the action for changing lanes. But that's not right. What you've described is actually a sequence of the movements that you require for turning the corner. To actually change lanes, you have to turn the steering wheel to the right, then turn it back crossing the center line, turning the wheel and equal amplitude to the left to correct your heading, and then back to the center. Knowing that this weird brain hiccup existed, Steve's team at the University of Queensland tested people in driving simulators, and sure enough, if you provided visual feedback, people could change lanes no problem.

But as soon as you turned off the screen or blindfolded them and told them to change lanes, even though they had only just moments ago successfully performed the correct action, they couldn't do it. Given no other feedback, you can't change lanes using a steering wheel without vision. I mean since cars are designed to be driven with your eyes open, that's okay. In fact, this is a funky example that doesn't mean that a steering wheel is a bad interface design. You could probably argue the opposite.

You could argue that a steering wheel is so well designed that anyone can use it with just a little bit of feedback in the real world even though they can't describe how they use it in the abstract. It's like people didn't learn, they just did the same. Those are the course of an experiment, which takes about 45 minutes to an hour. The size of the error was pretty consistent. But Steven and his researchers decided to test this in a real car. So Steve got some from like $50 million worth of insurance and took people out in a real car and drove them down a test road and then took their vision away and asked them to change

lanes. Our friends Tristan and Tom were two of the participants. The first time you took vision away from me, it was absolutely terrifying. Yeah. It's a little bit like when Obi-Wan Kenobi was teaching Luke Skywalker how to use a light saber without using his eyes. With the blash you'll down I can't even see. In the first few runs people made the same mistake they did in the simulator. Essentially they were told to change lanes and they move the steering wheel in such a way that they turned a corner instead.

But here's where things get really interesting. Stretch out with your feelings. People gradually started to improve and by the end of the real world blind trial, they were performing almost perfect lane change. In my experience there's no such thing as luck. There's the vestibular system that senses your balance or the somato-sensory system that senses pressure on your skin as your thigh presses into the seat as you turn a corner. One gives an aneronia signal.

The others would correct it. Well, that's right. Using all those extra senses, people learned how to perform the lane change in a real car blindfolded. But here's the crazy part. After it was over over they asked the participants to mime a lane change with an imaginary steering wheel in their hands. And sure enough, they

went right back to making the same mistake performing a corner turn instead of a lane change. This is a reward and how it was resistant to learning. The steering wheel is pretty nicely mapped to our intuition, but it still requires the slightest bit of feedback so that our brain knows how to use it, but we still manage. Also, I can't stress this enough, people. Don't dry-ply unfold it. Really, you're just not going to be able to do it. Alright, I'm glad we got this job. 99% Indusible was produced by Tristan Cook and Thomas Nelson of the blog Humans In Design,

fun at war at humansanddesign.com and me Roman Mars. It's made possible with support from Lunar, making a difference with creativity. It's a project of KALW, 91.7 local public radio in San Francisco, the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco, and the Center for Architecture and Design. To find out more, go to the website at 99%invisible.org. This fire is burning still, put it out when we lose the thrill. I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, I'm drunk, Here's an interesting sign note. If you want people to pretend to perform a perfect lane change blindfolded, here's what you tell them. You say, dodge an obstacle in the road and then return back to your current lane.

That movement, perfect lane change. and then return back to your current lane. That movement, perfectly in change.